European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology

This research aims to stimulate employee engagement in sustainability by investigating whether self-initiated and trained job crafting functions as a behavioural tool to engage more in sustainability in daily work. Using a daily diary design in Study 1, we found that employees’ general attitude and perceptions of control towards sustainability predicted daily sustainability intentions which related to daily sustainability behaviour. Importantly, optimizing demands mediated the intention-behaviour gap. In Study 2, we tested a self-training intervention in which participants were encouraged to work on daily self-set crafting for sustainability goals. Results showed that the intervention group had increased sustainability intentions after the training. Furthermore, participants who actively followed the training increased more in optimizing demands throughout the training than control participants. The self-training did not affect overall proactive sustainability behaviour but resulted in increased specific sustainability activities through optimizing demands. Stimulating job crafting seems promising for implementing sustainability into organizational life.

Idle time is a period during which employees cannot complete their work tasks for reasons beyond their control. It has previously been shown to have negative consequences for employees’ performance and well-being. To shed light on the mechanisms underlying these effects, we argue based on affective events theory and action regulation theory that idle time is an event that leads to boredom. Since boredom is a negative affective experience that motivates employees to do something about their situation, it may reduce job satisfaction and increase extra-role behavior (i.e., prosocial and counterproductive) and turnover intentions. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 1,036 employees who participated in a five-wave longitudinal study across 12 months. Results showed that, at both the within-person and between-person levels, idle time was positively associated with boredom, which, in turn, was associated with lower job satisfaction, higher counterproductive work behavior, and higher turnover intentions, but not with prosocial work behavior. These associations were robust when additionally controlling for work environment features (e.g., working from home), dispositions (e.g., personality), and demographic characteristics. Thus, idle time seems to be a boring and mostly negative experience for employees. Employees and managers should organize work to avoid boredom whenever possible.

Leaders influence their followers directly through interactions and role modelling, and indirectly by providing resources and managing demands. However, to lead accordingly, leaders require adequate working conditions. So far, little is known about the contextual antecedents of leadership and its subsequent impact on follower job characteristics. To address this research question, we asked 711 employees and their 82 direct leaders about their autonomy and their workload at three points of time (time lags: 12–14 months between T1 and T2 and 6–7 months between T2 and T3). Followers also rated their leaders on transformational leadership. The analysis accounted for the nested data structure. Results showed that leader autonomy and workload are linked to transformational leadership behaviour, which is significantly related to follower autonomy but not follower workload. The findings of this longitudinal study highlight the importance of leader job characteristics for establishing transformational leadership behaviours and designing their followers’ job characteristics.

This study aims to identify whether daily activities during the lunch break, performed before eating, are associated with improvements in several indicators related to recovery from work stress. No existing studies examine the daily effects of sitting mindfulness meditation and aerobic physical exercise practiced during lunch break as daily internal work recovery activities. This three-armed randomized controlled trial was carried out over 22 working days with service sector workers (n = 94, age mean, 46.8) The RCT was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, Identifier: NCT03728062. The mindfulness group received a mindfulness-based intervention (sitting meditation), while the physical exercise group practiced an aerobic exercise program with the same time intervals as the mindfulness group (15–30 minutes); the third group was the control group. We measured daily effects on fatigue, psychological detachment, sleep quality, stress symptoms, and attention problems. Measurements of daily variables were collected through an ad hoc App. Growth curve analysis reveals that mindfulness and physical exercise can effectively reduce fatigue, stress boschphysicalBosch physical exercise significantly improved sleep quality.

According to Stress-as-Offense-to-Self theory, illegitimate stressors should undermine the self-enhancing potential and amplify the strain-related consequences of challenge stressors. We therefore postulated that time pressure will be less challenging and more hindering/threatening when considered illegitimate. In a five-day daily and a consecutive three-week weekly diary study (N = 117), we examined within-level indirect effects of daily/weekly time pressure on strain and performance-related outcomes via challenge/ hindrance/threat appraisal and tested the role of illegitimacy in these relationships. Time pressure predicted both strain (emotional irritation/exhaustion) and performance-related variables (professional efficacy/engagement). Indirect effects were only found for emotional irritation and engagement via challenge appraisal; these effects were moderated by illegitimacy in the daily data. Underscoring the importance of illegitimacy, the consideration of illegitimacy rendered many associations of hindrance and threat appraisals with outcomes insignificant. Overall, illegitimacy mostly predicted outcomes directly or moderated relationships between time pressure and challenge, hindrance, and threat apprai-sal. Also supporting our reasoning, illegitimacy augmented the effect of “urgency” (i.e., time pressure net of challenge, hindrance, and threat appraisal) on strain. By contrast, illegitimacy undermined effects of urgency on engagement only at low, rather than high, urgency, which we interpret as indicating a performance protection mode.

