More to life than promotion: Self-initiated and self-resigned career plateaus

Being on a career plateau is widely regarded as an undesirable career experience characterised by a lack of individual proactivity, ability, or opportunity for promotion. In this paper, we present an alternative view arguing that some employees may choose to plateau their careers and deliberately forego opportunities for hierarchical progression. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 75 law enforcement officers in the US and Australia, we explore why they declined a promotion opportunity or elected not to apply for promotion. Drawing on social cognitive career theory, we develop a provisional taxonomy characterised by individual proactivity: self-initiated and self-resigned career plateaus. Specifically, we report how the decision to remain on either of these career plateaus is informed by either the low valence accorded to a promoted position or, paradoxically, the reduced self-efficacy in navigating what is viewed as a flawed promotion system

The Concept of Originality and Creativity in the Humanities, the Social Sciences and the Natural Sciences

The study was conducted to determine how 21 experts in the discipline clusters of humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences defined originality and creativity in terms of how these concepts are understood and realized in the production of works in their respective disciplines, what related copyright issues emerge related to these concepts, and how these two concepts are related. Through thematic qualitative analysis of in-depth interview data, findings suggest that while there may be converging ideas about originality and creativity among the discipline clusters, the way this concept is operationalized by each discipline significantly vary. The study is deemed useful because apart from clarifying vague notions about original works, the study can serve as reference for legislators in amending the Copyright law, and for law practitioners in contextualizing cases involving original and derivative works, plagiarism and other related concepts. In this connection, the study provides the implications for the evaluation of the originality and creativity in works produced from the various discipline clusters

A Self-Esteem Threat Perspective on the Downstream Customer Consequences of Customer Mistreatment

A Self-Esteem Threat Perspective on the Downstream Customer Consequences of Customer Mistreatment A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Australian National University, 2016 Committee Co-chairs: Professor Prashant Bordia and Professor Simon Lloyd D. Restubog Committee Members: Dr Deshani Ganegoda and Dr Vinh Lu Customer mistreatment encompasses a broad range of poor interpersonal treatment that employees receive from customers such as verbal abuse and rudeness (Wang, Liao, Zhan, & Shi, 2011). Subjected to customer mistreatment, employees perform poorly, feel angry and psychologically distressed, and withdraw from their work (Skarlicki, van Jaarsveld, & Walker, 2008; Baranik, Wang, Gong, & Shi, in press; Sliter, Sliter, & Jex, 2012). While much is known about the psychological experience of customer mistreatment of the employee—fairness and resource loss—less is known about the implications of customer mistreatment for the employee’s sense of self. Customer mistreatment conveys contempt and disregard for employees, that they are unworthy of respect and dignified treatment in the eyes of the customer. In this way, customer mistreatment may serve as a self-esteem threat, or a challenge to employees’ positive views of their worth (vanDellen, Campbell, Hoyle, & Bradfield, 2011). High self-esteem employees may compensate for the blow to their ego during subsequent customer encounters in ways that are detrimental to service delivery. While the possibility of a “spiral out” effect of customer mistreatment to subsequent customers has been raised (Groth & Grandey, 2012), little is known about its behavioral mechanisms and boundary conditions. In the customer mistreatment literature, outcomes for customers have received little attention. This project comprises a programmatic series of three multiwave, multisource studies investigating the role of employee self-esteem threat in the relationship between customer mistreatment and downstream customer outcomes. Study 1 demonstrates that the consequences of customer mistreatment for downstream customer satisfaction are amplified by employee high self-esteem. This study was conducted in a sample of food service employees and customers. Study 2 replicates the base moderation model from Study 1 in a retail sample and extends the model by examining the employee behavioral mechanisms that mediate the relationship between customer mistreatment and downstream customer dissatisfaction. Consistent with theory, employee self-esteem amplifies the indirect effect of customer mistreatment on downstream customer satisfaction through supervisor-reported customer-directed organizational citizenship behaviors. Lastly, Study 3 unpacks the employee self-concept mechanisms by which customer mistreatment elicits self-esteem threat through the role of an approval-contingency of self-worth (CSW-Approval). Consistent with theory, the negative relationship between customer mistreatment and downstream customer satisfaction is evinced only among employees with both high self-esteem and high CSW-Approval. Each study successively addresses limitations to and alternative explanations of preceding studies. This series of studies contributes to the literature in four significant ways. First, these studies test a novel account of the psychological experience of customer mistreatment: self-esteem threat. The self-esteem perspective sheds light on how the consequences of customer mistreatment follow not just from employees’ perceptions of external events but also from their internal judgements of the self (Swann, Chang-Schneider, & McClarty, 2007). Second, these studies advance our understanding of customer mistreatment by bringing the customer into the picture. Looking merely at employee outcomes of customer mistreatment belies the full scope of the phenomenon. Third, these studies examine the mechanisms and boundary conditions of a little-studied organizational phenomenon: the spiral-out effect of customer mistreatment (Groth & Grandey, 2012). Fourth and lastly, these studies introduce others’ approval as a source of contingent self-esteem at work. The burgeoning literature on contingent self-esteem at work has so far only examined performance as a source of esteem (Ferris, Lian, Brown, Pang, & Keeping, 2010); Study 3 departs from the existing literature by introducing another source of self-esteem—other’s approval—involved in how employees’ manage self-esteem threat from customer mistreatment

