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Positive psychology research is increasingly being transferred to organizational contexts, and organizations are increasingly striving for healthier and more motivated employees. In this study, a three-week self-instructed online intervention which combines positive activities and mindfulness was developed and evaluated using a randomized-controlled group design with employees. All exercises could be easily integrated into the daily working routine. The intervention is based on broaden-and-build theory, the two-component model of mindfulness and the positive-activity model. Results indicate that the intervention is effective in increasing work engagement, hope and sleep quality as well as in reducing fatigue. Practical implications for human resource departments and corporate health management are discussed. Practitioner points A three-week mindfulness intervention can increase work engagement, hope, sleep quality, and reduce fatigue. Such activities can easily be integrated into the workday and thus, represent a realistic way for employees to improve motivation and reduce health impairment.

Although much is known about the antecedents and consequences of abusive supervision, scant attention has been paid to investigating procedures to reduce its frequency. We conducted a quasiexperiment to examine the effects of supervisor support training on subordinate perceptions of abusive supervision and supervisor support. Supervisors (n = 23) in 4 restaurants were trained in 4 supportive supervision strategies (benevolence, sincerity, fairness, and experiential processing) during 4 2-hr sessions over a period of 2 months. We compared perceived supervisor support and abusive supervision before and 9 months after training for 208 employees whose supervisors received support training and 241 employees in 4 similar control restaurants. Compared to employees in the control restaurants, employees whose supervisors received the support training reported higher levels of perceived supervisor support and less abusive supervision. These findings suggest that a relatively brief training program can help managers become more supportive and less abusive. Theoretical and practical implications for effectively managing abusive supervision are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cortina, Rabelo, and Holland's (2018) perspective on studying victimization in organizations is a welcome contribution to workplace aggression research. We share their believe that considering a perpetrator predation paradigm may advance and proliferate research on issues related to gender harassment, bullying, mobbing, and other explicitly overt forms of victimization where the intent to harm is supposedly clear. However, we propose that, if blindly adopted, neither the dominant victim precipitation paradigm nor the suggested perpetrator predation paradigm will improve research on incivility or other more covert and indirect forms of victimization. In fact, we suggest in our commentary that both models may be counterproductive for understanding and remedying incivility in organizations.

Victim precipitation is embedded deeply within industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Cortina, Rabelo, and Holland (2018) are right to challenge the assumptions that have perpetuated victim blaming in our discipline (consciously and unconsciously); however, a significant source of victim precipitation discourse within our field was strikingly absent in their discussion: construct measurement. The nature of how we measure most of our workplace aggression and mistreatment constructs (e.g., incivility, abusive supervision, bullying) have potential to negate the experiences of targeted employees as well as the unique impact of various perpetrator behaviors. Furthermore, how we interpret these measures can result in researchers and practitioners privileging the experiences of some individuals and dismissing the experiences of others. How can we hope to achieve a progressive approach to mistreatment in our disciplines if our measures do not keep pace?

Increasing and new work demands drain employees’ energy resources at work. This 4-week longitudinal field experiment investigated the energizing potential of a respite intervention conducted at the...

Brief and cost-effective interventions focused on emotion regulation techniques can buffer against stress and foster positive functioning. Mindfulness and positive reappraisal are two techniques that can mutually enhance one another to promote well-being. However, research testing the effectiveness of interventions combining mindfulness and reappraisal is lacking. The current pilot examined the effect of a combined mindful-reappraisal intervention on daily affect in a 5-day diary study with 106 university students. Participants were randomized to a mindful-reappraisal intervention (n = 36), a reappraisal-only intervention (n = 34), or an active control activity (n = 36). All participants described a negative event each day but only reappraised the event in the intervention conditions. Using multilevel growth modelling, results indicated that negative affect in both interventions declined over 5 days compared to the control; however, there were no differences in the growth of positive affect. Compared to reappraisal-only, the mindful-reappraisal group reported overall lower daily negative affect and marginally higher daily positive affect over the 5-day intervention. These findings suggest that brief daily practice combining mindfulness and positive reappraisal can be trained as a self-regulatory resource to promote positive affect and buffer negative affect above and beyond reappraisal practice alone.

This paper aimed to replicate the findings from Sliter, Withrow, and Jex (2015) examining the influence of personality characteristics on how individuals perceive uncivil behaviors in the workplace...

Academia has changed over the last decades and so have academic careers. In a 2019 special issue of the journal Academy of Management Learning and Education, we have brought together a set of paper...

