Examining regulatory focus in the acceleration and deceleration of engagement and exhaustion cycles among nurses.

BACKGROUND: Given that emotional exhaustion and nurse engagement have significant implications for nurse well-being and organizational performance, determining how to increase nurse engagement while reducing nurse exhaustion is of value. PURPOSE: Resource loss and gain cycles, as theorized in conservation of resources theory, are examined using the experience of emotional exhaustion to evaluate loss cycles and work engagement to evaluate gain cycles. Furthermore, we integrate conservation of resources theory with regulatory focus theory to examine how the ways in which individuals approach work goals serves as a facilitator to the acceleration and deceleration of both of these cycles. METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Using data from nurses working in a hospital in the Midwest United States at six time points spanning over 2 years, we demonstrate the accumulation effects of the cycles over time using latent change score modeling. RESULTS: We found that prevention focus was associated with the accelerated accumulation effects of emotional exhaustion and that promotion focus was associated with the accelerated accumulation effects of work engagement. Furthermore, prevention focus attenuated the acceleration of engagement, but promotion did not influence the acceleration of exhaustion. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that individual factors such as regulatory focus are key to helping nurses to better control their resource gain and loss cycles. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: We provide implications for nurse managers and health care administrators to help encourage promotion focus and suppress prevention focus in the workplace.

Interruptions in Remote Work: a Resource-based Model of Work and Family Stress.

We use the conservation of resources (COR) theory to propose a work-family model of stress in remote work. We propose that interruptions from family are a unique hindrance stressor, detrimental for the employee's challenge and hindrance stress responses in remote work, which, in turn, have distinct effects on resource-oriented attitudes and states of both the employee and spouse. Namely, we expect that both partners' satisfaction with the work arrangement, employee engagement, and spouse family overload will be associated with the way the employee experiences stress in remote work (stress response). We also integrate the effort-recovery model to examine whether two types of breaks taken by employees while working remotely replenish resources lost through interruptions. Using a sample of 391 couples, we find support for all hypotheses that pertain to the employee. Findings involving the spouse support the primacy of the resource loss tenet in COR theory, in that these detrimental effects are significant in crossing over to the spouse via hindrance but are not significant via challenge stress. We discuss the implications of these findings, emphasizing that interruptions are harmful for both types of stress experienced by remote employees (i.e., lower "good" and higher "bad" stress responses), and interruptions appear to have far-reaching effects on both partners. However, choosing to use breaks for both nonwork goals and self-care can buffer these otherwise detrimental effects.

Hidden costs of anticipated workload for individuals and partners: Exploring the role of daily fluctuations in workaholism.

The present study advances a within-person approach to the study of workaholism in line with whole trait theory, arguing that individuals have general workaholic tendencies as well as daily fluctuations in workaholism. We tested this model using an experience sampling study of 121 U.S. employees and their spouses who completed self-report surveys for 10 working days. Multilevel analyses supported the idea that workaholism varies at the daily level, and trait workaholism was significantly related to higher daily fluctuations in workaholism averaged across the 10 days. Consistent with whole trait theory (Fleeson, 2007), we found anticipated workload each morning positively related to daily fluctuations in workaholism. Moreover, individuals reported feeling more fatigued on days they report higher daily workaholism, and daily fluctuations in workaholism were related to stress crossover and spouse's relationship tension. Overall, results support a within-person conceptualization of workaholism, linking anticipated workload to daily fluctuations in workaholism, which in turn demonstrates negative spillover and crossover outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Technology-enacted abusive supervision and its effect on work and family.

This study examines the effects of technology-enacted abusive supervision, defined as subordinate perceptions of supervisor's use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to engage in hostile communications. This research was designed to examine if technology-enacted abusive supervision has an impact on both the work and family domains. Based on conservation of resources theory, we theorize that technology-enacted abusive supervision enhances subordinate engagement in emotional labor surface acting, which contributes to emotional exhaustion, which in turn impacts both the work and family domains. Results demonstrate significant paths in both domains. Subordinate perceptions of technology-enacted abusive supervision are positively related to the engagement in technology-enacted incivility through the serial mediation of emotional labor surface acting and emotional exhaustion. Additionally, subordinate perceptions of technology-enacted abusive supervision are positively related to family undermining at home for the subordinate through the serial mediation of emotional labor surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and stress transmission.

The cost of being ignored: Emotional exhaustion in the work and family domains.

