This study examines daily energy trajectories at work from a temporal self-regulation perspective, addressing the paradoxical finding that effort can be both energizing and depleting. Rather than treating daily energy curves as purely descriptive, we distinguish three self-regulatory phases of energetic activation—resource mobilization, resource utilization, and resource retraction—and investigate sleep quality, effort, and absorption as phase-specific regulatory predictors. Using experience sampling data from 106 employees over 10 workdays, comprising four daily self-reports (2552 observations), we applied piecewise growth curve modeling to analyze within-person variations in energy trajectories. Our findings confirm an inverted U-shaped energy trajectory, peaking at midday. Sleep quality emerged as a key driver of the resource mobilization phase, associated with higher baseline energy levels but a flatter energy increase during the first half of the workday. During the resource utilization phase, higher noon effort was associated with a steeper decline in energetic activation over the work episode, independent of noon absorption. During the resource retraction phase, afternoon effort predicted a steeper evening decline, although this association did not persist once absorption was included. Effort and absorption also interacted in predicting evening energy trajectories, such that absorption differentiated evening declines primarily when effort was low, whereas differences were smaller under high effort. These results advance theoretical frameworks on energy regulation by identifying distinct mechanisms across daily phases and by showing that the energetic consequences of effort and absorption are temporally structured rather than uniform, becoming most visible after work.
Although food-related behavior has become a topic of growing interest in organizational research, it is typically studied as a matter of individual choice about food content. In this study, we expand this conceptualization by examining the temporal, structural, and social contexts in which food-related decisions unfold. Based on an inductive analysis of interviews with workers managing type 2 diabetes, we examine how structural and social constraints at work influenced workers’ capacity to make and enact food-related decisions, including what, when, where, and how to eat. Applying tenets of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory in the final stages of our analysis, we show how workplace conditions can function as a resource caravan passageway, shaping workers’ access to several interrelated personal resources (e.g., time, energy, and willpower) critical to making and enacting these decisions. Drawing from participants’ accounts, structural and social constraints at work contributed to recurring cycles of resource loss across the work-home interface, leaving workers increasingly vulnerable to future threats. Beyond broadening the conceptualization of food-related behavior in organizational research, our findings extend work design theory by highlighting the need to account for how workplace conditions affect workers’ capacity to manage personal needs within and around work systems. We also offer an empirical elaboration of COR theory by illustrating how resource loss cycles unfold in everyday experiences across the work and home domains. We conclude by highlighting practical strategies organizations can adopt to support workers’ capacity to make and enact food-related decisions and promote well-being and performance at work.
Existing theory on capitalization (i.e., sharing positive events with others) positions disclosers of positive events as the sole drivers of capitalization, with responders as passive targets of capitalization. However, given that capitalization can in principle only transpire with a responder, it is reasonable to expect that responders also play important upstream roles regarding whether capitalization transpires. Drawing from Emotion as Social Information (EASI) theory, we examine how and when coworker displayed happiness elicits focal employee workplace interpersonal capitalization. Via a preregistered experiment, a three-wave round robin field study, and an experience sampling field study, we found support for our predictions that coworker displayed happiness evokes employee workplace interpersonal capitalization through both an affective reaction mechanism (employees’ own experienced happiness) and an inferential mechanism (anticipated coworker responsiveness). Further, we found support for our hypothesis that the strength of coworker friendship acts as a key social-relational boundary condition that weakens both mediating pathways, suggesting that the affective reaction and inferential mechanisms are more efficacious when coworker friendship is weaker. Overall, we offer a consensus shifting contribution by elucidating how the responder fulfills a much larger role regarding antecedent factors of capitalization than currently constituted.
