This study aims to understand how state law, organizational policies, and supervisor actions that facilitate abortion access interact to predict employees’ attitudes toward their organization and wellbeing in the United States of America (U.S.). Using organizational support theory, we propose that abortion-facilitative organizational policies and supervisor actions increase employee support and wellbeing. We test U.S. state abortion-restrictive legislation as a macro-level modifier of these effects. Hypotheses are tested across two studies using an experimental vignette design (N = 167) and a cross-sectional survey administered to a random sample of residents in four U.S. states (N = 290). Vignette findings suggest abortion-facilitative organizational policy and supervisor actions increment beyond one another to predict greater perceived organizational support and better anticipated employee wellbeing; state law was not a significant modifier. Survey findings show no support for direct effects of state, organization, or supervisor abortion-facilitative actions on employee perceived organizational support or wellbeing. Instead, state law modifies organization and supervisor actions’ relationships with perceived organizational support and employee wellbeing. Hypothesized and post-hoc moderations mostly support a synergistic pattern, such that abortion-facilitative actions are most strongly associated with higher perceived organizational support and wellbeing when in abortion-facilitative contexts.
The underreporting of workplace safety incidents remains a pervasive concern for various stakeholders, preventing workers from accessing healthcare benefits and hindering organizational leaders and policymakers from identifying systemic safety hazards. Using an abductive approach, this exploratory study examines incident reporting by framing it as a dynamic, environmentally constrained decision-making process shaped by the interplay of psychological, incident-related, organizational, policy, and economic considerations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 employees from the shipbuilding and ship-repair industry. Qualitative analysis indicated that incident reporting decisions are asymmetrical in nature; the factors that inhibit reporting are not mere opposites of the factors that motivate reporting. Coding further revealed that individual factors defied assignment to a single level of analysis, and that more macro-level (e.g., contextual, organizational, policy, economic) and more micro-level (e.g., incident-related, psychological) considerations frequently co-occurred within participants’ accounts, reflecting the interconnected nature of cues across levels. Drawing on Simon’s (1990) bounded rationality framework, we identified four higher-order themes reflecting recurring patterns in reporting and nonreporting decisions. Additionally, the cues discussed by workers varied across referents, with differences noted between statements about reporting in general and those about oneself or a specific other individual reporting. We offer a conceptual model that depicts incident reporting as a bounded process, emphasizing that organizations must look beyond compliance to understand the complex constraints workers navigate in real reporting situations.
Asian workers in the US face workplace challenges, including stereotype-related obstacles that may increase their vulnerability to poor health and well‑being but remain insufficiently understood. Integrating insights from ethnic studies and social psychology, the current study simultaneously investigates two theoretically related social determinants that can influence Asian worker well-being: mechanistic dehumanization (‘mechanization’; being perceived as robotic or machine-like) and social pain minimization (‘minimization’; having interpersonal hurts invalidated by others). We conducted a two-wave survey of 332 Asian workers in the US. It examined how the two factors relate temporally and predict Asian workers’ well-being, including physical fatigue, mental health symptoms, workplace friendship, and job satisfaction. Results showed that mechanization and minimization were positively related, and both predicted poorer well-being outcomes. In addition, cross-lagged panel analysis and structural equation modeling indicated that minimization preceded higher levels of subsequent mechanization, which was concurrently associated with poorer well-being. These results highlight the need for further occupational health research to better understand Asian workers’ experiences and for organizations to make greater efforts to build a supportive and inclusive work environment.
Dirty work is socially constructed as physically, morally, or socially tainted, and these perceptions can shape how dirty workers understand and experience their identities. However, the processes through which the perception of taint shapes dirty workers’ identities and associated outcomes (e.g., identity ambivalence, isolation), as well as the effects of the degree of perceived taint, are not fully understood. To better understand these processes, the present study describes the development and validation of a measure that examines the experience of dirty work through workers’ perceptions of occupational taint. First, an initial pool of items was developed, based on the dirty work literature and open-ended responses describing dirty workers’ perceptions of their work. Across subsequent studies, this item pool was reduced through a series of exploratory factor analyses and evaluated the resulting factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis. These analyses provided preliminary support for a 13-item, three-factor model consisting of physical, moral, and social taint. Finally, convergent validity was examined by testing relationships between physical, moral, and social taint and stress, burnout, job satisfaction, job involvement, and intent to quit. The three-factor structure was further supported by its superior fit relative to both a two-factor model and single-factor model.
Our study examines the role of leaders in employee recovery. We hypothesize that supervisor support for recovery (between-person) will buffer the impact of daily workload (within-person) on evening psychological detachment (within-person). We tested this hypothesis with a 7-day experience sampling methodology study using data from 545 employees, 1970 valid end-of-work observations (51