Building on the work-home resources model and crossover theory, we investigated how workplace ostracism both spills over and crosses over to emotional exhaustion for both the ostracism target and his or her spouse. We examine whether this occurs through the linking mechanisms of personal resources, specifically the target's positive mood and psychological distress. We draw on the work-home resources model and crossover theory to explain how being ostracized at work is damaging to the target of that ostracism and has implications for the target's life outside of work as well as for his or her spouse. Using longitudinal data from 3 separate points in time with a sample of 350 matched targets and their spouses, we examined how workplace ostracism flowed through positive mood and psychological distress to impact the target's job and family emotional exhaustion. Decreases in positive mood explained why workplace ostracism affected job emotional exhaustion, whereas increased psychological distress explained its crossover effect on family emotional exhaustion. Further, a crossover effect existed on spouses' family emotional exhaustion, and was explained by the target's increased psychological distress and family undermining behavior. Implications for research and practice are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Social media addiction and social media reactions: The implications for job performance.

We investigate the intersection of social media and the workplace, focusing on job performance impacts of employees' social media addictions and social media reactions through work-family balance and burnout. The research model is grounded in conservation of resources theory, which suggests social media compulsions and emotional reactions to co-worker's social media posts will deplete employees' energetic and constructive resources, making it difficult to achieve work-family balance and increasing the likelihood of job burnout, and will ultimately degrade job performance. A sample of 326 full-time employees revealed a negative relationship between social media addiction and work-family balance and a positive relationship between social media reactions and job burnout. Balance and burnout mediated the relationship between social media and job performance such that social media addiction was negatively related to job performance through work-family balance, and social media reactions were negatively related to performance through burnout and work-family conflict.

Double crossed: The spillover and crossover effects of work demands on work outcomes through the family.

This study expands our understanding of the negative impact of work demands on work outcomes by examining this impact in light of the family domain. We explore how the family domain plays a role in this process by considering mechanisms that capture both spillover and crossover effects. We investigate the spillover of work demands (i.e., role conflict and role overload) through work-to-family conflict on work attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and affective commitment) and self-reported work behaviors (i.e., citizenship behavior and absenteeism). We also consider the double crossover of work demands through work-to-family conflict to stress transmission, and back to the incumbent's family-to-work conflict on both attitudinal and behavioral work outcomes to examine the impact of work demands. Using a time-lagged matched sample of 389 dual career couples, we found spillover effects for the work attitudes and crossover effects for the work behaviors, suggesting work demands uniquely shape outcomes depending on the path they take. We close by offering implications for research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Your job is messing with mine! The impact of mobile device use for work during family time on the spouse's work life.

The use of mobile technology for work purposes during family time has been found to affect employees' work and family lives. Using a matched sample of 344 job incumbents and their spouses, we examined the role of mobile device (MD) use for work during family time in the job incumbent-spouse relationship and how this MD use crosses over to affect the spouse's work life. Integrating the work-home resources model with family systems theory, we found that as job incumbents engage in MD use for work during family time, work-to-family conflict increases, as does the combined experience of relationship tension between job incumbents and spouses. This tension serves as a crossover mechanism, which then contributes to spouses' experience of family-to-work conflict and, subsequently, family spills over to work outcomes for the spouse in the form of reduced job satisfaction and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Do the benefits of family-to-work transitions come at too great a cost?

This research examines the impact of role boundary management on the work-family interface, as well as on organizational (job embeddedness) and family (relationship tension) outcomes. First, we integrate conservation of resources theory with crossover theory, to build a theoretical model of work-family boundary management. Second, we extend prior work by exploring positive and negative paths through which boundary management affects work and family outcomes. Third, we incorporate spouse perceptions to create a dynamic, systems-perspective explanation of the work-family interface. Using a matched sample of 639 job incumbents and their spouses, we found that family-to-work boundary transitions was related to the job incumbents' work-to-family conflict, work-to-family enrichment, and job embeddedness as well as the boundary management strain transmitted to the spouse. We also found that the boundary management strain transmitted to the spouse mediated the relationship between family-to-work boundary transitions and both work-to-family conflict and work-to-family enrichment. Finally, we found significant indirect effects between family-to-work boundary transitions and job embeddedness and relationship tension through both the boundary management strain transmitted to the spouse and the incumbent's work-family conflict, but not through work-family enrichment. Thus, family-to-work boundary transitions offer some benefits to the organization by contributing to job embeddedness, but they also come at a cost in that they are associated with work-family conflict and relationship tension. We discuss the study's implications for theory, research, and practice while suggesting new research directions.

A short and valid measure of work-family enrichment.

The stream of research concerning work-family enrichment has generated a significant body of research because it plays an important role in occupational health (Masuda, McNall, Allen, & Nicklin, 2012). work-family enrichment has been defined as "the extent to which experiences in one role improve the quality of life in the other role" (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006, p. 73). Within work-family enrichment, there are two directions: work to family and family to work. Carlson, Kacmar, Wayne, and Grzywacz (2006) developed an 18-item scale to measure this construct. Although the scale has been shown to be both reliable and valid, it also requires work-family researchers to include a proportionally large number of items to capture this construct in a study. The goal of the current study was to isolate a subset of the items in this measure that produces results similar to the full version thereby providing a more streamlined scale for researchers. Using a five-sample study that follows the scale reduction procedures offered by Stanton, Sinar, Balzer, and Smith (2002), we provide evidence that scales containing only three items for each direction of enrichment produce results equivalent to the full scale with respect to reliability and discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity. Reducing the original scale by two thirds, without losing explanatory power, allows scholars to measure enrichment in the work and family domains more efficiently, which should help minimize survey time, lower refusal rates, and generate less missing data.