Gender inequality in leadership remains a grand societal challenge. Prior research suggests that implicit leadership prototypes drive this inequality through unequal emergence of women and men to leadership positions. Organizational efforts to address this gap are typically with working adults, which may be too late to yield change, as cognitive biases that shape leadership perceptions begin developing in childhood. We therefore examined gendered leadership prototypes across elementary school (K–5) in 215 children using children’s drawings of a leader and a follow-up interview. Task-oriented and relational leadership content was coded in two ways: a categorical coding and a strength-based, dimensional coding. Findings showed a same-gender bias in leader selection, with 84.0
Experimental vignette methodology (EVM) can serve as a powerful tool for testing causal hypotheses in organizational and applied psychology research. Yet, researchers often lack actionable guidance for navigating the practical decisions inherent in vignette-based study design. To address this, we provide applied methodological recommendations across four critical domains: evaluating research question suitability for EVM, selecting between- versus within-subjects designs, developing ecologically grounded vignettes and manipulations, and safeguarding data integrity. We argue that best practices in EVM are inherently context-dependent and must be evaluated with respect to the specific research question, sample characteristics, and ecological validity of the design rather than applied as universal prescriptions. By offering explicit, decision-oriented guidance supported by illustrative examples from published research, this manuscript aims to strengthen the rigor and credibility of vignette-based research, equip both researchers and peer reviewers with a framework for evaluating EVM studies, and ultimately encourage the broader adoption of well-executed vignette designs in the field.
Questionnaires in ipsative (relative-to-self) formats ask respondents to compare several stimuli, for example behaviors or personal characteristics, at a time. Since it is impossible to endorse all desirable stimuli, the ipsative formats are often used in high-stakes personality assessments to reduce impression management (aka ‘faking good’). However, their high cognitive complexity may contaminate the intended measurement of personality with cognitive abilities. This study investigated the role of general mental ability (GMA) and the Ability to Identify Criteria (ATIC) in faking personality assessments utilizing a ‘graded preference’ format, scored normatively using Thurstonian modeling. We recruited N = 200 participants who completed the Leadership Style Questionnaire (de Klerk-van Someren et al., 2023) under two conditions: imagining they are applying for a specified job (high-stakes condition) and responding normally (low-stakes condition). In both completions, participants’ response latencies and click counts were recorded. The results indicate that participants can improve their scores on job-relevant traits, but effect sizes are small to medium (0.26 to 0.47). Participants with higher GMA tend to inflate their scores more, and participants with higher ATIC produce personality profiles that closer match the target job when faking. Through cross-classified path analysis, we unpick effects at block and person level and show that criteria recognition is the main driver for targeted increases in personality scores, and strategic editing of responses is the most plausible explanation for increased response latencies and click counts when faking. We also suggest that in repeated measures faking studies, high-stakes condition should precede low stakes.
Individual creativity is crucial for organizations, driving research into its determinants. Although studies have explored how individual traits and situational factors interact to influence creativity, our understanding of how situational variables themselves interact in moderating trait–creativity relationships is incomplete. Complementing research showing that situational variables can have mutually enhancing effects in moderating trait–creativity relationships, we argue that situational variables can also substitute for each other’s influence when they are functionally equivalent, such that the influence of the one on the trait–creativity relationship is weaker at higher levels of the other—a phenomenon we call situation substitution. Based on person-in-situation theory and the notion of functional equivalence, we examine how job autonomy and job information–processing requirements interact to moderate the proactive personality–creativity relationship. Results from a sample of 299 subordinate-supervisor dyads show that autonomy and information processing have similar trait-activating effects in the proactive personality–creativity relationships, such that they substitute for each other’s influence (i.e., the moderating effect of the one is weaker at higher levels of the other). Our study underscores the inter-connection of situational interactions and highlights the importance of understanding these dynamics for fostering creativity in organizations.
Managers are said to play a vital role in supporting their employees’ mental health. However, prior research has fallen short in conceptually and operationally defining the specific ways managers can support employees experiencing poor mental health. To address this gap, six independent studies were conducted to develop and validate a behavioral measure of mental health-responsive supervision (MHRS), which describes how managers can respond supportively in such circumstances. The resulting 16-item measure captures four interrelated dimensions of MHRS, each representing a specific way in which managers can manifest their supportive response. Those four MHRS subtypes include communicating compassionately, reducing demands, giving recovery time, and promoting mental health resources. Evidence supports the measure’s discriminant, convergent, criterion, and incremental validity. Criterion validity results indicate that employees who had received more MHRS when having recently experienced poor mental health reported better mental health (more work engagement, less burnout and depression) and increased self-help behavior (using mental health resources, taking time off rather than attending work while mentally unwell). Incremental validity findings show that one or more MHRS subtypes explained unique variance in most outcome variables beyond what was accounted for by a widely used general measure of supervisory support. Implications for theory, practice, and how the MHRS measure should be used in applied and research settings are discussed.
