Why do followers' reactions to perceived paradoxical leader behavior (PLB) differ? To answer this question, we draw from self-regulation theory and argue that making sense of a paradoxical leader's seemingly contradictory behavior can pose a challenge for followers and requires specific cognitive traits and abilities that enable them to navigate such complex and dynamic environments. We propose that followers who lack these cognitive traits and related abilities find it more difficult to make sense of and navigate their paradoxical leader's behavior, thereby perceiving them as behaviorally unpredictable. This, in turn, impairs followers' self-regulation when working with such leaders, and leads to lower well-being. Conversely, followers endowed with appropriate cognitive traits can make sense of PLB and thrive in these environments. To test our propositions, we conducted two multi-wave field studies. In Study 1, we examine the role of followers' trait cognitive flexibility in interpreting PLB; whereas Study 2 explores the role of followers' trait self-regulation. The findings from these studies support our hypotheses, with an important implication: the efficacy of PLB may not only solely depend on a leader's ability to enact these behaviors but also on their followers' ability to interpret and make sense of them.

While it is well-known that employees with disabilities have significantly more negative work experiences compared to other employees, research geared towards understanding how employers could improve some of these experiences is still underdeveloped. To advance this research agenda, this study investigates links between five distinct types of discretionary arrangements (work discretion, scheduling discretion, part-timing, homeworking and pay for individual performance), and outcomes related to work experiences and the wellbeing of employees with disabilities (job satisfaction, perception of fairness, recognition, motivation, engagement, work stress and work-life interference). To explore these links, we use data from the European Working Conditions Survey (2015). We find that not all work arrangements that increase discretion at the workplace have a positive impact on employees with disabilities and that some can be especially detrimental. By unpacking the multiple ways in which various types of discretion at the workplace affect employees with disabilities, this study not only makes a theoretical contribution but also provides employers who aim to improve the working experiences of employees with disabilities with some empirical evidence to help them take more inclusive actions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.

Robots are becoming an increasingly prominent part of society. Despite their growing importance, there exists no overarching model that synthesizes people's psychological reactions to robots and identifies what factors shape them. To address this, we created a taxonomy of affective, cognitive and behavioural processes in response to a comprehensive stimulus sample depicting robots from 28 domains of human activity (for example, education, hospitality and industry) and examined its individual difference predictors. Across seven studies that tested 9,274 UK and US participants recruited via online panels, we used a data-driven approach combining qualitative and quantitative techniques to develop the positive-negative-competence model, which categorizes all psychological processes in response to the stimulus sample into three dimensions: positive, negative and competence-related. We also established the main individual difference predictors of these dimensions and examined the mechanisms for each predictor. Overall, this research provides an in-depth understanding of psychological functioning regarding representations of robots.

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 ( N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic ( r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multinational data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution-individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar results were found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, and collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-neglible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic.

Resilience of food systems is key to ensuring food security through crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unprecedented shock that reveals varying levels of resilience of increasingly interconnected food systems across the globe. We contribute to the ongoing debate about whether increased connectivity reduces or enhances resilience in the context of rural Pacific food systems, while examining how communities have adapted to the global shocks associated with the pandemic to ensure food security. We conducted 609 interviews across 199 coastal villages from May to October 2020 in Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu to understand community-level impacts and adaptations during the first 5-10 months of the COVID-19 crisis. We found that local food production practices and food sharing conferred resilience, and that imported foods could aid or inhibit resilience. Communities in countries more reliant on imports were almost twice as likely to report food insecurity compared to those least reliant. However, in places dealing with a concurrent cyclone, local food systems were impaired, and imported foods proved critical. Our findings suggest that policy in the Pacific should bolster sustainable local food production and practices. Pacific states should avoid becoming overly reliant on food imports, while having measures in place to support food security after disasters, supplementing locally produced and preserved foods with imported foods when necessary. Developing policies that promote resilient food systems can help prepare communities for future shocks, including those anticipated with climate change.

The nature of work is changing rapidly and global trends such as demographic changes, exponential technological growth and changes in individual value systems have accelerated a shift with regards to how, where and when work is organized. Whilst an abundance of research has explored the implications of modern work from economic and sociological perspectives and discussed the consequences for organizations, relatively little is known about how the changing notion of work impacts workers and teams. This symposium addresses this gap by bringing together leading scholars who will shed light on how workers experience changes in work and how this influences their careers, their attitudes and their wellbeing. Using the presentations as a starting point, the aim of the symposium is to discuss common patterns, but also interesting differences in order to identify how individuals benefit from modern work, whilst highlighting potential challenges and drawbacks. Insider to the Team, Outsider to the Organization. Freelancers’ Perceived Insider Status Presenter: Thomas Gigant; ESCP Europe Employee Experiences and Well-being in rapidly transformed Virtual Teams Presenter: Almudena Canibano; ESCP Business School Presenter: Petros Chamakiotis; ESCP Business School Presenter: Emma Russell; U. of Sussex Visibility and Status of Accumulated Professional Knowledge. Effects of Digital Transformation Presenter: Nanna Gillberg; U. of Gothenburg Presenter: Ewa Wikström; School of Business, Economics & Law, U. of Gothenburg, Sweden Can AI Recommendations Mitigate Nepotistic Hiring Behavior? Presenter: Jonathan Edward Booth; London School of Economics and Political Science

Over the past 40 years, an early emphasis on equal opportunities among both human resource management (HRM) practitioners and scholars has gradually shifted to a focus on diversity management and, more recently, a burgeoning interest in inclusion (Oswick C, Noon M, Br J Manag 25:23–39, 2014). This chapter examines inclusion in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) employees and provides an overview of the current state of play and further opportunities for employers to facilitate the full and free participation of these workers. After defining inclusion and its appeal to organizations, we will review organizational challenges to the inclusion of LGBTQI+ workers, including those unique to members of this community relative to other minority groups and also those posed by the diversity within this group.