Categories of illustrated problems for training children in inductive reasoning

Klauer and Phye’s Cognitive Training for Children (Cognitive training for children: a developmental program of inductive reasoning and problem solving. Hogrefe & Hogrefe Publisher, Kirkland, 1994) provides instruction in inductive reasoning through a sequence of 120 illustrations following a prescribed two-way categorization (a) attributes of objects versus relations between objects, and (b) similarities or differences versus both similarities and differences in attributes or relations. While the program’s effectivity has been established, its prescribed categorization of problems has yet to be validated. If training performance is in accordance with the prescribed categorization, then performance patterns should be more similar for problems in the same than in different categories. In the current research, correlations of performance between problem categories were used as similarity measures in multidimensional scaling. The resulting solution yielded the attribute–relation and similarity–difference dimensions thus showing that performance reflects problem complexity. Visual salience, however, may override problem complexity, as suggested by the finding that the matrix arrangement of objects facilitated training in the algorithmically complex similarity-and-difference problems. The use of everyday-life objects as opposed to abstract objects also was shown to facilitate inductive reasoning. © 2015, De La Salle University

Beyond Tit-for-Tat: Theorizing Divergent Employee Reactions to Customer Mistreatment

Customer mistreatment is a ubiquitous and pernicious form of interpersonal mistreatment leveled by customers against employees. Service workers' reactions to customer mistreatment have been traditionally viewed as titfor-tat reactions in which service workers respond to customers' aggression with retaliation in kind. However, this tit-for-tat account does not capture the broad range of possible service worker responses to customer misbehavior. We build the case for self-esteem threat as an overarching framework for divergent employee reactions to customer mistreatment, and explain how service workers’ behavioral reactions and emotional labor may systematically vary according to where service workers stake their self-esteem—in performance, in others' approval, or in status—using contingencies of self-worth theory. Other features of the self-concept are identified as boundary conditions of the process.This research was supported by a Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Scholarship awarded to the first author

Laughter is (powerful) medicine : The effects of humor exposure on the well-being of victims of aggression

Aggression at work is an expensive and widespread problem. While a large body of research has studied its antecedents and consequences, few studies have examined what victims can do to help mitigate the damage once it has occurred. Many practitioners and scholars have suggested that workers seek out humor to help them deal with the impact of stressors such as aggression, but little is known about whether humor can actually help victims deal with the psychological damage caused by aggression in the workplace. This paper presents a programmatic series of four experimental studies that examine whether and how exposure to humorous stimuli improves well-being among victims of interpersonal aggression by integrating the superiority theory of humor with Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional model of stress and coping. Study 1 (N = 84 students) showed that exposure to humor had a positive effect on well-being in a sample based in the Philippines. Consistent with theoretical prescriptions from the superiority theory of humor, this effect was mediated by increased momentary sense of power. Study 2 (N = 205 students) found the same positive effects of humor exposure on well-being in a sample based in Australia even when manipulating perpetrator power. These findings were replicated in studies 3 (N = 175 MTurk workers) and 4 (N = 235 MTurk workers) among a diverse sample of workers based in the USA