By acknowledging the role of assessing employees’ promotability in talent development and retention, along with the need to improve the understanding about its antecedents, this paper examines the impact of employees’ role breadth self-efficacy on this criterion. Specifically, it builds upon the integration of previous theoretical developments regarding the motivational virtues of role breadth self-efficacy at work, with the core assumptions of Spence’s signalling theory to empirically test whether innovative work behaviour acts as an underlying mechanism of the link between role breadth self-efficacy and promotability. Relying upon a time-lagged design with multisource data (employees and respective supervisors), evidence obtained from a sample of N = 185 software engineers supported the indirect effect of role breadth self-efficacy on supervisors’ ratings of employees’ promotability, via employees’ innovative work behaviour. The main theoretical and applied contributions of these findings are presented and discussed in the context of human resource management.

This article develops a conceptual understanding of initial employability development, specifically the transition into first career destinations. Substantial previous research focuses on the role of individuals in ensuring employment readiness and continued employability development. Studies also identify the importance of employers for sustained employability. However, the interdependence and interaction between employers and individuals are under-theorized. We integrate social exchange theory and signalling theory to conceptualize initial employability development. We propose a cyclical model that comprises interactive and reciprocal signalling and social exchange processes between employers and individuals. The model overcomes the limitations of linear conceptualizations and one-sided models that theorize employability as either the outcome of human capital resources deployed by individuals or as managed by employers in employability development processes. We extend the processual approach to employability by redirecting theoretical attention to the interaction of signalling and social exchange as fundamental to employability development. We conclude by discussing implications in relation to employability research and theory development.

Work-related self-efficacy has been found to predict outcomes such as daily work motivation and performance. However, the way in which self-efficacy changes within workdays and how such changes emerge remain unclear. This study integrates research on work events with a self-regulation perspective to explain changes in daily self-efficacy. We argue that negative events hamper daily goal attainment, reducing employees’ self-efficacy. We also investigate differences in employees’ reactivity to negative events, assuming that the strength of the indirect effect differs based on their ability to self-regulate in threatening and demanding situations (indicated by threat- and demand-related action orientation) and to make autonomous decisions (indicated by job autonomy). The model was tested in a diary study across five workdays (N = 101 individuals). The findings indicate that decreased goal attainment explains impairments in self-efficacy on days with more negative events. The negative relationship was stronger for employees with lower demand-related action orientation. However, the indirect effect was not contingent on threat-related action orientation and job autonomy. Our findings contribute to the self-efficacy literature and the growing research on work events by providing knowledge regarding the mechanisms and conditions that can partially explain how and when negative work events reduce employees’ daily self-efficacy.

This research relies on bifactor models to help improve our understanding of the dimensionality of the psychological empowerment construct. We also examined the configurations, or profiles, taken by psychological empowerment dimensions, and documented their stability over time as well as the associations between these profiles and theoretically-relevant predictors (workload, supervisor support, overall organizational justice, and role clarity) and outcomes (alcohol consumption, sleeping difficulties, and depressive symptoms). A sample of 750 healthcare workers completed a questionnaire twice over a one-year period. First, our results showed that employees’ psychological empowerment ratings simultaneously reflected a global overarching construct co-existing with four specific dimensions (competence, impact, meaning, and self-determination). Then, five profiles were identified and found to be highly stable over time: Low Empowerment, Moderately High Empowerment and Impact, Normative, High Empowerment, and Moderately High Empowerment and High Meaning. Role clarity was also associated with a higher likelihood of membership into the High Empowerment profile and a lower likelihood of membership into the Low Empowerment one relative to the other profiles. Finally, employees’ depressive symptoms were the highest in the Low Empowerment profile.

The effectiveness of empowering leadership has been the subject of contrasting views. Numerous studies have adopted an interactive approach to reconciling these inconsistencies and emphasized the role of subordinates’ competence and capabilities. We join this stream of discussions by pointing out that leader competence also plays a pivotal role in empowering subordinates. We further postulate that subordinates’ relational energy can mediate the interactive effects of empowering leadership and perceived leader competence on task performance. In Study 1, data analyses based on a sample of 397 team members and 112 team leaders reveal that relational energy mediates the interaction effect of empowering leadership and perceived leader competence on subordinates’ task performance. In Study 2, data analyses based on 193 leader – follower dyads reveal that the indirect effect of relational energy is still significant after controlling for several alternative mediators commonly used in empowering leadership research (e.g., LMX, intrinsic motivation, and psychological empowerment).

Leaders occupy the most critical roles in organizations. A growing body of research on mindfulness in the field of leadership suggests that mindfulness is a highly beneficial factor for various leader and organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study is to quantitatively review the research related to leader mindfulness from the perspectives of both self-report mindfulness levels and mindfulness interventions. Meta-analytic results from 54 independent samples and 9,414 leaders suggest that leader mindfulness significantly relates to leaders’ well-being (e.g., stress), relationships (e.g., relationship qualities, leadership styles), and job performance, as well as followers’ well-being and job performance. Moreover, we found strong support for the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in improving leader well-being. We also found a significant difference between leader mindfulness levels before and after the intervention. The difference of post-test scores between the intervention and control groups was not statistically significant, though the effect was in the predicted direction. Through this quantitative review, we synthesize findings on leader mindfulness and mindfulness interventions for leaders, identify research gaps in the literature, and lay a solid foundation for advancing research on leader mindfulness.

