We should also aim higher : I-O psychology applied to sustainable growth and development

[Extract] Schneider and Pulakos (2022) suggest that industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is uniquely positioned to explain organizational effectiveness and argue that an organizational focus will enhance the relevance of the field. We applaud their efforts to raise the field’s attention to a level of analysis higher than individuals and teams. Building from this idea, we consider here the potential for I-O psychology to contribute to an understanding of sustainable growth and development at the societal level. The notion of sustainable growth and development captures the interconnectedness between work, well-being, and society. It considers work productivity as a contributing factor to economic growth; decent work as a mechanism underlying quality of life for individuals and communities; and the intricate and important connections among well-being, economic vitality, and the health of the planet in both short and long terms (International Labour Organization, nd; United Nations General Assembly, 2015). Paralleling Schneider and Pulakos, we argue that I-O psychology can make important contributions that go beyond its current level of analysis

From speculation to substantiation : Empirically-testing societal changes in impact of fit on job satisfaction from 1989, 1998, 2006, and 2016

Against the backdrop of large-scale changes in work over the past few decades, both business leaders and academics have speculated that employees’ job satisfaction is increasingly tied to the extent to which their jobs meet their desires for meaning and other reinforcers. However, empirical evidence has not yet been brought to bear on these arguments. In order to provide insights into potential socio-temporal changes in how employees derive job satisfaction from job characteristics, we analyzed repeated large-scale population surveys in the United States to examine the impact of fit between desiring and receiving job characteristics on job satisfaction across four time points (1989, 1998, 2006, and 2016). Moderated polynomial regression analyses indicated that employees in more recent years experience greater dissatisfaction by deficiencies in intrinsically-rewarding job characteristics. We interpret these findings against broader discussions of the changing employment narrative theorized to have occurred in the United States over the past several decades

FROM ORGANIZATIONAL WELFARE TO BUSINESS SUCCESS: HIGHER PERFORMANCE IN HEALTHY ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

This e-book provides insight into the link between employee health and productivity/performance, with a focus on how individuals, groups, or organizations can intervene in this relationship to improve both well-being and performance-related outcomes. Given the continuous changes that organizations and employees face, such as the aging workforce and continued economic turbulence, it is not surprising that studies are increasingly finding that employee health is related to job conditions. The papers in this e-book emphasize that organizations make a critical difference when it comes to employees' health and well-being. In turn, healthy employees help their organizations to flourish. Such findings are in line with the recent emphasis by both the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations (UN) on the importance of work for individual well-being and the importance of individual well-being for productive and sustainable economic growth (see e.g., ILO, 1985; World Health Organisation, 2007; UN, 2015). Overall, the papers report findings from a cumulative sample of nearly 19,000 workers and perspectives from 68 authors. They suggest that performance cannot be successfully achieved at the cost of health and well-being, and provide various perspectives and tools to guide future research and practice

The interactive effect of leader-member exchange and perceived organizational support on employee adaptive performance

Examining the role of intra-organizational social exchanges in influencing adaptive performance, the authors hypothesized that leader-member exchange (LMX) quality and organizational support have an interactive effect on employee adaptive performance. We surveyed 175 private sector workers and found that subordinate perceptions of LMX were positively related to supervisor-rated adaptive performance among workers reporting average and high but not low levels of organizational support. Results add to the LMX literature by showing that the LMX-outcome relationship may depend on context, provide support for the divergent validity of POS and LMX, and raise important questions for future social exchange research

Emerging Issues in Occupational Health Psychology

The world of work is changing dramatically due to continuous technological advancements and globalization (the so-called industry 4 [...

Too many firms ignore their abusive boss problem

Some think that abuse and employee fear and silence are recipes for success, argue Christian Kiewitz, Simon Lloyd D. Restubog, Mindy Shoss, Patrick Raymund James M. Garcia and Robert L. Tan

Suffering in Silence: Investigating the Role of Fear in the Relationship Between Abusive Supervision and Defensive Silence

Drawing from an approach-avoidance perspective, we examine the relationships between subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervision, fear, defensive silence, and ultimately abusive supervision at a later time point. We also account for the effects of subordinates’ assertiveness and individual perceptions of a climate of fear on these predicted mediated relationships. We test this moderated mediation model with data from three studies involving different sources collected across various measurement periods. Results corroborated our predictions by showing (a) a significant association between abusive supervision and subordinates’ fear, (b) second-stage moderation effects of subordinates’ assertiveness and their individual perceptions of a climate of fear in the abusive supervision–fear– defensive silence relationship (with lower assertiveness and higher levels of climate-of-fear perceptions exacerbating the detrimental effects of fear resulting from abusive supervision), and (c) first-stage moderation effects of subordinates’ assertiveness and climate-of-fear perceptions in a model linking fear to defensive silence and abusive supervision at a later time. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

The psychological interaction of spam email features

This study explored distinct perceptual and decisional contributions to spam email mental construal. Participants classified spam emails according to pairings of three stimulus features – presence or absence of awkward prose, abnormal message structure, and implausible premise. We examined dimensional interactions within general recognition theory (GRT; a multidimensional extension of signal detection theory). Classification accuracy was highest for categories containing either two non-normal dimension levels (e.g. awkward prose and implausible premise) or two normal dimension levels (e.g. normal prose and plausible premise). Modelling indicated both perceptual and decisional contributions to classification responding. In most cases, perceptual discriminability was higher along one dimension when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension (e.g. prose discriminability was higher with abnormal structure). Similarly, decision criteria along one dimension were biased in favour of the non-normal response when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension. Potential applications for training are discussed

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: A Functional-Identity Perspective

The impact of the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) on workers’ experiences remains underexamined. Although AI-enhanced processes can benefit workers (e.g., by assisting with exhausting or dangerous tasks), they can also elicit psychological harm (e.g., by causing job loss or degrading work quality). Given AI’s uniqueness among other technologies, resulting from its expanding capabilities and capacity for autonomous learning, we propose a functional-identity framework to examine AI’s effects on people’s work-related self-understandings and the social environment at work. We argue that the conditions for AI to either enhance or threaten workers’ sense of identity derived from their work depends on how the technology is functionally deployed (by complementing tasks, replacing tasks, and/or generating new tasks) and how it affects the social fabric of work. Also, how AI is implemented and the broader social-validation context play a role. We conclude by outlining future research directions and potential application of the proposed framework to organizational practice

Addressing Job Insecurity in the 21st Century

In this piece, Dr. Shoss outlines the prevalence, experience, and consequences of job insecurity. Dr. Shoss highlights the role job insecurity plays as a stressor in the modern workforce. She suggests that specific subsets of workers (i.e., less educated workers, African American employees, or, counterintuitively, the most desirable workers) are particularly susceptible to this stressor in the modern workforce. Specifically, Dr. Shoss notes aspects of globalization and technology, such as automation, artificial intelligence, climate displaced workers, and global political climate, that have shifted the stage of the modern workforce. She further links these changes to individual behavior, as well as organizational, political, and economic systems