A dynamic systems theory of intrateam conflict contagion.

Recognizing the challenges that conflict poses, organizational researchers have invested considerable energy toward investigating the processes by which conflict occurs and spreads within a team. However, current theoretical frameworks of conflict contagion posit a static growth trajectory in which members become engaged in conflict and stay in conflict. While this trajectory is certainly possible, the broader conflict literature outside of the organizational sciences has shown evidence for a more varied set of potential trajectories of conflict contagion. To advance theory on team conflict, we integrate conflict research from micro-level (interpersonal) to macro-level (interstate) perspectives into a formal theory of intrateam conflict contagion. Drawing from conflict stage and social contagion theory, we theorize that team members move through three stages of conflict (disengaged, at-risk, engaged) at rates determined by four process mechanisms (faultlines, forgiveness, frustration, integration) such that disengaged individuals become at-risk of engaging in conflict, engage in conflict, then disengage, only to potentially become at risk of reengaging at a later point in time. Using computational modeling, we demonstrate the generative sufficiency of our theory to account for conflict trajectories observed in the broader conflict literature. To facilitate the interpretation of such trajectories, we present a typology of contagion trajectories, discuss the dynamic properties of these trajectories (e.g., stability, bifurcations), and provide implications for future theory building and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The dynamic nature of interpersonal conflict and psychological strain in extreme work settings.

Humanity will mount interplanetary exploration missions within the next two decades, supported by a growing workforce operating in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) conditions of space. How will future space workers fare in a closed social world while subjected to persistent stressors? Using a sample of 32 participants operating in ICE conditions over the course of 30-45 days, we developed and tested a dynamic model of conflict and strain. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, we investigated reciprocal relationships between different forms (i.e., task and relationship) of conflict, and between conflict and strain. Results demonstrated evidence for a resource threat feedback loop as current-day task conflict predicted next-day relationship conflict and current-day relationship conflict predicted next-day task conflict. Additionally, results indicated support for a resource loss feedback loop as current-day relationship conflict predicted next-day strain, and current-day strain predicted next-day relationship conflict. Moreover, we found that job conditions affected these associations as current-day relationship conflict was more associated with next-day task conflict when next-day workload was high, but not when next-day workload was low. Similarly, current-day relationship conflict was more associated with next-day strain when next-day workload was high; however, this association decreased when next-day workload was low. Therefore, the results suggest that workload plays a critical role in weakening the effect of these spirals over time, and suggests that targeted interventions (e.g., recovery days) can help buffer against the negative impact of relationship conflict on strain and decrease the extent that relationship conflict spills over into task disputes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Making daily decisions to work from home or to work in the office: The impacts of daily work- and COVID-related stressors on next-day work location.

To protect workers' safety while gradually resuming on-site operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations are offering employees the flexibility to decide their work location on a daily basis (i.e., whether to work from home or to work in the office on a particular day). However, little is known about what factors drive employees' daily decisions to work from home versus office during the pandemic. Taking a social ecological perspective, we conceptualize employees' daily choice of work location (home vs. office) as a way to cope with stressors they have encountered on the previous day, and conducted a daily diary study to examine how five categories of work-related and COVID-related stressors during the pandemic (identified through a pilot interview study) may jointly predict employees' next-day work location. We collected data over five workdays from 127 participants working in a Chinese IT company which allowed employees to choose their work location on a daily basis amid the pandemic. We found that experiencing more work-family boundary stressors and work coordination stressors on a certain day were associated with a greater likelihood of working in the office (vs. at home) on the next day, while experiencing more workload stressors prompted employees to work at home (vs. in the office) on the next day. Furthermore, we found that COVID-19 infection-related stressors moderated the effects of technology stressors and workload stressors on next-day work location. Our research findings offer implications for understanding the driving factors of daily work location choices during and beyond the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Supporting interdependent telework employees: A moderated-mediation model linking daily COVID-19 task setbacks to next-day work withdrawal.