Beyond tit-for-tat: Theorizing divergent employee reactions to customer mistreatment

Customer mistreatment is a ubiquitous and pernicious form of interpersonal mistreatment leveled by customers against employees. Service workers’ reactions to customer mistreatment have been traditionally viewed as tit-for-tat reactions in which service workers respond to customers’ aggression with retaliation in kind. However, this tit-for-tat account does not capture the broad range of possible service worker responses to customer misbehavior. We build the case for self-esteem threat as an overarching framework for divergent employee reactions to customer mistreatment, and explain how service workers’ behavioral reactions and emotional labor may systematically vary according to where service workers stake their self-esteem—in performance, in others’ approval, or in status—using contingencies of self-worth theory. Other features of the self-concept are identified as boundary conditions of the process

Age as double-edged sword among victims of customer mistreatment: A self-esteem threat perspective

Service workers are expected to maintain high‐quality service delivery despite customer mistreatment—the poor‐quality treatment of service workers by customers—which can be demeaning and threatening to self‐esteem. Although service work is increasingly delivered by middle‐aged and older workers, very little is known about how employees across the age range navigate abuse from customers on the job. Does advancing age help or hinder service performance in reaction to customer mistreatment? Drawing on strength and vulnerability integration theory, we proposed that age paradoxically both helps and hinders performance after customer mistreatment, albeit at different stages. We tested our proposed model in a two‐sample field investigation of service workers and their supervisors using a time‐lagged, dyadic design. Results showed that age heightens the experience of self‐esteem threat but, nevertheless, dampens reactions to self‐esteem threat, leading to divergent effects on performance at different stages. Implications for age and service work, as well as aging and the sense of self, are discussed.This research was supported by a Prime Minister's Australia Asia Scholarship awarded to the first autho

Age as double-edged sword among victims of customer mistreatment : A self-esteem threat perspective

Service workers are expected to maintain high-quality service delivery despite customer mistreatment—the poor-quality treatment of service workers by customers—which can be demeaning and threatening to self-esteem. Although service work is increasingly delivered by middle-aged and older workers, very little is known about how employees across the age range navigate abuse from customers on the job. Does advancing age help or hinder service performance in reaction to customer mistreatment? Drawing on strength and vulnerability integration theory, we proposed that age paradoxically both helps and hinders performance after customer mistreatment, albeit at different stages. We tested our proposed model in a two-sample field investigation of service workers and their supervisors using a time-lagged, dyadic design. Results showed that age heightens the experience of self-esteem threat but, nevertheless, dampens reactions to self-esteem threat, leading to divergent effects on performance at different stages. Implications for age and service work, as well as aging and the sense of self, are discussed

Misbehaving customers. Understanding and managing customer injustice in service organizations

Customers who treat frontline service employees unfairly ar an expensive problem for companies. We know that other forms of mistreatment such as workplace incivility are costly for organizations, as Pearson and Porath show, and that in service workplaces customers can be viewed as a more common source of negative behaviors directed at employees compared with co-workers and supervisors. Frontline service employees can view customers as treating them unfairly if customers, for example, yell at them, or doubt their credibility. Understanding how customers can influence employee attitudes and behaviors is attracting increasing attention from managers and scholars. These encounters are especially problematic for managers, given the psychological and emotional toll unfair encounters have on the frontline workforce, increasing employee burnout, turnover intentions, and reducing performance. Clearly, misbehaving customers create a dilemma for managers who want the customer revenue, but, at the same time, jeopardize service quality by exposing employees to unfair treatment from customers