Emotion regulation is centrally important to work life. Being able to control one's emotions and show what is needed on the job is highly valued, as is being able to manage the emotions of others. Dominant perspectives of emotion regulation tend to emphasize the experience of the regulator in isolation. In this review, we adopt an explicitly social lens through which to view emotion regulation at work. Specifically, we consider social influences at three levels: ( a ) relational, with a focus on the role and impact of one's interaction partners; ( b ) professional, with a focus on the role of shared occupational and organizational norms in shaping emotion regulation; and ( c ) societal, with a focus on how widely shared beliefs or expectations relating to culture, race, and gender can influence emotion regulation. Focusing on four phases of emotion regulation (i.e., emotion goal selection, affect and discrepancy detection, emotion regulation strategy use, and outcomes of emotion regulation), we consider social influences from all three levels on intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation. Finally, we conclude with research questions and practical implications, as well as a call for research to adopt an integrative approach that examines intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation at work together.
We review recent research on the trio of artificial intelligence (AI) practices—electronic platforms, machine learning, and large language models—and their effects on those who use and work with them. Because these tools take over specific tasks from existing jobs, the important effects are how the remaining work changes and how workers react to it. Perhaps our main conclusion is that choices as to how they are used are the most important factor in their effects on those who use them. For example, do they take over boring tasks like note-taking or interesting ones like drafting reports? Do workers spend their saved time checking AI output or taking on new tasks? We describe the wide variety of outcomes and emerging issues such as the ability of chatbots to show empathy, the ability to codify what had been tacit human knowledge, and the development of digital twins, which predict responses from specific individuals.
Despite the prevalence and stability of remote and hybrid work, debate persists regarding whether these arrangements help or harm job performance. In this review, we synthesize research on the complex relationship between remote work and performance, focusing on objective and supervisor-rated job performance as well as innovation and creativity outcomes. We then examine theoretical mechanisms and boundary conditions that explain why and when remote work facilitates or constrains performance. Additionally, we provide recommendations for individual employees, managers, human resource departments, organizations, and policymakers aimed at maximizing performance in remote and hybrid work contexts. Finally, we outline future research directions that move beyond simple comparisons of work location to examine how collaboration processes, location–task fit, different forms of hybrid work, and contextual factors are associated with the relationship between remote work and performance.
With meta-analytically derived prevalence rates of 75% of employees, workplace incivility is a widespread workplace stressor. Increasing research over the past 25 years has demonstrated its importance to both employee well-being and organizational effectiveness. This review carefully considers the major theoretical perspectives surrounding workplace incivility, examines its correlates and boundary conditions, and considers the importance of the workplace context to its incidence and intervention. We attend to the growing international literature and provide directions for future research and practical implications.
Perfectionism, characterized by striving for excessively high standards and having overly critical self-evaluations, has attracted increasing interest in the work context in recent years. This review synthesizes the growing body of research on perfectionism in the workplace, exploring its impact on individual, leadership, team, and organizational dynamics. We review four conceptualizations of perfectionism—trait, state, behavioral, and domain-specific perspectives—and summarize findings from existing studies under each framework. Additionally, we examine how perfectionism influences managers’ leadership behaviors and followers’ outcomes. Furthermore, we discuss potential future research through a multilevel lens, considering within- and between-individual levels, leader–follower dyadic dynamics, team and organizational levels, and societal and cross-cultural differences. Our review highlights the complexities of perfectionism at work and identifies opportunities for advancing this area of research.
This perspectives article examines the historically overlooked potential of human agency in organizational settings, a topic I have been passionate about throughout my career. Agency refers to people's ability to influence life events and shape the outcomes they experience. My research has explored the ways in which individuals are agentic in creating the work lives they most want across topics as micro as feedback seeking, as macro as middle managers’ effectiveness and attempts at upward influence in the strategy process, and as current as professionals working out how to create their best life in the gig economy. Agency is intriguing for the very human issues it raises: the danger, risk, and anxiety over agency's appropriateness and payoff, but also the joy and empowerment that come from actively shaping the outcomes one experiences. I then review the various moves and decisions that have shaped my career in the hope that sharing these experiences and distilling takeaways might be helpful to others as they navigate their own paths in this field we love. It has been fascinating to be a part of the historical shift from primarily focusing on managerial actions in organizations to recognizing individual proactivity and initiative.
We explore emergent micro-, meso-, and macro-level issues that impact the experiences of people with disabilities at work and how these issues can drive research. These issues have received little attention in the management literature. At the micro level we examine how the definition of disability has moved from the medical model to an interactionist model, the intersectionality between disability and other identities, and evolving assistive technology. At the meso level we focus on ableism; new forms of work impacting the inclusion of people with disabilities; how disability is treated in organizations’ diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts; and the comparison of sheltered work to competitive market work. Finally, at the macro level, we examine the techno exclusion of people with disabilities, varying definitions of fairness (i.e., quotas versus accommodation), and the DEIA backlash.