The COVID-19 crisis has compelled many organizations to implement full-time telework for their employees in a bid to prevent a transmission of the virus. At the same time, the volatile COVID-19 situation presents unique, unforeseen daily disruptive task setbacks that divert employees' attention from routinized work tasks and require them to respond adaptively and effortfully. Yet, little is known about how telework employees react to such complex demands and regulate their work behaviors while working from home. Drawing on Hobfoll's (1989) conservation of resources (COR) theory, we develop a multilevel, two-stage moderated-mediation model arguing that daily COVID-19 task setbacks are stressors that would trigger a resource loss process and will thus be positively related to the employee's end-of-day emotional exhaustion. The emotionally exhausted employee then enters a resource preservation mode that precipitates a positive relationship between end-of-day exhaustion and next-day work withdrawal behaviors. Based on COR, we also predict that the relation between daily COVID-19 task setbacks and exhaustion would be more positive in telework employees who have higher (vs. lower) task interdependence with coworkers, but organizations could alleviate the positive relation between end-of-day exhaustion and next-day work withdrawal behavior by providing employees with higher (vs. lower) telework task support. We collected daily experience-sampling data over 10 workdays from 120 employees (Level 1, n = 1,022) who were teleworking full-time due to the pandemic lockdown. The results generally supported our hypotheses, and their implications for scholars and managers during and beyond the pandemic are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Positive family events facilitate effective leader behaviors at work: A within-individual investigation of family-work enrichment.

Challenges related to managing work and family demands have become more and more pressing, particularly for those with high work demands, such as those in managerial and leadership roles. While existing research has focused on how family demands may negatively affect employee functioning at work, less attention has focused on characterizing the process through which individuals can benefit from their family lives. Drawing from self-determination theory, we develop a family-to-work enrichment framework to illustrate how leaders' positive experiences and motivational gains from home may transfer to work. We conducted two experience sampling studies to examine our family-work enrichment framework. Our results show that daily positive family events are positively predictive of consideration and transformational leadership behaviors at work through family need satisfaction and prosocial motivation. Our results further demonstrate that positive family events are more beneficial for leaders who view their family role as important and central (Study 2). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Workplace Bullying Among Nurses: Developing a Model for Intervention.

Workplace bullying is endemic to the nursing profession and it threatens nurses' health and ability to work safely. However, effective interventions to prevent workplace bullying are lacking. A sample of hospital nurses (n = 15) explored experiences of bullying and ideas for intervention via four focus groups in 2016. Four main themes emerged from the qualitative content analysis: (a) characteristics that define bullying behavior; (b) facilitators of bullying; (c) consequences of bullying; and (d) possible interventions. Although personal characteristics played a role, bullying was primarily facilitated by workplace and organizational factors that hindered the establishment of collegiality and team trust among nurses. Findings have informed a conceptual model for prevention of nurse-to-nurse bullying with ethical leadership and communication, trust, and social cohesion in work teams as key elements.

Organizational determinants of bullying and work disengagement among hospital nurses.

AIMS: To identify organizational determinants of bullying and resulting work disengagement among hospital nurses. DESIGN: A cross-sectional, web-based, anonymous questionnaire study. METHODS: The questionnaire was administered in 2017 to all Registered Nurses in a regional healthcare system in the United States (N = 1,780), with 331 complete responses. Logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with personally experiencing and witnessing bullying, respectively. Linear regression was conducted to identify organizational factors associated with disengagement due to bullying. RESULTS: Psychological safety, a measure of team trust and respect, was inversely associated with being personally bullied and witnessing bullying. Being personally bullied, but not witnessing bullying, was associated with disengagement due to bullying. Psychological safety and competence development, a measure of opportunities to develop skills and knowledge at work, were both inversely associated with disengagement due to bullying. CONCLUSION: Hospital units characterized by trust and respect among nurses are less likely to have a culture of bullying. Both psychological safety and competence development have a protective effect on nurse disengagement from the workplace due to bullying. Interventions to mitigate and prevent bullying and work disengagement among nurses should encompass efforts to enhance psychological safety and opportunities for competence development. IMPACT: Bullying is a pervasive hazard in the nursing profession that contributes to unhealthy workplaces. Nurse managers and staff nurses should work together to establish psychologically safe environments where nurses dare to discuss tough issues like bullying. This research contributes to understanding the characteristics of work environments in which nurses can thrive and work effectively.

