The impacts of COVID-19 on workers and workplaces across the globe have been dramatic. This broad review of prior research rooted in work and organizational psychology, and related fields, is ...intended to make sense of the implications for employees, teams, and work organizations. This review and preview of relevant literatures focuses on (a) emergent changes in work practices (e.g., working from home, virtual teamwork) and (b) emergent changes for workers (e.g., social distancing, stress, and unemployment). In addition, potential moderating factors (demographic characteristics, individual differences, and organizational norms) are examined given the likelihood that COVID-19 will generate disparate effects. This broad-scope overview provides an integrative approach for considering the implications of COVID-19 for work, workers, and organizations while also identifying issues for future research and insights to inform solutions.
Public Significance Statement
COVID-19 has disrupted work and organizations across the globe. This overview integrates and applies prior research in work and organizational psychology as well as related fields in its examination of emergent changes for work practices as well as workers. This article also acknowledges and considers the disproportionate impacts that COVID-19 may have on workers depending on demographic characteristics, individual differences, and relevant organizational norms. In addition to helping make sense of the implications of COVID-19 for employees, teams, and work organizations, this review features roadmaps for future research and action.
Positive manager-subordinate relationships are invaluable to organizations because they enable positive employee attitudes, citizenship behaviors, task performance, and more effective organizations. ...Yet extant theory provides a limited perspective on the factors that create these types of relationships. We highlight the important role subordinates also play in affecting the resource pool and propose that a subordinate's multiple identities can provide him or her with access to knowledge and social capital resources that can be utilized for work-based tasks and activities. A manager and a subordinate may prefer similar or different strategies for managing the subordinate's multiple identities, however, which can affect resource utilization and the quality of the manager-subordinate relationship. Our variance model summarizes our predictions about the effect of managers' and subordinates' strategy choices on the quality of manager-subordinate relationships. In doing so we integrate three divergent relational theories (leader-member exchange theory, relational-cultural theory, and a positive organizational scholarship perspective on positive relationships at work) and offer new insights on the quality of manager-subordinate relationships.
PurposeBlack people, as members of a historically underrepresented and marginalized racial identity group in the workplace, are often confronted with identity references – face-to-face encounters in ...which their race is referenced by a White colleague in a comment, question or joke. Identity references can be interpreted by a Black colleague in a variety of ways (e.g. as hostile and insulting or well-intentioned, even flattering). Identity references can derail the building of relationships across difference, but under certain conditions may open the door for deeper understanding and connection. The conceptual framework in this article delineates conditions under which an identity reference may elicit an initial negative reaction, yet, when engaged directly, may lead to generative experiences and promote higher connection and learning in relationships across difference.Design/methodology/approachThis article builds theory on identity references by incorporating relevant research on race, identity, diversity, attribution and interpersonal relationships at work.FindingsThe framework identifies a common precursor to identity references and three factors that are likely to influence the attribution a Black person makes for a White colleague's identity reference. It then describes how, based on that attribution, a Black person is likely to respond to the White referencer, and how that response is likely to affect their interpersonal relationship over time.Originality/valueBy explicating how a single identity reference can have significant implications for relationships across difference, the framework deepens understanding of how race affects the development of interpersonal relationships between Black and White colleagues at work. In doing so, this article advances research on race, diversity, workplace relationships and positive organizational scholarship.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to build insight into how the local community impacts an organization’s ability to develop an inclusive culture. The paper introduces the concept of inclusion ...disconnects as incongruent experiences of inclusion between an organization and its community. Then, using the case of teaching hospitals, the paper empirically demonstrates how individuals and organizations experience and deal with inclusion disconnects across the boundaries of organization and community.
Design/methodology/approach
– A multi-method qualitative study was conducted in hospitals located in the same city. Focus groups were conducted with 11 medical trainees from underrepresented backgrounds and semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten leaders involved with diversity efforts at two hospitals. Data analysis followed an iterative approach built from Miles and Huberman (1994).
Findings
– The findings demonstrate how boundary conflicts arise from disconnected experiences of organizational and community inclusiveness. Such disconnects create challenges for leaders in retaining and supporting minority individuals, and for trainees in feeling like they could build a life within, and outside of, their organizations. Based on findings from the data, the paper offers insights into how organizations can build their capacity to address these challenges by engaging in boundary work across organizational and community domains.
Research limitations/implications
– Future research should build upon this work by further examining how inclusion disconnects between communities and organizations impact individuals and organizations.
Practical implications
– The paper includes in-depth insight into how organizations can build their capacity to address such a deep-rooted challenge that comes from a less inclusive community.
Originality/value
– This paper contributes to an understanding of how forces from the community outside an organization can shape internal efforts toward fostering inclusion and individuals’ experiences of inclusion.
Role conflict exists when two or more social roles overlap and are incompatible. Conflict occurs because the performance of one role interferes with the performance of another. Role conflict can be ...time‐based, strain‐based, or behavior‐based. Antecedents of work–family conflict can be within the same work or family domain or across domains. Role overload exists when an individual fulfills multiple roles simultaneously and lacks the resources to perform them. It can evolve from both excessive time demands and excessive psychological demands. Role strain is an outcome of role conflict and overload. Solutions to reducing the effects of role conflict, overload, and strain include reducing demands, increasing resources, or both. More specifically, role‐sequencing, role‐prioritizing, and role change, as well as increasing social resources and managing boundaries between work and family responsibilities, are options for reducing role conflict, overload, and strain.
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