Based on previous empirical findings, “challenge stressors” (Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, & Bouderau, 2000; Lepine, Podsakoff, & Lepine, 2005), such as the amount and scope of responsibility, can be loosely considered as “good stressors” that are consistently and positively related to job satisfaction and performance. We introduce the role of appraisal to further examine how challenge stressors are connected to performance. Structural equation modelling analyses using an applied sample of 284 employee–supervisor dyads showed that affective commitment to the organization mediated the relationship between both opportunity and threat appraisal and performance (in-role and extra-role). The mediating role of increased psychosomatic distress was supported only for the relationship between threat appraisal and in-role performance. The findings indicate the importance of taking into account the actual appraisal of “challenge stressors”, as it carries implications for performance, and reveals the key role...

Workplace abuse, broadly defined as interpersonal mistreatment against employees in the workplace that might harm or injure them and contribute to a hostile work environment, is one of the most pervasive and harmful problems faced by organizations worldwide. In the current symposium, we focus attention on the macro-level drivers of workplace abuse that occur within organizations and in society more generally. At the societal level, we will have one paper about important global trends affecting today’s organizations. The paper investigates how, why, and for whom these macro forces have implications when it comes to workplace harassment. At the organizational level, we will have three papers, one dedicated to unpacking the multiple dimensions of organizational tolerance for abuse. Two more papers will focus on structural organizational features, namely the mechanisms of communication, and structural pay inequality that can impact perceptions of interpersonal abuse at work. We argue that a stronger focus on studying the “barrel” and “orchard”, rather than “apples” and “cases”, can enhance our understanding of social and structural factors that underpin everyday workplace interactions and help us identify new avenues of theorizing and practice to prevent interpersonal workplace abuse.

The act of reviewing is the backbone of the academic enterprise as it ensures high-quality outputs. A number of scholars in the early stages of their academic career find themselves in reviewer pos...

While complementary studies are an accreditation requirement and feature prominently in the Canadian engineering curriculum, focus-group conversations with upper-year engineering students have indicated that a lack of awareness of, and appreciation for, soft skills development often prevents students from benefiting from complementary studies to the fullest. Given this reported difficulty to grasp the importance of complementary studies, a study was undertaken at the University of Guelph using a quasi-experimental design to explore the possibility that triggering self-assessment and awareness about career development early in the engineering curriculum promotes greater engagement with complementary studies and soft-skill development. First-year engineering students took part in a learner-centered activity focused on the importance of complementary studies for the development of soft skills. Through active learning exercises and case studies of successful engineering graduates, who described the skills and knowledge required to perform their daily work, the session was designed to encourage students to develop greater self-awareness and intentionality about complementary studies and their associated graduate attributes. The outcomes of this activity and issues on how to embed it in the Engineering first-year curriculum will be discussed

The job demands-control-support model (DCS; Karasek, 1979) is an influential theory for understanding how work characteristics relate to employee well-being, health, and performance. However, previous research has largely neglected theory-building regarding the interrelationships between job demands, control, and support. We remedy such theoretical underdevelopment by reviewing and integrating theory on the relationships between demands, control, and support to develop five hypotheses. We test our hypotheses within a meta-analytic framework using a set of 106 studies. Our results show negative demands-supervisor support and demands-coworker support relationships, but no significant demand-control relationship. Our findings also indicate positive control-supervisor support and control-coworker support relationships. Using the meta-analytic effect sizes, we also estimate two competing structural equation models intended to discern which theoretical model using DCS work characteristics to predict occupational strain and well-being is more consistent with our data. Our results suggest that job control and both sources of social support should be treated independently, as opposed to indicators of a shared latent factor, in terms of their prediction of well-being and job demands. Our study offers support for the usefulness of the DCS and more modern conceptualizations of the working environment in understanding the employee work experience and for predicting important work outcomes. (

Building up on the socially induced model of burnout and the job demands-resources model, we examine how burnout can transfer without direct contagion or close contact among employees. Based on the social information processing approach and the conservation of resources theory, we propose that perceived collective burnout emerges as an organizational-level construct (employees' shared perceptions about how burned out are their colleagues) and that it predicts individual burnout over and above indicators of demands and resources. Data were gathered during the first term and again during the last term of the academic year among 555 teachers from 100 schools. The core dimensions of burnout, exhaustion, and cynicism were measured at the individual and collective level. Random coefficient models were computed in a lagged effects design. Results showed that perceived collective burnout at Time 1 was a significant predictor of burnout at Time 2 after considering previous levels of burnout, demands (workload, teacher-student ratio, and absenteeism rates), and resources (quality of school facilities). These findings suggest that perceived collective burnout is an important characteristic of the work environment that can be a significant factor in the development of burnout.