Conversations about work-family conflict are commonplace. However, most of the conversation is based on how individuals can best manage work and family demands. Little is known about how others perceive and react towards individuals who go through this experience. Building on theories of social evaluation and stereotype maintenance, we hypothesized that due to gender stereotypes, which prescribe the ideal woman as highly invested in family and the ideal man as highly invested in work, women who experience work interference with family (WIF) and men who experience family interference with work (FIW) would elicit negative reactions. Results of three experimental studies (NStudy1 = 569; NStudy2 = 299; NStudy3 = 275) and a field study (N = 219) provided only limited evidence for this assumption. However, they consistently showed across all four studies that both men and women who experience FIW were systematically judged and treated less favourably compared to employees with WIF, by observers and their supervisors, on several work-related dimensions (agency, dominance, respect, promotability, work performance, reward allocations). However, they were judged to be the better parents. We discuss the implications of our findings for work-family conflict research.

Our study provides new theoretical insights into the integration of social identity and social exchange theory through an examination of the effects of leader-member subgroup similarity, perceived leader-member exchange, faultlines and social identity leadership. Empirical support was found from 430 team members nested within 73 teams across four organizations for the mediating effect of perceived leader-member exchange on the relationship between leader-member subgroup similarity and perceived team identification, within the relationship between leader-member subgroup similarity and perceived leader-member exchange being moderated by faultlines. In addition, the relationship between perceived leader-member exchange and perceived team identification is enhanced by higher levels of social identity leadership. Overall, the findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between different identity orientations and perceived leader-member exchange. This understanding has implications for the effective management of leader–member relationships.

Understanding how diversity-focused HR practices influence individual performance is critical to enhancing organizational competitiveness. In the current article, we examine the effects of diversity-focused HR practices on individual performance in terms of social information processing theory and social exchange theory. In particular, we draw upon constructs of diversity-focused HR practices, inclusion climate, employee relational attachment, and individual performance to hypothesize serial mediation mechanisms linking diversity-focused HR practices to individual performance. We collected time-lagged, multi-level, and multi-source data from 475 employees and their immediate supervisors working in the hotel industry of Italy. Our results demonstrated that diversity-focused HR practices were positively related to inclusion climate, which in turn improved relational attachment among employees. Moreover, diversity-focused HR practices were positively related to individual performance via sequential mediation of inclusion climate and relational attachment. ARTICLE HISTORY

This article investigates the impact of demographic team faultlines on employee absenteeism by considering the level of leader-member exchange (LMX) that supervisors develop with members from different subgroups in a team. We integrate faultline research with the literature on LMX differentiation to build an integrative multilevel model to explain individual absenteeism behaviour. Drawing from social categorization and social comparison theory, we propose that members of subgroups that receive less favourable LMX treatment than their outgroup are particularly likely to increase their absenteeism behaviour due to faultline-induced social categorization. Our predictions receive empirical support in a study with 164 employees from a German electrical engineering company. We discuss implications for the faultline and LMX literature and executives who lead diverse teams.

In the information age we live in, we are constantly threatened by being drowned in a huge flood of information. Information overload (IO) describes this state where information can no longer be adequately processed by an individual. However, the danger posed by IO to individuals as well as organizations can still not be assessed properly due to a missing integration of previous findings. In this quantitative meta-analysis, we analysed the data of 133.011 people within 117 studies, and overall, 330 effect sizes. We performed multi-level as well as robust variance estimation analyses and found, among other things, positive correlations between IO and information avoidance, stress states, burnout and fatigue, and negative correlations between IO and performance and satisfaction. Explorative subgroup analyses revealed different moderating effects based on different vocational settings. Overall, the results of this meta-analysis indicate a negative relationship between IO and peoples’ behaviour and experience, which call for an evaluation of the exchange and handling of information. Across a wide range of studies and contexts, this meta-analysis reveals that IO may provoke the information fatigue syndrome that has been poorly considered to date, leading to severe consequences in both work and home contexts.

This study addressed the lack, in the work context, of a comprehensive time-lagged examination of the core constructs (interpersonal behaviors, psychological need states, and motivation) underlying Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Specifically, this research relied on person-centered analyses to gain a better understanding of how the distinct components of psychological need states (satisfaction, frustration, and unfulfillment of the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) combine to produce distinct profiles of employees. We also documented the stability of these profiles over time and their associations with theoretically-relevant predictors (supervisors’ supportive, thwarting, and indifferent behaviors) and outcomes (work motivation). Questionnaire surveys were completed twice over the course of three months by a sample of 590 French employees. Six profiles characterized by distinct configurations of global and specific need constructs were identified and found to be stable over time. Supervisors’ supportive, thwarting, and indifferent behaviors showed well-differentiated patterns of association with these profiles. Finally, employees’ global levels of self-determination and specific levels of motivational regulations differed as a function of profile membership. Altogether, results from this research suggest that SDT’s explanatory framework may be expanded to encompass the key role played by need indifferent behaviors and employees’ experiences of need unfulfillment. Keywords: Interpersonal behaviors; Need indifferent behaviors; Psychological needs; Need unfulfillment; Work motivation; Self-Determination Theory.