Work engagement refers to an enduring, positive, affective-motivational state of employee well-being. Specifically, work engagement is a state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. In this review, after a brief introduction to other conceptualizations of engagement at work, we discuss the temporal and social aspects of work engagement and the main theoretical perspectives from which it is investigated. We also summarize the abundant information on the key antecedents and consequences of work engagement that over 20 years of research has produced and review work engagement in different contexts: in various groups, during organizational changes, and in remote work. After discussing different types of interventions that aim to boost work engagement, we end by presenting practical implications and future research options.
Playfulness—the ability to frame or reframe situations in an engaging, intellectually stimulating, or entertaining way—is an emerging topic in organizational research. Traditionally seen as the opposite of work, play and playfulness are increasingly recognized for their potential to enhance creativity, motivation, and well-being in professional settings. This review synthesizes theoretical and empirical perspectives on workplace play and playfulness, distinguishing them from related concepts such as humor and creativity. We examine existing models, measurement approaches, and mechanisms through which playfulness may influence workplace outcomes. We highlight the need to consider contextual factors such as job type, organizational culture, and leadership. Open questions remain regarding the optimal level of playfulness, cultural differences, and its long-term impact. Finally, we discuss practical implications for organizations, emphasizing the importance of fostering playfulness through voluntary, context-sensitive approaches that complement meaningful work structures.
Here we review recent work in the personnel selection field. We open with two sections, the first focusing on meta-analytic validity research on well-established predictors and the second on new measurement approaches. These include moving from a holistic to a modular view of predictors; from face-to-face to asynchronous video interviews; from resumes to social media assessments; from multiple choice to constructed response; and to using artificial intelligence to develop, administer, and score tests, among approaches. We then review developments in estimating validity, including issues in correcting validity estimates for error of measurement and restriction of range. We address technical issues on the topics of fairness and bias, including Pareto optimization, effect size measures for predictive bias, and approaches to algorithmic bias mitigation, and offer insight into addressing the validity-diversity dilemma. We then discuss insights into applicant reactions to selection systems and perspectives of other stakeholders in the selection process.
In this review, we examine developments in how organization members’ responses to change have been conceptualized, measured, and predicted, and the outcomes they have been shown to produce. We focus on quantitative studies and use four conceptual lenses to analyze them: the tripartite approach, the change response circumplex model, change ambivalence, and levels of analysis. Drawing on established classifications of change response antecedents, we present current understandings of the factors and the mediating and moderating mechanisms that explain responses to change. Particular attention is given to the roles of national culture and time in shaping responses and our understanding of them. We end with directions for future research and practice, emphasizing the need to consider response activation, ambivalence, and timing in understanding and managing responses to organizational change.
Job crafting empowers employees to proactively shape their work environment to better align with their skills, interests, and needs. This review provides a comprehensive overview of job crafting, examining its predictors, positive and negative outcomes, and the role of culture. Additionally, it discusses issues that have not been frequently addressed, such as the nomological network of job crafting, various forms of job crafting, and the time perspective in job crafting research. It outlines how to design effective job crafting interventions and suggests avenues for future research. By addressing gaps in our understanding of job crafting mechanisms and contextual factors, we can unlock its full potential to transform workplaces and improve employee experiences. This review emphasizes the importance of balanced job crafting efforts to maximize benefits while mitigating risks such as increased workload and burnout. Ultimately, understanding and promoting job crafting can lead to healthier, more engaged, and more productive workplaces.
The name Humanitarian Work Psychology denotes harmonization with successive United Nations goals to tackle poverty. These encompass universally inclusive access to decent work, aligning research with serving underrepresented, forgotten populations. Since 2000, research with humanitarian aid workers from and serving poverty- and other disaster-affected populations first improved aid work conditions, boosting aid and later welfare services. When working poverty globalized, a more extensive quantum supported making work in general more inclusive by backing enterprise capabilities and skills, among microentrepreneurs in the majority informal economy or carried by dislocated/relocating immigrant groups, and by theorizing fair-pay evaluation across minimum-, living- and maximum-waged groups, up and down the formal economy. Today these two groups are combining to reconceptualize structural elements of decent work into functional Sustainable Livelihoods. Essential for inclusive, just transitions during climate action, they function to weather poly-crises and sustain livelihoods for others—especially future generations.
