Tag Archives: work environment

Organizational Attraction – It’s more than the Money!

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Topic: Staffing, Culture, Work Environment
Publication: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2010)
Article: Fit with What? The Influence of Multiple Self-Concept Images on Organizational Attraction
Authors: K. P. Nolan, C. M. Harold
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood

What attracts a potential employee to a specific organization – salary, benefits, promotion opportunities? Yes, in part, but attraction also stems from something deeper – an employee’s own self-image. Self-image consists primarily of two parts: the actual self (or the compilation of traits and attributes that an individual believes him or herself to possess) and the ideal self (or the collection of traits and attributes that an individual would like to acquire).

According to image congruity theory, customers are likely to purchase products that reflect both their actual as well as ideal self-image. Expanding this theory, individuals on the job hunt should favor organizations that emphasize both actual and ideal self-image qualities of the candidate. But, these same candidates should be the most attracted to organizations which emphasize their ideal self-image qualities, because this should inflate self-esteem by making the candidate feel closer to achieving his or her ideal self-image.

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Service with a Smile? But I’m Exhausted!

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Topic: Work Environment, Burnout
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (March, 2010)
Article: Contextualizing emotional exhaustion and positive emotional display: The signaling effect of supervisors’ emotional exhaustion and service climate.
Authors: C.K. Lam, X. Huang, & O. Janssen
Reviewed By: Allison Gabriel

Employees are frequently encouraged to engage in pleasant behavior while suppressing negative emotions, despite how they actually feel. But, what happens when employees are too emotionally exhausted to go on?

Lam and colleagues looked at this question, exploring what kinds of contexts will help employees push through emotional exhaustion to continue being friendly, even when they feel drained. The researchers explored two potential factors: supervisor exhaustion and service climate.

First, they explored whether or not a supervisor’s level of exhaustion had an impact on the
emotional exhaustion of the subordinate. Secondly, the organization’s service climate was considered, which is the level of policies and procedures employees believe to be in place about being friendly (i.e., are you going to reward me for smiling to this customer or not?!) In a study of front-line sales employees in an Asian sample, the results are clear: service climate matters the most! Service climate directly impacted employees’ positive emotional displays.

Additionally, when service climate perceptions were low and supervisors’ emotional exhaustion was high, employees seemed to experience the lowest amount of positive emotional displays.

Conclusion?

Organizations who want to save employees from emotional exhaustion (and, ultimately, job burnout) should help foster a service climate in their organizations. After all, service with a smile is part of a hard day’s work, and any factor that can assist employees would be greatly appreciated, maybe even with a smile!

Lam, C.K., Huang, X., & Janssen, O. (2010). Contextualizing emotional exhaustion
and positive emotional display: The signaling effects of supervisors’ emotional
exhaustion and service climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95, 368-376.

Heavy Workloads: Much More Than Just a Nuisance

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Topic: Stress, Wellness, Work Environment
Publication: Personnel Psychology (Summer 2010)
Article: Psychological and physiological reactions to high workloads: Implications for well-being
Authors: R. Ilies, N. Dimotakis, and I.E. De Pater
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

In a rather unique study by Ilies, Dimotakis and De Pater (2010), the authors found that heavy workloads can have negative psychological (distress) and physiological (blood pressure) effects that fluctuate depending on an employee’s daily workload.  The authors also investigated how daily changes in workload affect employees’ daily well-being when they get home from work.

Ilies et al. employed a sample of 64 technical, clerical and administrative employees at a large U.S. university. Employees were given PDAs and an apparatus to measure their blood pressure at several time points throughout the day for a period of two weeks.  On days in which employees reported having higher workloads, they also experienced higher levels of distress at work and had higher blood pressure readings. Higher workloads were also associated with lower perceptions of well-being at the end of the work day.

The good news is that the unfavorable effects of workload tend to be much less dramatic for employees who perceive that they have more control over their work and employees who perceive that their organization values their contributions (i.e., perceived organizational support).

On the other hand, heavy workloads seem to have a very serious effect on employees who have little control over their work and feel that the organization does not value their work.

One important implication of Ilies et al.’s findings is that workload may ultimately lead to very serious psychological and physical health issues in the long run (e.g., increased blood pressure can lead to cardiovascular disease).  While it seems that our workloads continue to increase over time, organizations should note that the greater degree of control employees have over their work and the degree to which their employees feel that they support them and value their contributions seems to diminish the negative effects of heavy workloads.