This multi-sample study (5 samples) revisited the content and factor structure of the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale (MWMS) through exploratory structural equation modelling. Specifically, the operational representation of, and the relations between, the types of behavioural regulation were investigated as was their relation to theoretical outcomes. Results suggest the removal of three problematic items and show that work motivation, as measured by the MWMS, is best represented by a factor structure reflecting autonomous motivation, introjected and external regulation as well as amotivation. Furthermore, introjected regulation is more strongly represented by its avoidance subscale, whereas the two types of external regulation (material and social) are not distinguishable. Lastly, autonomous motivation is linked to optimal employee functioning (e.g., vigor/vitality, satisfaction, lower turnover intention). The two controlled types of regulation have differentiated relations with performance, but are both linked to poor employee health and turnover intention, with (avoidance) introjected regulation being a particularly important predictor. By revisiting the content of the MWMS and cross-validating its structure in five samples, this study provides an empirically adequate representation of the types of regulation and their outcomes. Suggestions for future research aimed at improving the content of the MWMS are also offered.

Research suggests that people prefer human over algorithmic decision-makers at work. Most of these studies, however, use hypothetical scenarios and it is unclear whether such results replicate in more realistic contexts. We conducted two between-subjects studies (N=270; N=183) in which the decision-maker (human vs. algorithmic, Study 1 and 2), explanations regarding the decision- process (yes vs. no, Study 1 and 2), and the type of selection test (requiring human vs. mechanical skills for evaluation, Study 2) were manipulated. While Study 1 was based on a hypothetical scenario, participants in pre-registered Study 2 volunteered to participate in a qualifying session for an attractively remunerated product test, thus competing for real incentives. In both studies, participants in the human condition reported higher levels of trust and acceptance. Providing explanations also positively influenced trust, acceptance, and perceived transparency in Study 1, while it did not exert any effect in Study 2. Type of the selection test affected fairness ratings, with higher ratings for tests requiring human vs. mechanical skills for evaluation. Results show that algorithmic decision-making in personnel selection can negatively impact trust and acceptance both in studies with hypothetical scenarios as well as studies with real incentives.

We provide an up-to-date quantitative synthesis of the evidence on the effect of unemployment on wellbeing based on 46 samples reported in 29 studies published between 1990 and 2020. Our sample includes longitudinal studies focusing on developed economies (e. g., EU-15 countries, UK, US, and Australia). We advance existing knowledge by exploring a wider range of wellbeing measures (both mental health and subjective wellbeing) and an extensive set of moderators capturing individual characteristics and country-level factors. In addition to the well-established negative impact upon mental health, our results present a negative relationship between unemployment and life satisfaction. In line with previous work, this negative association is stronger for men than women, and the longer the duration of unemployment, the larger the impact. We contribute to the existing evidence by pointing to the significant role in this relationship of gender, social and economic context, and norms/societal expectations regarding work. Finally, by utilizing longitudinal data and meta-analytic cross-lagged structural equation modelling, we present preliminary evidence on the existence of a reciprocal relationship between unemployment and wellbeing over time. While unemployment reduces wellbeing, poor wellbeing also leads to unemployment, indicating that individuals can become trapped in a cycle of unemployment and poor wellbeing.

Does entering a romantic relationship enhance or detract from employees’ work–life balance (WLB)? While different theoretical predictions can be made about how being in a relationship contributes to employees’ satisfaction with WLB, the literature lacks a robust investigation into this question. Using longitudinal data from Germany (n = 609; k = 2,358), this research examined if and how transitions in and out of non-marital relationships over six years relate to employees’ varying levels of satisfaction with WLB. Results showed that employees were less satisfied with WLB when they were romantically partnered (vs. unpartnered), which contrasts previous cross-sectional findings. In an additional study (N = 779) validating the first study’s measures using a similar sample, and comparing partnered vs. unpartnered employees cross-sectionally, we found that partnered individuals feel more, not less, satisfied with WLB. Taken together, these findings suggest caution in interpreting the effects of time-varying variables in cross-sectional studies. When examined longitudinally, taking on a partner role was related to reduced satisfaction with WLB, highlighting the need to attend to the variability in needs and challenges unmarried individuals face in work–life interface research.