Organizational climate is widely acknowledged as a key construct for examining how organizations shape employee behavior. However, a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the mechanisms and boundary conditions of why and when organizational climate exerts its effects is still lacking. In our research, we conceptualize the organization as a social context and draw on theories of social influence to develop a theoretical framework of how organizational climate affects employee behavior. Specifically, we propose that the effects of organizational climate are driven by social norms and are amplified by organizational identification. We conducted three preregistered field studies (total N = 1,983) to test our theoretical model in the domains of safety behavior related to COVID-19 prevention and pro-environmental behavior. Across studies and levels of analysis (unit- and employee-level), we consistently found that the link between organizational climate and employee behavior was mediated by social norms. In exploratory analyses on the unit-level, we further found that this indirect effect is moderated (stage-2 moderation) by the average level of team identification, with stronger effects emerging in teams with stronger collective identification. Taken together, our findings suggest that organizational climate shapes employee behavior in part through social norms.
Leadership has rarely been examined as an antecedent of employees’ recovery experiences, and instrumental leadership remains largely unexplored in this context. Drawing on a self-regulation perspective, we propose that instrumental leadership is associated with employees’ recovery experiences through employees’ cognitive engagement and positive emotions during work, while task interdependence may shape the effectiveness of instrumental leadership. We further propose cognitive engagement and positive emotions are associated with employees’ recovery experiences. Using an experience sampling methodology, we collected 2118 daily observations from 229 employees working in the South Korean construction industry. Results indicated on days when employees experienced higher levels of instrumental leadership, they also reported greater cognitive engagement and positive emotions. Cognitive engagement demonstrated consistent positive relationships with relaxation and mastery experience, whereas positive emotions were positively associated only with mastery experience. In addition, cognitive engagement showed a more consistent indirect relationship between instrumental leadership and recovery experiences than positive emotions. Contrary to our expectations, task interdependence did not significantly moderate the relationships between instrumental leadership and cognitive engagement or positive emotions. Overall, these findings suggest that task-oriented leadership behaviors may contribute to employees’ daily recovery experiences primarily through cognitive self-regulatory processes, with more limited evidence for emotional processes.
Construct proliferation poses significant challenges for cumulative science in organizational psychology. This article explores how natural language can be used to evaluate construct clarity by introducing an integrated approach combining content and semantic overlap using meaningful work measurement as a case study. Across two studies, we find evidence that measures of meaningful work sample different psychological content areas (i.e., within-construct heterogeneity or a jingle fallacy). Content overlap analysis identified 31 unique content areas captured by the measures, providing an initial taxonomy of meaningful work content, with only 36
This study explores the dual role of digital communication on employee performance and well-being. Prior research highlights that individuals with central positions in communication networks benefit from greater access to information, enhanced innovation, and improved organizational outcomes. However, recent findings point also to the risk of information overload as digital connectivity increases. This research examines whether employees’ structural position in an email communication network is positively associated with work performance, engagement, and job satisfaction and whether this relationship follows a curvilinear pattern. The analysis is based on over 1.4 million emails exchanged among 1149 employees of a major Italian bank over a 1-year period during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social network data were integrated with survey responses on job satisfaction and engagement, as well as supervisor-rated performance evaluations. Social network analysis and regression techniques were employed to examine the associations between employees’ structural positions in the email network and individual outcomes. The results reveal that the breadth of distinct contacts and the volume of email exchanges operate through theoretically distinct mechanisms depending on the outcome considered. These findings offer new theoretical and practical insights into how email communication structures relate to employee well-being and productivity and highlight the need to balance connectivity and communication volume in digitally mediated work environments.
Does the managerʼs self-complexity matter for employee perception of abusive supervision and their responses? Drawing on self-complexity, self-concept differentiation, and self-control theories, we examine the serial indirect effects of components of manager self-complexity on subordinate work-related burnout through manager ego depletion and abusive supervision. We argue that managers who possess a great number of self-aspects and maintain a high degree of overlap among them will experience lower ego depletion. In addition, they are less likely to be perceived as abusive supervisors, and their subordinates will subsequently experience less work-related burnout. We test our hypotheses using two independent samples (Sample 1: 179 U.K. managers; Sample 2: 109 Taiwanese managers and their 415 subordinates) and find consistent support for our hypothesized relationships. The implications and limitations of this research, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.