Self-monitoring research poses a challenge to conventional treatments of personality due to its focus on the extent to which people adapt their self-presentations to the demands of social situations. The adaptable self, characteristic of a high self-monitoring orientation, contrasts with the principled self, characteristic of a low self-monitoring orientation. We review research linking self-monitoring to careers, leadership, workplace social networks, authenticity, and deception. We outline future research paths related to agency, top management, and cross-cultural outcomes. We conclude with practical suggestions for how low self-monitors can enhance their workplace outcomes, how high self-monitors can avoid overengagement in projects, and how managers can facilitate people's careers in light of self-monitoring differences. The self-monitoring research program opens avenues of exploration on vital issues concerned with careers, leadership, status, and performance in workplace settings.
The evolving landscape of contemporary careers is marked by frequent nonlinear transitions and their concomitant identity dynamics. In this review we define career transition as a movement from one institutionally recognized work role sequence into a role that forms part of a different role sequence and that is perceived as career discontinuity by the person making the transition. We review the current state of research on career transition and professional identity to uncover overarching themes and important lacunae in our understanding of the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of change in today's varied and often circuitous careers, recommend directions for future research, and elaborate on practical implications for people and organizations.
Demographic shifts in population aging and disruption caused by technology and automation are rapidly changing the landscape of work across the globe. The current review provides a focused, forward-looking perspective on key issues relevant to workplace aging and new realities of the workplace, namely workplace learning and development, an age-diverse workforce, and retirement. Our review provides a multilevel perspective on these issues, including the macro (societal/cultural), meso (job design/organizational climate and HR practices), and micro (individual health, wealth, traits, and motivation) factors that influence workplace aging. We also apply lifespan development theories that describe normative and individual influences on aging to the work context, particularly regarding socio-emotional selectivity theory, and process models of successful aging at work. We conclude by providing practical implications and presenting areas of future research that are the most pressing in the workplace of the twenty-first century, including specific research questions at multiple levels (i.e., macro, meso, and micro).
As business environments remain increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, both team empowerment and team resilience have increased in importance for teams in organizations worldwide. We review the literatures on both team empowerment and team resilience over the past 15 years to uncover what has been learned about these two important team constructs. We discuss patterns and advancements in each area followed by a brief review of their intersection, including both commonalities and important differences. We then highlight directions for future research for each, followed by practical implications emanating from our review. In doing so, we provide a crucial roadmap for theoretical and empirical advancements for team empowerment and team resilience over the next decade.
Organizations rely on roles, routines, and other mechanisms to build systems of shared expectations. By definition, surprises occur when expectations are violated. Hence, surprise is inevitable in organizations. This matters because surprise threatens to undo the shared expectations that make organizations feel predictable and workable. Reacting to surprises can therefore feel unpredictable and threatening. Indeed, surprises can be seen as offering evidence of poor planning and bad management. However, in this review, we integrate literature on surprise that offers a contrasting perspective: that individuals in organizations do not just react to and experience surprises but also proactively engineer them. Our review explores who engineers surprises, why they choose to do so, how they structure situations to create surprises, what happens as individuals and collectives deal with the emotional impact of surprises, and what happens next as individuals and collectives either learn from or dismiss surprises. Our review provides an important corrective to research that focuses exclusively on surprises as negative events in organizational life and offers questions for future research that provide an agenda for developing theory on engineering surprise.
Accelerating interest in followership research and practice is advancing development of followership as a field of study. Despite this, many are still confused by what followership is and how it differs from leadership. Findings from our review of followership research show that of the papers self-identified as followership, nearly half are more accurately described as leadership or general employee behavior (and not followership). Of the papers categorized as followership, nearly all use reversing the lens approaches, with less than 10% categorized as co-creation. Using these findings and drawing from the literature, we delineate theoretical boundaries between leadership, followership, and employeeship to help drive construct clarity in followership research. We also simplify previous conceptualizations of followership into two main categories of studies that emerged in our review: reversing the lens and co-creation approaches. We conclude by using paradigm interplay between reversing the lens and co-creation approaches to show how we can realize the potential and promise of followership by advancing theoretical frameworks that position leadership/followership as a co-creation.
This review examines the development and evolution of meeting science over the past three decades. Drawing on diverse disciplinary foundations—including the organizational sciences, communication studies, and computer science—we provide a thematic discussion of meetings research. We organize the body of literature into five key areas of inquiry: ( a ) meetings as stressors and affective inducing events; ( b ) meetings as a communication technology that drives performance; ( c ) meetings as a platform for employee voice, participation, and inclusion; ( d ) meetings as a stage for leadership and power dynamics; and ( e ) meetings as an expression of culture and identity. We present illustrative findings from each research stream and conclude by outlining a research agenda that addresses how to build upon what we know around meetings as well as new frontiers.