The benefits of receiving gratitude for helpers: A daily investigation of proactive and reactive helping at work.

Although gratitude is a key phenomenon that bridges helping with its outcomes, how and why helping relates to receipt of gratitude and its relation with helper's eudaimonic well-being have unfortunately been overlooked in organizational research. The purpose of this study is to unravel how helpers successfully connect to others and their work via receipt of gratitude. To do so, we distinguish different circumstances of helping-reactive helping (i.e., providing help when requested) versus proactive helping (i.e., providing help without being asked)-and examine their unique effect on the gratitude received by helpers, which, in turn, has downstream implications for helpers' perceived prosocial impact and work engagement the following day. Using daily experience sampling (Study 1) and critical incident (Study 2) methods, we found that reactive helping is more likely to be linked to receipt of gratitude than proactive helping. Receipt of gratitude, in turn, is associated with increases in perceived prosocial impact and work engagement the following day. Our study contributes to the helping literature by identifying receipt of gratitude as a novel mechanism that links helping to helper well-being, by distinguishing proactive and reactive helping, and by highlighting eudaimonic well-being as an outcome of helping for helpers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Eating your feelings? Testing a model of employees' work-related stressors, sleep quality, and unhealthy eating.

Although organizational research on health-related behaviors has become increasingly popular, little attention has been paid to unhealthy eating. Drawing on the self-regulation perspective, we conducted 2 daily diary studies to examine the relationships between work-related stressors, sleep quality, negative mood, and eating behaviors. Study 1 sampled 125 participants from 5 Chinese information technology companies and showed that when participants experienced higher levels of job demands in the morning, they consumed more types of unhealthy food and fewer types of healthy food in the evening. In addition, sleep quality from the previous night buffered the effect of morning job demands on evening unhealthy food consumption. Study 2 used data from 110 customer service employees from a Chinese telecommunications company and further demonstrated a positive association between morning customer mistreatment and evening overeating behaviors, as well as the buffering effect of sleep quality. Results from Study 2 also supported afternoon negative mood as a mediator linking morning customer mistreatment to evening overeating behaviors. Finally, our findings revealed that the buffering effect of sleep quality was channeled through employees' vigor in the morning, which subsequently weakened the effect of customer mistreatment on negative mood. (PsycINFO Database Record

Getting to the core of locus of control: Is it an evaluation of the self or the environment?

Responding to criticisms surrounding the structural validity of the higher order core self-evaluations (CSE) construct, in the current study we examined the appropriateness of including locus of control as an indicator of CSE. Drawing from both theoretical and empirical evidence, we argue that locus of control is more heavily influenced by evaluations of the environment compared with the other CSE traits. Using data from 4 samples, we demonstrate that model fit for the higher order CSE construct is better when locus of control is excluded versus included as a trait indicator and that the shared variance between locus of control and CSE is nominal. This does not mean that locus of control is irrelevant for CSE theory though. We propose that evaluations of the environment moderate the relations that CSE has with its outcomes. To test this proposition, we collected data from 4 unique samples that included a mix of student and employee participants, self- and other-ratings, and cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Our results revealed that locus of control moderated relations of CSE with life and job satisfaction, and supervisor-rated job performance. CSE had stronger, positive relations with these outcomes when locus of control is internal versus external. These findings broaden CSE theory by demonstrating one way in which evaluations of the environment interface with evaluations of the self. (PsycINFO Database Record

When is success not satisfying? Integrating regulatory focus and approach/avoidance motivation theories to explain the relation between core self-evaluation and job satisfaction.

