We argue that other peoples' failures provide a neglected source of managerial learning that is associated with enhanced learning transfer. Due to their negative valence, stories about other peoples' ...failures as compared to stories about other peoples' successes should elicit a more pronounced motivational response, such that people elaborate the content of failure stories more actively. As a consequence, the knowledge gained from failure stories will more likely be applied on a transfer task. We expect this motivational response to failure stories and its benefits for learning to be most pronounced for people who view failures as valuable learning opportunities. We report an experimental study, in which participants were exposed to a managerial training with stories about either managerial successes or managerial failures that delivered the same learning content. Results showed that stories about managerial failures led to more elaboration and learning transfer, in particular for participants who see the learning potential of failures. We discuss how failure stories can be used to stimulate managerial learning in educational and organizational settings.
Recent studies have highlighted the relevance of sleep for procrastination at work. Procrastination at work is defined as the irrational delay of the initiation or completion of work-related ...activities. In line with recent studies, we offer a self-regulation perspective on procrastination. We argue that procrastination is an outcome of depleted self-regulatory resources and that the restoration of self-regulatory resources during high-quality sleep at night would prevent procrastination.
In an attempt to further develop this line of research, the current study aimed to achieve a broader understanding of the relevance of sleep and circadian rhythm for procrastination. Therefore, we explored the effect of sleep quality on procrastination for different chronotypes. We also considered the shift to daylight saving time as a phenomenon that aggravates circadian misalignment and thereby later chronotypes' dependence on high-quality sleep. Specifically, we hypothesized that compared to employees with an earlier chronotype (morning types), employees with a later chronotype (evening types) are more dependent on good sleep at night to prevent procrastination the next day. This effect would be especially pronounced after the shift to daylight saving time.
For this repeated-measures study, participants were 101 full-time employees. They completed a general questionnaire and day-specific questionnaires on the Monday before and the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time.
The multilevel analyses showed that employees procrastinated less on days following nights during which they slept better and that later chronotypes experienced more procrastination than earlier chronotypes. Our findings also supported the hypothesis that the relationship between sleep quality and procrastination is stronger for later chronotypes compared to earlier chronotypes on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. In other words, the lower the sleep quality of later chronotypes during the previous night, the more they procrastinated on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time.
Our findings further corroborate the existing findings on the relevance of sleep and chronotype for well-being and performance at work.
Unlimited paid time off policies are currently fashionable and widely discussed by HR professionals around the globe. While on the one hand, paid time off is considered a key benefit by employees and ...unlimited paid time off policies (UPTO) are seen as a major perk which may help in recruiting and retaining talented employees, on the other hand, early adopters reported that employees took less time off than previously, presumably leading to higher burnout rates. In this conceptual review, we discuss the theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the potential effects of UPTO on leave utilization, well-being and performance outcomes. We start out by defining UPTO and placing it in a historical and international perspective. Next, we discuss the key role of leave utilization in translating UPTO into concrete actions. The core of our article constitutes the description of the effects of UPTO and the two pathways through which these effects are assumed to unfold: autonomy need satisfaction and detrimental social processes. We moreover discuss the boundary conditions which facilitate or inhibit the successful utilization of UPTO on individual, team, and organizational level. In reviewing the literature from different fields and integrating existing theories, we arrive at a conceptual model and five propositions, which can guide future research on UPTO. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and societal implications of UPTO.
We examine the influence of chronobiological processes on creativity, specifically the influence of a person's chronotype. Chronotype refers to the setting of a person's biological clock that gives ...rise to a distinctive pattern of sleep habits and preferred diurnal activity. We propose a synchrony effect and predict that people are creative when the external clock is aligned with their internal, biological clock. According to our model, positive mood and creative self-efficacy act as affective and cognitive mechanisms of this synchrony effect. We present three studies that test our theorizing: a quasi-experimental field study with 260 employees, a day-reconstruction study with 238 employees, and a one-day experience sampling study with 319 employees. Across the studies, we find that chronotype moderates the effect of time of day on creativity. Overall, late chronotypes were more creative in the late afternoon and early chronotypes tended to be more creative in the morning. The alignment between chronotype and time of day also gave rise to positive mood and creative self-efficacy; however, the studies provide only partial support for the hypothesis that positive mood acts as a mediating mechanism. We discuss the implications of these findings against the background of an embodied cognition perspective on creativity.
Reattachment to work (i.e., rebuilding a mental connection to work) before actually starting work is important for work engagement during the day. Building on motivated action theory, this study ...examines anticipated task focus, positive affect, and job resources (job control and social support) as mediators that translate reattachment in the morning into work engagement during the day. We collected daily-survey data from 151 employees (total of 620 days) and analyzed these data with a multilevel path model. We found that day-level reattachment to work in the morning predicted anticipated task focus, positive affect, social support, and job control through goal activation and that anticipated task focus, positive affect, social support, and job control predicted work engagement during the day. This study points to the important role of reattachment to work in employee experiences and behaviors throughout the workday and specifically highlights the benefits of such initial mental boundary crossing between life domains for employee engagement at work.
