You’ve coughed continuously for the third night in a row, everything hurts and your sinuses are having a snot fest. What you need is to be tucked up in bed, but either you can’t stop thinking about ...the those you are letting down, or you feel guilt-tripped by management, so you turn up to that 12-hour shift anyway.
The use of control variables plays a central role in organizational research due to practical difficulties associated with the implementation of experimental and quasi‐experimental designs. As such, ...we conducted an in‐depth review and content analysis of what variables, and why such variables are controlled for, in 10 of the most popular research domains (task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, turnover, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, employee burnout, personality, leader‒member exchange, organizational justice, and affect) in organizational behavior/human resource management (OB/HRM) and applied psychology. Specifically, we examined 580 articles published from 2003 to 2012 in AMJ, ASQ, JAP, JOM, and PPsych. Results indicate that, across research domains with clearly distinct theoretical bases, the overwhelming majority of the more than 3,500 controls identified in our review converge around the same simple demographic factors (i.e., gender, age, tenure), very little effort is made to explain why and how controls relate to focal variables of interest, and control variable practices have not changed much over the past decade. To address these results, we offer best‐practice recommendations in the form of a sequence of questions and subsequent steps that can be followed to make decisions on the appropriateness of including a specific control variable within a particular theoretical framework, research domain, and empirical study. Our recommendations can be used by authors as well as journal editors and reviewers to improve the transparency and appropriateness of practices regarding control variable usage.
The search strategy used in systematic reviews is an important consideration, as the comprehensiveness and representativeness of studies identified influences the quality of conclusions derived from ...the review. Despite the importance of this step, little in the way of best practice recommendations exist. In an effort to inform future reviews, we report the results of two studies. In Study 1, we outline a series of recommendations for designing comprehensive systematic literature searches. We review the search strategies used in 152 recent systematic reviews published in top applied psychology (including organizational psychology, counseling psychology, and management) journals and evaluate them against these criteria. In Study 2, we build on the findings of our review, carrying out an original meta-analysis, which we use as an opportunity to empirically demonstrate effects of database selection and inclusion of a complementary search protocol on search outcomes. Our results suggest that database selection could have a large effect on conclusions from reviews. Implications and recommendations for carrying out comprehensive literature reviews are described.
•We review criteria for designing and implementing systematic reviews.•We evaluate existing literature searches against these recommendations.•Areas for improvement are identified.•We simulate the effect of database selection on findings from a meta-analysis.•Database selection had a large effect on conclusions from the meta-analysis.
This paper reports a meta‐analysis that examines the relationship between leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship quality and a multidimensional model of work performance (task, citizenship, and ...counterproductive performance). The results show a positive relationship between LMX and task performance (146 samples, ρ = .30) as well as citizenship performance (97 samples, ρ = .34), and negatively with counterproductive performance (19 samples, ρ = ‒.24). Of note, there was a positive relationship between LMX and objective task performance (20 samples, ρ = .24). Trust, motivation, empowerment, and job satisfaction mediated the relationship between LMX and task and citizenship performance with trust in the leader having the largest effect. There was no difference due to LMX measurement instrument (e.g., LMX7, LMX‐MDM). Overall, the relationship between LMX and performance was weaker when (a) measures were obtained from a different source or method and (b) LMX was measured by the follower than the leader (with common source‐ and method‐biased effects stronger for leader‐rated LMX quality). Finally, there was evidence for LMX leading to task performance but not for reverse or reciprocal directions of effects.
Scholars have paid an increasing amount of attention to organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), with a particular emphasis on helping others at work. In addition, recent empirical work has ...focused on how OCB is an intraindividual phenomenon, such that employees vary daily in the extent to which they help others. However, one limitation of this research has been an overemphasis on well‐being consequences associated with daily helping (e.g., changes in affect and mental depletion) and far less attention on behavioral outcomes. In this study, we develop a self‐regulatory framework that articulates how helping others at work is a depleting experience that can lead to a reduction in subsequent acts of helping others, and an increase in behaviors aimed at helping oneself (i.e., engaging in political acts). We further theorize how two individual differences—prevention focus and political skill—serve as cross‐level moderators of these relations. In an experience sampling study of 91 full‐time employees across 10 consecutive workdays, our results illustrate that helping is a depleting act that makes individuals more likely to engage in self‐serving acts and less likely to help others. Moreover, the relation of helping acts with depletion is strengthened for employees who have higher levels of prevention focus.
Although scholars imply that job crafting contributes to person–job fit and meaningful work, to date, no study examined the relationships between these variables. The present three-wave weekbook ...study was designed to gain more knowledge about the influence of job crafting on person–job fit and meaningfulness. We collected data among a heterogeneous group of employees (N=114) during three consecutive weeks (N=430 occasions). At the end of their working week, employees reported their job crafting behaviors, their person–job fit (demands–abilities fit and needs–supplies fit), and the meaningfulness of their work that week. Results indicated that individuals who crafted their job by increasing their job resources (e.g., support, autonomy) and challenging job demands (e.g., participate in new projects), and by decreasing their hindering job demands (e.g., less emotional job demands) reported higher levels of person–job fit the next week. In turn, demands–abilities fit related to more meaningfulness in the final week. No support was found for alternative causal models. These findings suggest that by crafting their job demands and job resources, individuals can proactively optimize their person–job fit and as a consequence experience their work as meaningful.
•Longitudinal study testing relationships among job crafting, fit and meaningful work•Results show that job crafting predicts person–job fit in the next week.•Moreover, person–job fit in turn predicts meaningful work the following week.•Person–job fit is assessed with demands–abilities fit and needs–supplies fit.•Job crafting indirectly relates to meaningful work via demands–abilities fit only.
In this article, we develop and meta-analytically test the relationship between job demands and resources and burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes in the workplace. In a meta-analysis of 203 ...independent samples (N = 186,440), we found support for a health impairment process and for a motivational process as mechanisms through which job demands and resources relate to safety outcomes. In particular, we found that job demands such as risks and hazards and complexity impair employees' health and positively relate to burnout. Likewise, we found support for job resources such as knowledge, autonomy, and a supportive environment motivating employees and positively relating to engagement. Job demands were found to hinder an employee with a negative relationship to engagement, whereas job resources were found to negatively relate to burnout. Finally, we found that burnout was negatively related to working safely but that engagement motivated employees and was positively related to working safely. Across industries, risks and hazards was the most consistent job demand and a supportive environment was the most consistent job resource in terms of explaining variance in burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes. The type of job demand that explained the most variance differed by industry, whereas a supportive environment remained consistent in explaining the most variance in all industries.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major global health crisis that continues to threaten public health and safety. Although the pandemic is still unfolding, measures to reduce the spread of the virus ...have spawned significant challenges to people's current work as well as their careers more generally. In this commentary, we discuss the implications of COVID-19 for maintaining one's psychological well-being and employment security, and also managing family and work responsibilities. We also bring forth evidence from the emotion regulation literature to help mitigate the downstream negative consequences of COVID-19 on people's work lives. Finally, we offer several suggestions for future scholarly investigation into how this pandemic impacts vocational behavior.
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