How do daily experiences affect work-nonwork boundaries? In this paper, we present a dynamic framework of boundary permeability that aims to answer this question. We propose that daily events are associated with increases in permeation across daily work and nonwork boundaries, and that these increases are strongest on the days when the events occur. We further argue that support seeking and social capitalization are critical interpersonal processes that provide additional insights into the relations between daily events and daily boundary permeation. In Study 1, working parents (N = 88) completed a paper diary for seven days (612 observations), with repeated measures of daily events (hassles and uplifts) and daily work and nonwork boundary permeation. In Study 2, employed individuals (N = 138) completed a similar diary on-line (834 observations) that also included measures of the interpersonal processes. Results of both studies were generally consistent with our hypotheses, and offered support for our dynamic framework. At a practical level, our findings reinforce the importance of incorporating flexibility into human resources practices that are meant to support employees’ efforts to manage the work-nonwork interface – because every day brings about new events.

Responding to calls for examining the underlying mechanisms through which national culture influences employee attitudes, we test whether cultural values (egalitarianism, hierarchy, and power distance) alter the relationships of job insecurity with job satisfaction, pay satisfaction, promotion satisfaction, and organizational commitment via national corruption. Combining four data sources (i.e., the International Social Survey Programme, Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s cultural scores, and Transparency International’s corruption index), we tested the multilevel mediated moderation model with Study 1 of 25,030 employees nested within 32 countries in 2005, and Study 2 of 27,868 employees nested within 37 countries in 2015. Multilevel moderation analyses indicated that egalitarianism buffered against the negative impact of job insecurity on job satisfaction (Study 1 & Study 2), pay satisfaction (Study 1), and organizational commitment (Study 1 & Study 2), whereas power distance exacerbated the effect of job insecurity on pay satisfaction (Study 2). Meanwhile, national corruption aggravated the negative impact of job insecurity across outcomes and samples. Finally, the moderation effects of egalitarianism and power distance on employees’ reactions to job insecurity were mediated by national corruption. We discuss our findings in light of pervasive corruption and job insecurity globally.

Findings from adjacent literatures suggest that thinking about the future may have implications for employee health, especially when such thoughts are affectively toned. However, existing constructs targeting work-related thinking are predominantly time-unspecific, possibly overlooking a substantial portion of work-related cognitions that occur on a daily basis. We therefore develop a comprehensive, multidimensional conceptualization of work prospection, as well as an instrument (Work Prospection Scale; WPS) that allows the measurement of three types of work prospection (cognitive, positive affective, and negative affective). We place work prospection in its wider nomological network and evaluate its validity across three cross-sectional studies (total N = 825) and a 5-day diary study (N = 199). Psychometric properties of the scale were supported across studies, and the WPS was related to, yet empirically distinct from related constructs. Criterion-related results showed that positive affective work prospection during the evening was associated with less fatigue and more recovery in the next morning. Conversely, negative affective work prospection was related to more evening fatigue, as well as less next morning recovery. Cognitive work prospection had no significant relationship with recovery indicators. Additionally, our findings show that targeting future-oriented cognitions adds to the prediction of employee recovery beyond time-unspecific measures.

The role of leaders has been increasingly studied in connection to employee well-being. However, little attention has been given to the effect of passive forms of leadership such as laissez-faire leadership. Two studies examined the effects of laissez-faire leadership on positive and negative aspects of employee psychological well-being. Due to its passive nature, we expected laissez-faire leadership to relate to reduced positive mental health and more depressive symptoms among employees. Moreover, we predicted these relations to be exacerbated when supervisors are perceived to hold a high organizational status. Results from a three-wave time-lagged study (Study 1: N = 608) indicated that laissez-faire leadership was associated with reduced positive mental health and more depressive symptoms over time and provided partial support for the moderating role of perceived supervisor organizational status. Study 2 was a vignette experiment (N = 190) that examined the effects of laissez-faire leadership, constructive leadership, and abusive supervision conditions on employee well-being. Results indicated that in the laissez-faire leadership condition employee well-being was worse than in the constructive leadership condition but better than in the abusive supervision condition. We discuss the implications of these results for research on laissez-faire leadership and psychological well-being.

A leader’s role is often associated with increased psychosocial demands, which could lead to rumination during nonwork time. Leader rumination might trigger a cascade of mechanisms causing employee rumination and eventually persistent employee sleep problems. In a three-wave study, we examined whether leader rumination predicts changes in employee sleep quality linked by employee rumination. As a possible serial mechanism underlying the trickle-down effect of leader rumination on employee rumination, we investigated leaders’ general health and resource-oriented leadership behaviour. Based on self-report data from 94 leaders and their 332 employees, we found support for a multilevel mediation model in which leader rumination negatively affected employee sleep quality via employee rumination while controlling for baseline measures and a shared work environment (workload). Finally, leader rumination was negatively related to employee sleep quality via the serial mediation of leader health, resource-oriented leadership, and rumination perceived by the team members. The results demonstrate the importance of leader rumination for employees’ sleep quality nearly 2 years later and provide knowledge that can be used to expand and optimize interventions.

