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Introduction
Connie Wanberg is a Professor and Industrial Relations Faculty Excellence Chair in the Work and Organizations Department at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In her role as a researcher, she is internationally known for her work on unemployment, job search, and careers.
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Publications
Publications (68)
The authors used theoretical models to organize the diverse unemployment literature, and meta-analytic techniques were used to examine the impact of unemployment on worker well-being across 104 empirical studies with 437 effect sizes. Unemployed individuals had lower psychological and physical well-being than did their employed counterparts. Unempl...
A motivational, self-regulatory conceptualization of job search was used to organize and investigate the relationships between personality, expectancies, self, social, motive, and biographical variables and individual differences in job search behavior and employment outcomes. Meta-analytic results indicated that all antecedent variables, except op...
This review describes advances over the past decade in what is known about the individual experience of unemployment, predictors of reemployment, and interventions to speed employment. Research on the impact of unemployment has increased in sophistication, strengthening the causal conclusion that unemployment leads to declines in psychological and...
Despite widespread popular concern about what it means to be over 40 and unemployed, little attention has been paid in the literature to clarifying the role of age within the job seeking experience. Extending theory, we propose mechanisms by which chronological age affects job search and reemployment outcomes after job loss. Through a meta-analysis...
Even if individuals are in a job or organization that is generally a good fit for them, they can still experience misfit with specific work demands. This study examines the proximal experiences of trait‐incongruent work demands among highly introverted individuals, offering a novel episodic and trait‐specific perspective on workplace misfit. Throug...
Research suggests that physically attractive employees receive myriad workplace and career advantages compared to less attractive employees. Despite calls for more attention to the role of organizational context in understanding this phenomenon, a theoretically grounded conceptualization of an employer's value for physically attractive employees an...
Divorce is one of life's most stressful events (Scully et al., 2000). By pairing two studies, using mixed‐methods, and drawing on conservation of resources theory, we contribute new and previously unavailable information about three questions. How and to what extent does going through a divorce affect individuals at work? What factors differentiate...
Although social class is an important construct throughout the social sciences, it has received only minimal attention in the industrial-organizational psychology, organizational behavior, and human resource management literatures. As a result, little is known regarding the potential role of social class in the work and career context. The present...
The authors assess levels and within-person changes in psychological well-being (i.e., depressive symptoms and life satisfaction) from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic for individuals in the United States, in general and by socioeconomic status (SES). The data is from 2 surveys of 1,143 adults from RAND Corporation’s nationally representative...
The impacts of COVID-19 on workers and workplaces across the globe have been dramatic. This broad review of prior research rooted in work and organizational psychology, and related fields, is intended to make sense of the implications for employees, teams, and work organizations. This review and preview of relevant literatures focuses on (a) emerge...
Job search is an important activity that people engage in during various phases across the life span (e.g., school-to-work transition, job loss, job change; career transition). Based on our definition of job search as a goal-directed, motivational, and self-regulatory process, we present a framework to organize the multitude of variables examined i...
COVID-19’s impacts on workers and workplaces across the globe have been dramatic. We present a broad review of prior research rooted in work and organizational psychology, and related fields, for making sense of the implications for employees, teams, and work organizations. Our review and preview of relevant literatures focuses on: (i) emerging cha...
This review distills available empirical research about the process and experience of looking for a job. Job search varies according to several dimensions, including intensity, content, and temporality/persistence. Our review examines how these dimensions relate to job search success, which involves job finding as well as job quality. Because socia...
The authors develop and evaluate an online networking intervention, Building Relationships and Improving Opportunities (BRIO), built in conjunction with the networking literature and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1999). A field experiment using 491 unemployed job seekers shows that the intervention increases networking intensity, networki...
While social science has substantially documented the individual experience of unemployment, less is known about the role of contextual variables. One contextual factor that is important for unemployed job seekers is the unemployment insurance (UI) that they receive. This study examines the relationships between job seeker perceptions of UI generos...