Ilies, R., Dimotakis, N., & De Pater, I.E. (2010). Psychological and physiological reactions to high workloads: Implications for well-being. Personnel Psychology, 63(2), 407-436.

Culture Matters When it comes to Stressors and Strains

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Topic:  Culture, Self Efficacy, Work Environment
Publication: Applied Psychology: An International Review (JAN 2010)
Article: A cross-national examination of self-efficacy as a moderator of autonomy/job
strain relationships
Authors: M.M. Nauta, C. Liu, and C. Li
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

In work settings, autonomy refers to the degree of control that employees have over their work.  While research has generally shown that low levels of autonomy are stressful to employees (i.e., leads them to experience strain), this is not necessarily true for all employees.  Indeed, employees who are confident in their ability to exercise control over their lives and work environments (i.e., high generalized self-efficacy) appear to be buffered from the negative effects of low autonomy.  However, most of the research on this topic has been conducted in North America and it is unclear whether these findings are consistent across cultures. Recently, Nauta, Liu, and Li (2010) explored whether culture plays a role in determining how employees respond to low (vs. high) levels of autonomy and self-efficacy. The authors chose to compare American and Chinese employees because they typify individualistic and collectivistic cultures respectively.

That is, employees in the U.S. tend to be more individualistic and place a heavier focus on independence, while Chinese employees tend to be more collectivistic and place a heavier focus on the needs of the group to which they belong. Nauta, Liu, and Li collected data from a wide range of university employees working at a large university in the U.S. and three universities in China.

Much like U.S. employees, low levels of autonomy appear to make highly efficacious Chinese employees uncomfortable. In other words, for employees who feel confident that they can effectively exert control over their work environment, not being able to do so is stressful (regardless of culture).

However, Nauta et al. discovered an interesting difference in how American and Chinese employees, low in self-efficacy, react to autonomy. In other words, American employees who lack confidence in their ability to exert control over their work find low levels of autonomy stressful, while Chinese employees who lack such confidence find high levels of autonomy stressful.

These findings are particularly pertinent to organizations operating globally. If nothing else, Nauta et al.’s study is a reminder that management policies and job characteristics in one country or culture may not have the same effects in another country or for another culture.

Nauta, M.M., Liu, C., & Li, C. (2010). A cross-national examination of self-efficacy as a moderator of autonomy/job strain relationships. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 59(1), 159-179.

How Can You Be So Rude!?

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Topic: Job Performance, Work Environment, Culture
Publication: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (MAY 2009)
Article: Overlooked but not untouched: How rudeness reduces onlookers’ on routine and creative tasks
Authors: Porath, C. L. and Erez, A.
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Now here’s a topic that might make you ball your fists: Rudeness in the workplace. Have you ever been treated rudely by a coworker or supervisor?  Have you ever seen rude behavior at work? If so, you are not alone. Perhaps as many as 25% of employees report witnessing rudeness on a daily basis (For some reason, the DMV crosses my mind).

One intriguing idea that may not have crossed your mind is that rudeness not only adversely impacts the victims, but onlookers as well. To explore this idea, Porath and Erez (2009) conducted three experiments to find out if and how witnessing rudeness affects employees’ task performance, citizenship behaviors (going above and beyond what is required at work), and creative performance.

Interestingly, the results of studies one and two suggest that witnessing either a supervisor or peer exhibit rudeness to another had a negative impact on the onlookers’ performance. Specifically, compared to those in the control groups (witnessed no rudeness), those who witnessed rude behavior performed less well on a creative task and reduced their citizenship behaviors (e.g., helpfulness).

In the third study, Porath and Erez found that the effect of witnessing rudeness depends on the competitive context. That is, when onlookers were in competition for resources with a peer, witnessing that peer being treated rudely did not have as strong an effect on performance as opposed to a cooperative context. In other words, witnessing a competitor being treated rudely doesn’t bother us so much.

All in all, Porath and Erez’s results suggest that simply witnessing rudeness at work can negatively impact employees’ performance (scary, right?). At the very least, these findings should be a warning to organizational leaders that rudeness within the workplace can be even more detrimental to the workforce than they might have thought.

Porath, C.L. & Erez, A. (2009). Overlooked but not untouched: How rudeness reduces onlookers’ on routine and creative tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109, 29-44.