Evasive knowledge hiding (EKH) is a behavioural phenomenon with important personal and organizational implications, whose intraindividual motivational antecedents and situational contingencies are still not sufficiently clarified. In this paper, we integrate mixed-motives and trait-activation theory to address EKH in low- and high-trust work relationships. The focus is on complex interactions of trait competitiveness and prosocial motivation while responding to a knowledge-seeking request by a (dis)trusted colleague. Our findings based on three mixed-methods studies (two factorial survey field studies and one quasi-experimental student-based study) provide general evidence of the overwhelmingly positive effect of trait competitiveness (i.e., pro-self motives) on EKH across situations. Additionally, we found that if competitive individuals are also prosocially motivated, their “paradoxical personality” will manifest in less EKH behaviour, especially if situational trust cue is positive. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Building on a self-enhancement perspective (Sedikides & Alicke, 2019), we connect job crafting and organizational socialization research and propose that, based on their core self-evaluations (CSEs), newcomers use job crafting to create a resource-rich and stimulating work environment and construct a sense of organizational insider status during socialization. We hypothesize a reciprocal relationship between job crafting and insider status such that perceptions of insider status motivate newcomers to personalize their work through job crafting, and job crafting improves insider status perceptions. We also propose that leaders’ developmental coaching strengthens the positive effects of CSEs on job crafting and insider status. Survey data were collected from a four-wave sample of 125 newcomers at various organizations in China. The results showed that 1) positive CSEs were associated with more job crafting behaviors as well as higher perceptions of insider status, 2) job crafting and insider status were positively and reciprocally related to one another over time, and 3) leaders’ developmental coaching moderated the positive effect of CSEs on insider status, but not on job crafting, such that the association between CSEs and insider status was positive for higher levels of developmental coaching and non-significant for lower levels of leaders’ developmental coaching. These findings reveal a self-enhancement process during organizational socialization and the important role of leaders’ developmental coaching in such a process.

In a preregistered experimental study that draws from the met expectations hypothesis, we examined how volunteer recruitment messaging can shape expectations of new volunteers prior to their first day, and whether meeting or failing to meet expectations on the first day would affect satisfaction. By experimentally manipulating a recruitment poster, we set either a transactional (i.e., by volunteering, one can learn new skills) or a relational expectation (i.e., one can work in a team). Participants then viewed an experimentally determined vignette that depicted their first day as a volunteer as either being rich in, or bereft of, experiences of teamwork and learning new skills (crossed). We found that recruitment messaging strongly impacted the participants’ expectations of the volunteering experience prior to their first day. Neither meeting expectations regarding teamwork nor learning new skills played a statistically significant causal role in determining satisfaction. By contrast, richer experiences notwithstanding expectations, and especially those pertaining to learning new skills, were more important determinants of satisfaction. Polynomial regression analyses supported the experimental results, namely that experiences far more strongly determined satisfaction than did expectations. We conclude that providing richer experiences to volunteers is more important than expectation management for volunteer satisfaction.

The benefits of gratitude are universally recognized in psychology and other disciplines. However, the capacity for trait gratitude to bring advantages to employees and organizations is an under-explored area despite the fact that trait gratitude could offer considerable benefits to organizational performance and success through its potential impact on organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Based on trait activation theory, a model was put forward to examine the influence of trait gratitude on OCBs through the impact that trait gratitude has upon psychological availability. Additionally, task significance was explored as a moderator of the relationship between trait gratitude and psychological availability. The model was tested across two studies. Study 1 involved a multi-phase and multi-source survey of 178 leader-member dyads from a chemical company and an electricity firm. Study 2 was a preregistered experiment involving 205 full-time employees from a range of industries including finance, retailing, entertainment, information technology, law, engineering and other industries. In both studies the mediated moderation model of workplace trait gratitude on OCBs was supported. Limitations, implications for research and practice are addressed.

This research’s purpose was to develop a valid and transparent text-to-personality technique to fit the requirements for personnel selection assessments. In this research we developed an advanced word-counting technique, the HEXACO text-to-personality (HTTP) technique, based on prior lexical personality research to assess personality from job interviews. To evaluate the technique’s construct and criterion-related validity we conducted three studies and analysed the transcripts of asynchronous (n = 102 and 72) and face-to-face (n = 155) interviews. These studies provided four key insights. First, the HTTP technique showed small to medium correlations with self-reported and interviewer-rated personality. Second, the technique showed mixed, but generally favourable, evidence for criterion-related validity. Third, the technique produced a more construct valid personality score when the interview questions activated the predicted personality trait. Fourth, the technique’s additional features (i.e., having weighted keywords and adjusting the keywords’ weight for adjacent quantifiers) did not improve its validity; unit-weighing was approximately equally effective. Altogether, the results show that a word-count text-analysis technique can discover traces of personality in interview transcripts. Still, significant improvements are needed before these types of automatically computed text-to-personality ratings can be used to replace or supplement interviewer ratings.

