Well-being in times of task restructuring: The buffering potential of workplace learning

status: publishe

Unfairness at work as a predictor of absenteeism

This study among 514 security guards examines the relationship between perceptions of unfairness at work and absenteeism during a one-year follow-up. On the basis of previous theoretical work and fragmented empirical evidence, it was hypothesized that distributive unfairness causes absence behavior in a direct or indirect way (through health complaints). Procedural unfairness was hypothesized to cause absence behavior through affective commitment or through health complaints. Results of a series of structural equation modelling analyses offer support for the mediating role of health complaints in the relationship between (distributive and procedural) unfairness at work and absenteeism. Moreover, our findings demonstrate that perceived unfairness contributes to explaining T2-absenteeism over and above the impact of T1-absenteeism and traditional work-related stressors (i.e., work load and low job control). The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

Competition between individuals and groups: Do incentives matter?

In their research on individual-group discontinuity using Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PDG), Schopler, Insko, and associates observed that groups were more competitive than individuals. Alternatively, we propose that this effect can be interpreted as a group-adaptiveness phenomenon. In a 2 (individuals vs. groups)x2 (low vs. high incentives to cooperate) PDG study, individuals groups played against a cooperative opponent. Individual-group discontinuity was found when incentives to cooperate were low, but not when incentives were high. Results further suggest that the stronger intergroup competition observed in past discontinuity research may have been triggered and perpetuated by between-group violations of cooperative proposals. These findings are consistent with our group adaptiveness perspective, which proposes that groups are not invariably more competitive than individuals, but that they are more likely to adapt their behaviors to variations in the task and/or social environment in an attempt to attain important group goal