Who responds most strongly to supervisor social undermining? Building on self-verification theory (Swann, 1983, 1987), we theorize that employees with positive views of the self (i.e., higher core self-evaluations [CSEs]) who also maintain higher trust in workplace management are more likely to experience heightened stress and turnover intentions when undermined. We argue that this subset of employees (high CSE, high trust) are more likely to feel misunderstood when undermined by their supervisor and that this lack of self-verification partially explains their stronger responses to supervisor undermining. We find initial support for the first part of our model in a study of 259 healthcare workers in the United States and replicate and extend our findings in the second study of 330 employees in the United Kingdom. Our results suggest that the employees Human Resources often wishes to attract and retain—employees with high CSE and high trust in workplace management—react most strongly to supervisor social undermining.

Given that research consistently finds transgender individuals sustaining worse health outcomes than cisgender individuals, it is important to understand the workplace health and well-being experiences of trans employees in order to develop and support trans-sensitive Human Resources policies and interventions. We take an employee journey perspective to explore the experiences of trans individuals as they navigate organisational processes such as recruitment and selection, managing change, co-worker relationships, performance and termination. What the literature demonstrates is that transgender workers face many barriers to physical and psychological health, safety and well-being at work. These barriers can range from organisational oversights such as lack of access to appropriate bathroom facilities to social exclusion and/or verbal harassment from co-workers and physical attacks from customers. Anticipation of mistreatment generates psychological strain and anxiety and lowers trans workers’ career aspirations and career-building behaviours such as applying for jobs or promotions. Trans workers often conceal their transgender identity at work as a coping strategy for avoiding discrimination and harassment, but this in turn produces strain and fatigue arising from the cognitive and emotional effort involved in constructing and maintaining facades. Although HR staff should be the first point of contact for trans employees to develop their plans for coming out and for gender transition if applicable, our review indicates that in many cases, HR may not know how to initially or adequately respond.

Although differentiated relationships among leaders and their followers are fundamental to leader–member exchange (LMX) theory, research provides limited knowledge about whether employees’ responses to individual perceptions of LMX differentiation are uniform. In a field study, we examined whether individual‐level psychological empowerment buffers the negative relationship between perceived LMX differentiation and job satisfaction and found that the negative relationship is strongest under low employee psychological empowerment conditions, as compared to high psychological empowerment. Furthermore, in a multi‐wave field study and an experiment, we extended these initial findings by investigating employees’ perceptions of supervisory fairness as a mediator of this moderated relationship. We found that the indirect effect between perceived LMX differentiation and job satisfaction, through supervisory fairness perceptions, is strongest under low employee psychological empowerment, as compared to high psychological empowerment. Collectively, our findings showcase the importance of psychological empowerment as a tool for employees to use to counteract the negative effect of perceived differentiated contexts.Practitioner points When employees perceive that their managers have differentiated relationships across workgroup employees, employees tend to be less satisfied in their jobs, and this negative relationship is explained through employees’ perceptions of supervisory fairness. Employees with low psychological empowerment levels (e.g., employees who feel less in control of their work) report lower levels of job satisfaction when they perceive that their managers differentiate among employees. However, employees with high levels of psychological empowerment are more resilient in contexts where managers are perceived to differentiate across workgroup employees. The findings reinforce the necessity for managers and organizations to implement and promote empowerment initiatives.

This study examines the effect of work‐related experiences on employees’ engagement in community volunteering, using data from a British longitudinal panel of employees. Using a novel analytical approach that separates variation in volunteering due to within‐person changes in work conditions from variation due to between‐person work differences, we more robustly test existing and new hypotheses about the effects of work on volunteering. New to this literature, we find that commuting and satisfaction with job experiences are significant predictors of community volunteering, both the likelihood to volunteer and volunteering frequency. In turn, volunteering determinants previously explored with cross‐sectional data, such as managerial and professional jobs, employment sector and hourly paid contracts, are no longer statistically significant in the within‐person models. We discuss a number of important theoretical and practical consequences of these findings.

Awareness of transgender rights has been growing in recent years, with issues such as bathroom access hotly contested in the United States and the right to legal gender recognition by self-declaration without the requirement to provide medical evidence debated in the United Kingdom. The term transgender, or trans, describes individuals whose gender identity does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth; the trans community includes those who undergo medical gender reassignment, those who transition socially but not surgically from one gender to another, and others who reject the gender binary and express a continuum of gender identities regardless of social expectations. The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) estimates that about 1 percent of the British population is gender nonconforming to some degree, and research from the Williams Law Institute at UCLA estimates that 0.3 percent of the United States population identifies as trans.