The aim of this intensive longitudinal study was (1) to explore the temporal evolution of two mental health indicators (anxiety and depressive symptoms, and insomnia) throughout COVID-19 lockdown in Spain, and (2) to examine its association with two work-related stressors (job insecurity and work-family conflict). A sample of 1519 participants responded to several questionnaires during the lockdown (between 16 March and 29 April 2020). Results of latent growth modelling showed a curvilinear increase of our two mental health indicators over time (a logarithmic growth for anxiety and depression, accentuated during the first part of the lockdown, and a quadratic growth for insomnia, accentuated during the second part). Regarding its association with work-related stressors, we found that higher levels of job insecurity and work-family conflict were related to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Additionally, we found a significant interaction between time and the two forms of work-family conflict (work-to-home and home-to-work), showing that people with more work-family conflict experienced stronger growth in all mental-health indicators. Overall, this study contributes to the description of the temporal dynamics of mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain, as well as its association with two key work-related stressors.

The development and maintenance of work relationships is the primary mechanism for effective socialization, yet emerging work relationships in early socialization are fragile. We hypothesize that their persistence is related to frequency of information-based support between newcomers and support providers and perceived responsiveness of support providers. We contrast this relational effect with a more established effect of organizational socialization practices. In a three-wave longitudinal study of 40 newcomers involved in 601 work relationships, we examined the persistence of newcomers’ information-support relationships over time. We found support for arguing that the persistence of information-support relationships is positively related to the frequency of information support that newcomers receive from their support providers. Moreover, we show that the persistence of information-support relationships depends on relational factors—the perceived willingness of a support provider to provide informational support, while favourable socialization tactics as perceived by newcomers do not play a significant role. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

Based on a two-dimensional perspective of job insecurity and perceived employability, the present study examines the role of perceived employability in preventing job insecurity and subsequent work-related well-being (i.e., emotional exhaustion and vigour). Building on the Job Demands-Resources Model, our hypotheses were tested with 3-wave panel data of 1,233 Chinese employees with six months in between each measurement time. Results showed that: 1) perceived internal employability had a cross-lagged relation with qualitative job insecurity, and perceived external employability had a cross-lagged relation with quantitative job insecurity; 2) there was no cross-lagged relationship between job insecurity and work-related well-being indicators, while emotional exhaustion was positively related to both qualitative and quantitative job insecurity; 3) the relationship between perceived external employability and vigour was reciprocal; perceived internal employability was positively related to future vigour, but not the other way around. Hence, the present study contributes to the job insecurity and perceived employability literature by identifying perceived employability as a critical antecedent of job insecurity and work-related well-being as well as finding the reverse relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion.

A common theme across phenomena like vitality, vigor, and fatigue is that they all refer to some aspect of energy. Since experience sampling methodology has become a major approach, there is a significant need for a time-effective and valid measure of energetic activation. In this study, we develop and examine the validity of a single-item pictorial scale of energetic activation. We examine the convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the pictorial scale and scrutinize the practical advantages of applying a pictorial vs. a purely verbal item concerning response latencies and user experience ratings. We conducted two consecutive experience sampling studies among 81 and 109 employees across 15 and 12 days, respectively. Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses provide evidence that the pictorial scale converges strongly with vitality and vigor, relates to fatigue, is distinct from facets of core affect, and shows expected correlations to antecedents of energetic activation. Energetic activation as measured with the pictorial scale was predicted by sleep quality and basic need satisfaction, and predicted work engagement. The pictorial scale was superior to a purely verbal scale regarding response latencies and participant-rated user experience. Hence, our scale provides a valid, time-efficient, and user-friendly scale suited for experience sampling research.

Organizations increasingly require employees to be proactive and creative problem solvers in their daily work. We employ a multilevel perspective (i.e., weekly activity level, group/context level, and personal level) to understand employees’ day-to-day creative process. Specifically, we examine whether weekly help-seeking behaviour is positively related to weekly creativity and to what extent this relationship is affected by work group functional diversity and employees’ level of openness to experience. We recruited 368 medical employees nested within 42 work groups over four consecutive weeks. The results showed that help-seeking behaviour was not related to this week’s creativity, but was positively related to next week’s creativity when work group functional diversity was high. Moreover, this lagged effect was even stronger when simultaneously employees scored high on openness to experience. Our findings suggest that help-seeking behaviour sparks creativity after a period of incubation. Furthermore, employees’ creative performance reaches the highest level when they engage in help-seeking behaviour in a more functionally diverse work environment and simultaneously are more open-minded to different experiences. We thus present an integrative model (i.e., what actions individuals engage in, which circumstances individuals are exposed to, and what personal abilities individuals are capable of) to understand employees’ creativity.

In a multi-source field study and three scenario-based experimental studies, we provide evidence that subordinate performance and supervisor–subordinate guanxi are antecedents to empowering leadership. Supervisor–subordinate guanxi moderates the relationship between subordinate performance and empowering leadership. Supervisors’ trust in subordinates is one of the potential mediating mechanisms. Together, we show that subordinate performance and supervisor–subordinate guanxi are important for empowering leadership within Chinese cultural context, which enriches our knowledge of empowering leadership.