Integrating implications from regulatory focus and approach/avoidance motivation theories, we present a framework wherein motivational orientations toward positive (approach motivation orientation) or negative (avoidance motivation orientation) stimuli interact with workplace success to mediate the relation of core self-evaluation (CSE) with job satisfaction. Using data collected from supervisor-subordinate dyads (Sample 1) and time-lagged data (Sample 2), we found that the results from two studies indicated that the interaction of workplace success and avoidance motivation orientation mediated relations of CSE with job satisfaction. Although approach motivation orientation did not interact with workplace success, it did mediate the CSE-job satisfaction relation on its own. Implications for the CSE and approach/avoidance literatures are discussed.

Psychosocial precursors and physical consequences of workplace violence towards nurses: a longitudinal examination with naturally occurring groups in hospital settings.

BACKGROUND: Workplace violence towards nurses is prevalent and consequential, contributing to nurses' reduced health and safety, worsened job attitudes, and compromised productivity. OBJECTIVES: To examine if organizational violence prevention climate as perceived by nurses predicts nurses' physical violence exposure and if physical violence exposure predicts nurses' somatic symptoms and musculoskeletal disorder symptoms. DESIGN: A two-wave longitudinal design with naturally occurring groups, with a 6-month interval. METHODS: Analysis of covariance and logistic regression were applied to test the proposed hypotheses among 176 nurses from two hospitals in the U.S. who participated in both surveys required by this study. All nurses from the two hospitals were recruited to participate voluntarily. The response rate was 30% for the first survey and 36% for the follow-up survey. Among the subjects, only 8 were male. On average, the subjects were about 45 years old, had a job tenure of about 17 years, and worked approximately 37 h per week. RESULTS: Violence prevention climate, specifically the dimension of perceived pressure against violence prevention, predicted nurses' chance of being exposed to physical violence over six months (odds ratio 1.69), with no evidence found that violence exposure affected change in climate reports. In addition, results supported that nurses' physical violence exposure had effects on somatic symptoms, and upper body, lower extremity, and low back pain over six months. CONCLUSIONS: Findings of this study suggest that reducing organizational pressure against violence prevention will help decrease the chance of nurses' physical violence exposure and benefit their health and safety.

Regulatory focus and work-related outcomes: a review and meta-analysis.

Regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) has received growing attention in organizational psychology, necessitating a quantitative review that synthesizes its effects on important criteria. In addition, there is need for theoretical integration of regulatory focus theory with personality research. Theoretical integration is particularly relevant, since personality traits and dispositions are distal factors that are unlikely to have direct effects on work behaviors, yet they may have indirect effects via regulatory focus. The current meta-analysis introduces an integrative framework in which the effects of personality on work behaviors are best understood when considered in conjunction with more proximal motivational processes such as regulatory focus. Using a distal-proximal approach, we identify personality antecedents and work-related consequences of regulatory foci in a framework that considers both general and work-specific regulatory foci as proximal motivational processes. We present meta-analytic results for relations of regulatory focus with its antecedents (approach and avoid temperaments, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy) and its consequences (work behaviors and attitudes). In addition to estimates of bivariate relationships, we support a meta-analytic path model in which distal personality traits relate to work behaviors via the mediating effects of general and work-specific regulatory focus. Results from tests of incremental and relative validity indicated that regulatory foci predict unique variance in work behaviors after controlling for established personality, motivation, and attitudinal predictors. Consistent with regulatory focus theory and our integrative theoretical framework, regulatory focus has meaningful relations with work outcomes and is not redundant with other individual difference variables.

Not all aggressions are created equal: a multifoci approach to workplace aggression.

Types of perpetrators of workplace aggression can vary considerably, and recent research has demonstrated that aggression from different perpetrator categories has different implications for victims. We extended research on multifoci aggression and explored affective and cognitive pathways linking verbal aggression from four perpetrator types--supervisors, coworkers, customers, and significant others--and employee morale and turnover intention. Data from a sample of 446 working adults indicated that both emotional strain and employees' corresponding judgments of their social exchange relationships with these perpetrators served as the mechanisms for the association between aggression from supervisors, coworkers, and customers and morale and turnover intention. Coworker aggression had a direct association with turnover intention and significant other aggression was related to turnover intention only through emotional strain. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.