Research on the link between affect and creativity rests on the assumption that creativity unfolds as a stimulus-driven response to affective states. We challenge this assumption and examine whether ...personality dynamics moderate the relationships between positive and negative mood with creativity.
According to our model, personality dynamics that generate and maintain positive affect and downregulate negative affect energize creativity. Based on this model, we expect high creativity in response to negative mood if people engage in self-motivation and achieve a reduction in negative mood. We further derive that individual differences in action versus state orientation moderate the within-person relationship between mood and creativity.
We conducted an experience-sampling study and examined the relationship between mood and creativity in everyday work-life. Two hundred and ten participants indicated their action-state orientation and reported their mood three times a day over five consecutive workdays. At noon of each day, we assessed self-motivation and in the evening the extent to which participants had generated novel and useful ideas during the day.
We observed high creativity when negative mood declined and self-motivation was high. Action-state orientation moderated the within-person relationships of positive and negative mood with creativity.
Personality dynamics determine whether positive and negative mood result in creativity.
The positive impact of coworker social support on employee behaviour and well-being is well-described in the job demands-resources model. However, the specific mechanisms through which it operates ...have received scarce research attention. The current study investigated the distinct roles of relatedness need satisfaction (i.e. connectedness) and need frustration (i.e. isolation) to explain how available coworker social support relates to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and depersonalisation. We used a three-wave panel design (N = 1259/704/405 at Time 1/2/3) to test the indirect effects of social support on OCB via connectedness and on depersonalisation via isolation. Coworker social support at Time 1 predicted increases in connectedness and decreases in isolation from Time 1 to Time 2. Contrary to expectations, increases in connectedness predicted decreases in OCB, and decreases in isolation did not predict decreases in depersonalisation, from Time 2 to Time 3. Overall, our results highlight the importance of coworker social support to increase connectedness and decrease feelings of isolation in the workplace, which can ultimately affect interpersonal work outcomes.
In March 2020, the world was hit by the coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic which led to all‐embracing measures to contain its spread. Most employees were forced to work from home and take care ...of their children because schools and daycares were closed. We present data from a research project in a large multinational organisation in the Netherlands with monthly quantitative measurements from January to May 2020 (N = 253–516), enriched with qualitative data from participants' comments before and after telework had started. Growth curve modelling showed major changes in employees' work‐related well‐being reflected in decreasing work engagement and increasing job satisfaction. For work‐non‐work balance, workload and autonomy, cubic trends over time were found, reflecting initial declines during crisis onset (March/April) and recovery in May. Participants' additional remarks exemplify that employees struggled with fulfilling different roles simultaneously, developing new routines and managing boundaries between life domains. Moderation analyses demonstrated that demographic variables shaped time trends. The diverging trends in well‐being indicators raise intriguing questions and show that close monitoring and fine‐grained analyses are needed to arrive at a better understanding of the impact of the crisis across time and among different groups of employees.
Non-work social media use at work has seen a dramatic increase in the last decade and is commonly deemed counterproductive work behaviour. However, we examined whether it may also serve as a ...micro-break and improve work engagement. We used ecological momentary assessment across 1 working day with up to 10 hourly measurements in 334 white-collar workers to measure non-work social media use and work engagement, resulting in 2235 hourly measurements. Multilevel modelling demonstrated that non-work social media use was associated with lower levels of work engagement between persons. Within persons, non-work social media use was also associated with lower concurrent work engagement. However, non-work social media use was related to higher levels of work engagement 1 hour later. While more extensive non-work social media use at work was generally associated with lower work engagement, our advanced study design revealed that the longer employees used social media for non-work purposes during 1 working hour, the more work engaged they were in the subsequent working hour, suggesting that employees turn to social media when energy levels are low and/or when they (temporarily) lose interest in their work. This behaviour may serve as a break, which in turn increases work engagement later during the day.
Personal social media use at work is usually deemed counterproductive work behaviour reducing employee productivity. However, we hypothesized that it may actually help employees to coordinate work ...and nonwork demands, which should in turn increase work-related creativity. We used ecological momentary assessment across one working day with up to ten hourly measurements on 337 white-collar workers to measure personal social media use, work-nonwork balance and creativity, resulting in a total of 2244 hourly measurements. Multilevel modelling revealed that personal social media use was associated with better work-nonwork balance, but with lower levels of creativity between- and within-persons. Work-nonwork balance did not mediate the relationship between personal social media use and creativity. More research is needed to understand why employees use social media at work for personal purposes and how this affects their well-being and job performance.
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