How and to what extent does extraversion relate to work relevant variables across the lifespan? In the most extensive quantitative review to date, we summarize results from 97 published meta-analyses reporting relations of extraversion to 165 distinct work relevant variables, as well as relations of extraversion's lower order traits to 58 variables...
This research investigates whether and when a job applicant’s unemployment status (i.e., employed, short-term unemployed, or long-term unemployed) affects the probability of receiving an interview request by examining interview request rates in the presence of versus absence of unemployment status antidiscrimination legislation. In response to 3,33...
This article surveys 100 years of research on career management and retirement, with a primary focus on work published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Research on career management took off in the 1920s, with most attention devoted to the development and validation of career interest inventories. Over time, research expanded to attend to broa...
We examine changes in work adjustment among 179 expatriates from 3 multinational organizations from predeparture through the first 9 months of a new international assignment. Our 10-wave results challenge classic U-shaped theories of expatriate adjustment (e.g., Torbiorn, 1982). Consistent with uncertainty reduction theory, our results instead sugg...
Due to the worldwide economic recession many people lost their jobs whereas graduating students experience substantial difficulties landing their first job. Given that unemployment has detrimental effects on the well-being of individuals and their families, it is imperative to advance our understanding of the job search and (re)employment process....
While much organizational socialization occurs through interpersonal interactions, evidence regarding how these processes unfold over time has not been forthcoming. Results from a 14-wave longitudinal study with a sample of 264 organizational newcomers show that support of newcomers from coworkers and supervisors declines within the first 90 days o...
Job seeking is an important aspect throughout people’s careers. Extant theory and research has focused on one particular dimension of job search, that is, intensity/effort (i.e., job search quantity), posing that intensity/effort importantly affects employment success. The present conceptual paper extends job search theory by arguing for the import...
Via a qualitative study, we introduce and elucidate 5 layers of context-related job search demands (omnibus, organizational, social, task, and personal) that are encountered by both employed and unemployed job seekers. We develop a process model to portray the mechanisms (managing mood and motivation, feedback/help seeking, and self-reflection/lear...
Organizational socialization is the process by which a new employee learns to adapt to an organizational culture. This crucial early period has been shown to have an influence on eventual job satisfaction, commitment, innovation, and cooperation, and ultimately the performance of the organization. After decades of research on organizational sociali...
This chapter briefly describes the advances in the area of organizational socialization and highlights a number of important future research directions outlined by the preceding chapters within this handbook. Next directions for research include new antecedents and outcomes of newcomer socialization, how to explore socialization process and dynamic...
This handbook focuses on organizational socialization, or the process through which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors required to adapt to a new work role. This chapter launches the handbook by defining organizational socialization, differentiating this term from the related concept of onboarding. The importance of...
The purpose of this study was to increase our understanding of time structure (the degree to which individuals perceive their use of time as structured and useful) among individuals who are unemployed. First, our study assessed the relationship between time structure and employment status. We found partial support for the hypothesis that unemployed...
We propose and examine a self-regulatory framework focused on understanding the dynamics of job search intensity and mental health over the first several months of unemployment. We use a repeated-measures design, surveying newly unemployed individuals weekly for 20 weeks. Through the lens of our framework, we test relationships pertaining to the ro...
Guided by theory and research on self-regulation and goal pursuit, we offer a framework for studying the dynamics of unemployed individuals' job search. A daily survey over three weeks demonstrated vacillation in job seeker affect and, to a lesser extent, “reemployment efficacy.” Daily perceived job search progress was related to this vacillation....
This article describes the development of a self-administered inventory to provide unemployed job seekers of varying education levels and backgrounds with insight into their job search. The inventory was refined in 5 phases with multiple samples. Evidence for predictive validity was provided by examining the relationship between the inventory compo...