In recent decades, transformations in organizations and the labour market have produced an increase in employee job insecurity. In response to this situation, workers present different negative reactions. However, the intensity of these reactions varies across studies that have investigated the outcomes of job insecurity. One possible explanation for this inconsistency may lie in the influence of other factors, such as the occupational group (Sverke et al., 2002). The aim of this study is to provide additional evidence about the relationship between job insecurity and its outcomes (i.e., life satisfaction, job satisfaction, perceived performance and organizational commitment), and examine the moderator role of occupational group in this relationship. The sample was composed of 321 employees from different Spanish organizations. The results showed that job insecurity was directly and negatively related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and they suggest that occupational group moderated relations between job insecurity and three studied outcomes. In the case of life satisfaction and perceived performance, this relationship was stronger among blue collar workers. The relationship between job insecurity and job satisfaction was stronger in white collar workers. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Emotional labor – the act of expressing or managing emotions to conform to rules and norms at work – is experienced in virtually all professions. Researchers have readily examined how the strategie...

We explore the evaluative nature of entrepreneurial constraints and its consequences for entrepreneurs’ behavior. In study 1, we develop a measure of entrepreneurial constraint-appraisal and argue ...

This study investigates the role of gender in the benefits of coping (direct action and social support seeking) on the core dimensions of burnout (exhaustion and cynicism) using a longitudinal design. Specifically, the study examined these relationships on teachers, which is typically a female-dominated occupation. Data were gathered during the first term and again during the last term of the academic year. The Time 2 sample was composed of 141 male and 303 female teachers from 100 Spanish primary and secondary schools. Lagged and concurrent longitudinal designs were tested using random coefficient models. Concurrent interactive effects of gender in the relationship among coping strategies and cynicism as well as exhaustion were found. Direct action coping was beneficial only for men. Social support seeking coping was not beneficial for women; moreover, it was found to be detrimental for men. These results were in accord with previous studies confirming the coping-gender match hypothesis. Implications of these results and their significance for practical interventions in the work stress field are discussed.

The purpose of the present study is to analyze the roles of direct action coping and palliative coping in the relationship between work stressors and psychological well-being, as well as their possible interactions, in a sample of 464 bank employees. Hierarchical regression analyses showed main effects of direct action coping on well-being. Palliative coping predicts higher levels of psychological distress. Contrary to what was expected, the interactions between work stressors and direct action coping were not significant. Palliative coping interacted with work stressors when predicting psychosomatic complaints. The interaction between the two types of coping was significant on psychosomatic complaints and psychological distress, but not on job satisfaction. The paper discusses theoretical and practical implications of these results, in order to design intervention strategies to prevent and manage job stress.

Ethical, rigorous, and relevant research conduct features prominently in ongoing debates in a range of sub-disciplines in management, but also in other fields of research. These debates focus on a ...

Summary We present three studies providing an increased understanding of the interdependence between perceived organizational support (POS) and leader–member exchange (LMX). Using employees from a social service agency and new hires from a variety of organizations, we report evidence for a relational chain leading from supervisors' perceptions of support by the organization (supervisor POS) to the formation of high-quality LMX relationships with their subordinates (first link), who interpret high-quality LMX as support from the organization (subordinate POS, second link) and, ultimately, repay the organization with increased dedication and effort (examined here in terms of reduced withdrawal behavior). The relationship between supervisor POS and LMX with subordinates was strongly moderated by supervisor fear of exploitation in exchange relationships (reciprocation wariness), holding only for supervisors with low reciprocation wariness. Consistent with the view that employees perceive the organization as partly responsible for treatment received from supervisors, LMX was found to be more strongly related to POS when employees highly identified their supervisors with the organization (supervisor's organizational embodiment), and this interaction extended to reduced withdrawal behavior. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In order to account for wide variation in the relationship between leader-member exchange and employees' affective organizational commitment, we propose a concept termed supervisor's organizational embodiment (SOE), which involves the extent to which employees identify their supervisor with the organization. With samples of 251 social service employees in the United States (Study 1) and 346 employees in multiple Portuguese organizations (Study 2), we found that as SOE increased, the association between leader-member exchange and affective organizational commitment became greater. This interaction carried through to in-role and extra-role performance. With regard to antecedents, we found in Study 1 that supervisor's self-reported identification with the organization increased supervisor's expression of positive statements about the organization, which in turn increased subordinates' SOE.

The job demands-control-support model (Karasek, 1979) is an influential theory for understanding how work characteristics relate to employee well-being, health and performance. However, previous re...