Psychological contract breach has primarily been studied through social exchange theory and affective events theory, but these perspectives fail to fully explain why breach produces such wide-ranging effects across attitudes, behaviors, and wellbeing. Through the most comprehensive meta-analysis of breach to date – 517 studies, 91 correlates of breach – we conduct a systematic synthesis of the empirical landscape. Our work offers three contributions to the literature. First, we reveal effects of breach that extend beyond exchange disruptions or emotional triggers, suggesting the need for a theoretical lens that can account for diverse regulatory responses across domains. We integrate these findings with self-regulation theory to develop a process-oriented framework organizing breach responses around three interconnected regulatory mechanisms – contract monitoring, discrepancy evaluation, and resource regulation – that operate across individual, relational, and collective levels. Second, we examine temporal directionality in relation to key correlates, revealing sophisticated patterns that challenge reciprocity assumptions. Third, we examine the conceptualization and measurement of breach, finding generally limited differences across operationalizations. Our framework addresses current theoretical tensions and offers a generalizable account of how employees manage workplace disruptions over time.
Previous research noticed that the incongruence between expectation and reality affects newcomers’ (new employees’) organizational socialization. However, scholars ignore the effect of different types of these incongruent experiences on socialization outcomes from the perspective of individual psychology and behavior. In this research, we first propose and validate two types of expectancy violation experiences (i.e., positive violation experiences in socialization and negative violation experiences in socialization). Second, we explore how and when expectancy violation experiences trigger newcomers’ moods, interpersonal relationship behaviors, and socialization outcomes, drawing upon cognitive-motivational-relational theory, and examine the boundary condition of criticality of positive and negative violation experiences in socialization in the above relationship according to event system theory. The results of a scenario experiment (Study 1) and two field surveys (Studies 2 and 3) demonstrated that positive violation experiences in socialization could promote newcomers’ happiness and, in turn, drive relationship building and ultimately facilitate newcomer socialization, whereas negative violation experiences in socialization could trigger newcomers’ anxiety, which leads to relationship avoidance and is ultimately detrimental to socialization. Criticality of positive violation experiences strengthens the relationship between positive violation experiences and happiness, and criticality of negative violation experiences also strengthens the relationship between negative violation experiences and anxiety.
Economic stress remains perhaps the most widespread and impactful source of stress in workers’ lives across the globe. Although research has made a great deal of progress in understanding economic stressors, many theoretical and empirical gaps remain. This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Business and Psychology devoted to economic stress and work. Following an extensive review process, the special issue comprises 16 papers that make empirical and theoretical contributions to the economic stress literature. In this introduction, we set the stage for the importance of the special issue, discuss four broad themes that characterize the set of papers as a whole, and provide additional comments about future research challenges.
Organizations often provide the opportunity for job applicants to retest for a position from which they were rejected. The current study asks: What are the practical benefits and liabilities for organizations that allow applicants to retest for a position multiple times? How reliable should test scores be to prevent unqualified applicants from retesting until they are selected just by chance? Among those not selected, how much change in the mean score between initial test and retest can be expected purely due to measurement error variance? To investigate such questions, the current study conducted a Monte Carlo selection simulation that allowed for retesting on a selection test battery consisting of four commonly used tests (measures of cognitive ability, structured interview, conscientiousness, biodata) under realistic levels of test–retest reliability (from rxx = .70 to .95 for each test). The applicants’ true standing on these measures was held constant. Our simulation results provide specific information on a general intuition: retesting increased the number of underqualified applicants who eventually passed, and this increase became practically meaningful as test–retest reliability decreased. From an overall validity perspective, however, the decrease in mean job performance as a function of applicant retesting was minimal. Also, we found sizable mean score changes across retesting occasions that can meaningfully affect high-stakes selection decisions in typical selection situations. Thus, understanding the psychometric and practical implications of retesting and engaging in efforts to reduce construct-irrelevant changes in observed test scores across test occasions should be major points of consideration to help ensure that personnel selection procedures are more accurate and effective.