Drawing upon role-making theory, this study examines which new job market entrants, following college graduation, find informal mentors and how much mentoring they receive from these mentors using a predictive design. Our results suggest that individuals lower in negative affectivity and higher in cognitive ability as well as women, individuals who...
This study examined the role of self-disclosure within protégé/mentor dyads in formal mentoring partnerships within a corporate context as a means of learning more about specific relationship processes that may enhance the positive outcomes of mentoring. While both protégés and mentors self-disclosed in their relationships, protégés disclosed at a...
This longitudinal study examined 3 layoff-specific (explanation, correctability, and severance benefits) and 2 person-centered (negative affectivity and prior organizational commitment) variables as predictors of layoff victims' judgments of layoff fairness, willingness to endorse the terminating organization, desire to take the previous employer t...
This study examines the predictors and outcomes of mentoring received by participants of a 12-month formal mentoring program. Based on relationship theory, we examined how the personality of the individuals in the mentoring dyad, their perceived similarity, and mentor perceived support for mentoring contributed to relationship outcomes. The study i...
Two hundred forty-seven unemployed individuals completed a battery of scales assessing constructs relevant to the unemployment situation. These constructs included: financial situation, employment commitment, job-seeking confidence, time structure, mental health, cognitive impairment, physical symptoms, and unemployment negativity (how upset an ind...
Job search is an important element of people’s careers and is especially critical for unemployed individuals. The current study surveyed a sample of 328 unemployed job seekers in China to test hypotheses related to the theory of planned behavior and action–state orientation theory. Results of the three-wave longitudinal study demonstrated that the...
To better understand the process of organizational withdrawal, a turnover model incorporating dynamic predictors measured at 5 distinct points in time was examined by following a large occupationally and organizationally diverse sample over a 2-year period. Results demonstrated that turnover can be predicted by perceived costs of turnover, organiza...
Dynamic predictors of job-search intensity over time are examined in a large 10-wave longitudinal study of unemployed individuals. Two sets of variables relevant to the examination of job search from a dynamic, self-regulatory perspective--core self-evaluations (T. A. Judge, A. Erez, & J. E. Bono, 1998) and the theory of planned behavior (I. Ajzen,...
The use of network technology to deliver training is the latest trend in the training and development industry and has been heralded as the ‘e-learning revolution.’ In an effort to separate hype from reality, this paper reviews practitioner and research literature on e-learning, incorporating unpublished information from interviews with managers an...
Organizations have become increasingly interested in developing their human resources. One tool that has been explored in this quest is mentoring. This has led to a surge in mentoring research and an increase in the number of formal mentoring programs implemented in organizations. This review provides a survey of the empirical work on mentoring tha...
A three-wave longitudinal study of 1071 female Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) recipients was conducted to examine predictors of welfare outcomes in the context of the 1996 federal welfare reform act. In addition to the demographic and socioeconomic variables that typically have been examined in the welfare literature, motivational varia...
This 4-wave longitudinal study of newcomers in 7 organizations examined preentry knowledge, proactive personality, and socialization influences as antecedents of both proximal (task mastery, role clarity, work group integration, and political knowledge) and distal (organizational commitment, work withdrawal, and turnover) indicators of newcomer adj...
The authors propose a multidisciplinary model of the predictors of reemployment and test its predictive validity for explaining reemployment success. Predictor variables from the fields of economics, sociology, and psychology are incorporated into the model. Reemployment success is conceptualized as a construct consisting of unemployment insurance...
The authors propose a multidisciplinary model of the predictors of reemployment and test its predictive validity for explaining reemployment success. Predictor variables from the fields of economics, sociology, and psychology are incorporated into the model. Reemployment success is conceptualized as a construct consisting of unemployment insurance...
This study examined predictors and outcomes of networking intensity (i.e., individual actions directed toward contacting friends, acquaintances, and referrals to get information, leads, or advice on getting a job) during the job searches of a sample of unemployed individuals. The study used a Big Five framework, in which extraversion and conscienti...