Flexible employment arrangements where workers only provide labour (and are paid) when requested to by their employer have proliferated. How do workers react to the resulting instability in work schedules and pay? This study seeks to provide an answer using experimental methods. 301 low-income, working age, non-student individuals took part in an on-line experiment simulating standard and zero-hours contractual conditions. Results unambiguously support the hypothesis that work uncertainty discourages work. This is not only because variability in work availability reduced total expected pay but also because uncertainty itself is avoided, even at the cost of lower total earnings. Public benefits play an important moderating role. Workers are more likely to accept uncertain work and pay when access to out of work benefits is limited or when benefits automatically top up incomes during periods when work is unavailable.

This study examines the relationship between individual and climate-level job insecurity (JI) and employee performance (i.e. adaptivity, proactivity, task proficiency). We suggest that while JI at individual and climate level triggers similar appraisal, the behavioural response of employees might be different. While individual JI might evoke a withdrawal reaction (reduced performance) because individuals experience the insecurity as a personal issue (not affecting others), when JI is a climate-level phenomenon (affecting everyone), they might visibly increase their performance driven by job preservation motives. Moreover, the individuals’ own and the supervisor ratings might have additive value in evaluating employee performance; while individual’s performance ratings indicate one’s own candid reaction to JI and hence be more negative, supervisor ratings might be more positive because they reflect the supervisors’ perceptions of employee performance that might be more malleable (due to impression management). Results of the multi-level analyses largely confirmed our hypotheses.

Humour is a human being-inherent activity that occurs in all kinds of social activities and interactions. However, while leader humour is widely considered to be beneficial, the role of employee humour in humour interactions in the workplace is largely neglected in the literature. Accordingly, the present study examines the effect of congruence in the humour behaviour of leaders and employees on employees’ psychological and behavioural reactions. The complex effects of humour interactions on employee creativity are empirically examined within the context of the broaden and build theory. In particular, the study clarifies the mechanism by which humour benefits employees by proposing that the experienced positive events arising from congruence in the leader-follower humour behaviour enhance the employee PsyCap building process and hence increase employee creativity. Data collection is performed through a three-wave survey of 220 leader-follower dyads in Taiwan. The results confirm the proposed hypotheses. Notably, support is found for the indirect effect of congruence in the leader and employee humour behaviour on employee creativity via employee PsyCap. The present results have important implications for both theory and practitioners.

Due to its influence on important workplace outcomes, surface acting has drawn increasing attention from researchers in recent years. Most of the research in this area has focused on employees’ interactions with individuals external to the organization, such as customers and clients. With the current study, we contribute to and extend the literature by focusing on employees’ leader-directed surface acting and examining how leader-directed surface acting (i.e., faking positive emotions and suppressing negative emotions in interactions with one’s leader) relates to leader ratings of employee task performance. Data collected from 414 employees and 103 leaders showed that employees’ faking positive emotions in interactions with leaders was positively associated with employee withdrawal, but withdrawal was not significantly related to leader-rated task performance. In addition, male employees’ suppressing negative emotions in interactions with leaders was positively associated with leaders’ communication satisfaction, which was, in turn, positively related to leader-rated task performance. Yet, similar effects were not found for female employees. Theoretical and practical study implications are discussed.

Qualitative research methods are a powerful set of tools that play an important role in the scientific knowledge generation cycle. Yet the role of qualitative research in knowledge generation in the WOP field is unclear. The aim of this position paper is to showcase the value of qualitative research methods for the progress of WOP research. We offer an empirical overview and evaluation of observed practices and explore methodological challenges that appear to be prevalent. Furthermore, we discuss future opportunities for harnessing the hitherto untapped potential of qualitative methods for exploring pertinent and timely WOP research questions. Throughout this paper, we wish to encourage thoughtful discussion of how qualitative methods can be used to constructively contribute to scientific knowledge generation in the WOP field.

Studies have shown that mental health problems may lead to workplace bullying, a so-called reversed effect. The current study investigated if this effect can be found also for poor health in general. When the reverse effect occurs is unclear. Supervisor support has been shown to moderate different antecedents and consequences associated with bullying. It was hypothesized that poor health would be a risk factor for bullying and that a supportive leadership style would moderate this risk. Using a two-wave design with 958 participants, logistic regression was used to test the association between health and workplace bullying. A moderation analysis tested supportive leadership style as a moderator. The study resulted in two novel findings: (a) a supportive leadership style has a strong mitigating effect on bullying behaviours, both directly and as a buffer; (b) poor health in general, including poor physical health, about doubles the risk of becoming a victim of workplace bullying. Together, these two findings make a boundary condition for the reverse effect clearer. The reversed effect only seems to be present when the level of leadership support is low or absent.