Interactive effect of leaders' influence tactics and ethical leadership on work effort and helping behavior.

The purpose of this study was to explore the interactive influence of a) leaders' exemplification and supplication efforts and b) followers' perceptions of the leaders' ethicality on followers' work efforts and helping behaviors. We surveyed 58 leaders and 175 followers who worked for a governmental agency in the United States. Results indicated that the expected positive (negative) relationship between leaders' usage of exemplification and work effort was evident when ethical leadership was high (low). The expected positive relationship between leaders' engagement in supplication and helping behaviors was not present when ethical leadership was high, but the predicted negative relationship was found between supplication and helping when perceptions of leaders' ethicality were low.

Health and turnover of working mothers after childbirth via the work-family interface: an analysis across time.

This study examined organizational levers that impact work-family experiences, participant health, and subsequent turnover. Using a sample of 179 women returning to full-time work 4 months after childbirth, we examined the associations of 3 job resources (job security, skill discretion, and schedule control) with work-to-family enrichment and the associations of 2 job demands (psychological requirements and nonstandard work schedules) with work-to-family conflict. Further, we considered subsequent impact of work-to-family conflict and enrichment on women's health (physical and mental health) 8 months after women returned to work and the impact of health on voluntary turnover 12 months after women returned to work. Having a nonstandard work schedule was directly and positively related to conflict, whereas schedule control buffered the effect of psychological requirements on conflict. Skill discretion and job security, both job resources, directly and positively related to enrichment. Work-to-family conflict was negatively related to both physical and mental health, but work-to-family enrichment positively predicted only physical health. Physical health and mental health both negatively influenced turnover. We discuss implications and opportunities for future research.

The moderating effect of work-linked couple relationships and work-family integration on the spouse instrumental support-emotional exhaustion relationship.

Based on boundary theory and conservation of resources theory, we argue that employees with a spouse in the same occupation or workplace (referred to as work-linked couples) enhance the effectiveness of spousal instrumental support in reducing emotional exhaustion. In the first study of nurses (n = 103), we found that work-linked couples have more highly integrated work and family roles than participants whose spouses did not share an occupation or workplace. In a second study of working adults (n = 484), we found that work-linked couples have a stronger relationship between spouse instrumental support and the reduction of emotional exhaustion; this moderated relationship was mediated by their work-family integration. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of work and family roles, social support, and emotional exhaustion, and provide suggestions for future research.

Is work-family balance more than conflict and enrichment?

This study deepens our theoretical and practical understanding of work-family balance, defined as the 'accomplishment of role-related expectations that are negotiated and shared between an individual and his/her role-related partners in the work and family domains' (Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007: 458). We develop a new measure of work-family balance and establish discriminant validity between it, work-family conflict, and work-family enrichment. Further, we examine the relationship of work-family balance with six key work and family outcomes. Results suggest that balance explains variance beyond that explained by traditional measures of conflict and enrichment for five of six outcomes tested: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, family satisfaction, family performance, and family functioning. We conclude with a discussion of the applications of our work.

Regulatory focus as a mediator of the influence of initiating structure and servant leadership on employee behavior.

In this research, the authors test a model in which the regulatory focus of employees at work mediates the influence of leadership on employee behavior. In a nationally representative sample of 250 workers who responded over 2 time periods, prevention focus mediated the relationship of initiating structure to in-role performance and deviant behavior, whereas promotion focus mediated the relationship of servant leadership to helping and creative behavior. The results indicate that even though initiating structure and servant leadership share some variance in explaining other variables, each leadership style incrementally predicts disparate outcomes after controlling for the other style and dispositional tendencies. A new regulatory focus scale, the Work Regulatory Focus (WRF) Scale, also was developed and initially validated for this study. Implications for the results and the WRF Scale are discussed.

The work-family interface and job performance: moderating effects of conscientiousness and perceived organizational support.

Based on conservation of resources (COR) theory, the authors hypothesized that two aspects of the work-family interface--family-to-work conflict (FWC) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE)--are related to job performance. The authors also hypothesized that two variables moderate those relationships--individual differences in conscientiousness and aspects of the work environment in terms of perceived organizational support (POS). Data collected from a matched set of 136 private sector workers and their respective supervisors revealed that high FWC was more strongly related to lower job performance: (1) among high- than low-conscientiousness workers and (2) among workers reporting low rather than high levels of organizational support. However, FWE was unrelated to job performance.