This 3-wave longitudinal study aimed to extend current understanding of the predictors and outcomes of employee proactivity (involving information seeking, feedback seeking, relationship building, and positive framing) in the socialization process. Two personality variables, extraversion and openness to experience, were associated with higher level...
This 3-wave longitudinal study aimed to extend current understanding of the predictors and outcomes of employee proactivity (involving information seeking, feedback seeking, relationship building, and positive framing) in the socialization process. Two personality variables, extraversion and openness to experience, were associated with higher level...
It is becoming increasingly important for employees to be able to cope with change in the workplace. This longitudinal study examined a set of individual differences and context-specific predictors of employee openness (i.e., change acceptance and positive view of changes) toward a set of workplace changes. Personal resilience (a composite of self-...
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships...
Based on interview studies, the unemployment literature suggests that last job satisfaction influences reactions to unemployment. This study assessed the quantitative relationship between last job satisfaction and the unemployment experience. 265 individuals completed measures concerning last job satisfaction, mental health, life satisfaction, unem...
This study examined 3 predictors (self-esteem, perceived control, and optimism) and 3 outcomes (short-term mental health, reemployment, and long-term mental health) of coping behavior among unemployed individuals in a longitudinal context. The predictors and outcomes had differential relationships with the 5 coping behaviors (proactive search, nonw...
The present study consisted of developing the Kuder Task Self-Efficacy Scale (KTSES). The KTSES is a 30-item scale measuring a person's self-efficacy for tasks corresponding to Kuder's 10 occupational interest areas (Kuder Zytowski, 1991). Responses from the KTSES were compared with responses to the Self-Esteem Inventory (SES; Rosenberg, 1965) and...
The purpose of this study was to test a longitudinal model of the demographic, person, and situational variables predictive of job-seeking behavior and reemployment. Participants completed surveys 2 months and 5 months following a layoff. Multiple regression analysis revealed gender, conscientiousness, and job-seeking support as significant predict...
The purpose of this study was to test a longitudinal model of the demographic, person, and situational variables predictive of job-seeking behavior and reemployment. Participants completed surveys 2 months and 5 months following a layoff Multiple regression analysis revealed gender, conscientiousness, and job-seeking support as significant predicto...
Jones recently developed the Career Decision Profile (CDP; 1989). The CDP assesses career indecision, how comfortable individuals are with their career-decision status, and reasons for career indecision. According to Jones' vocational decision-status model, the CDP can be used to categorize individuals into four subtypes: decided- comfortable, deci...
Jones recently developed the Career Decision Profile (CDP; 1989). The CDP assesses career indecision, how comfortable individuals are with their career-decision status, and reasons for career indecision. According to Jones' vocational decision-status model, the CDP can be used to categorize individuals into four subtypes: decided-comfortable, decid...
One goal of this study was to compare individuals′ perceptions of jobs held before and following a period of unemployment in terms of global job satisfaction, facet job satisfaction, and job characteristics. Results did not support the expectation that most individuals would find poorer quality jobs following a period of unemployment. A second goal...
390 college students completed a battery of scales assessing 10 dimensions of vocational indecision and 9 personality constructs. Cluster-analytic procedures were applied to a subset of the scaled constructs, whereas other measures served as external descriptors. A 4-cluster solution was obtained, with the clusters being differentiated on the basis...
Three hundred ninety college students completed a battery of scales assessing 10 dimensions of vocational indecision and 9 personality constructs. Cluster-analytic procedures were applied to a subset of the scaled constructs, whereas other measures served as external descriptors. A 4-cluster solution was obtained, with the clusters being differenti...
To better understand the process of organizational withdrawal, a turnover model incorporating dynamic predictors measured at five distinct points in time was examined by following a large, occupationally diverse sample over a two-year period. Results demonstrated that turnover can be predicted by perceived costs of turnover, organizational commitme...
