Andrea Ceschi

Grit or Honesty-Humility? New Insights into the Moderating Role of Personality between the Health Impairment Process and Counterproductive Work Behavior

It is acknowledged that chronic job demands may be depleting workers’ stamina resulting in burnout conditions and ultimately causing further health problems. This relation, known as health impairment process, has recently been considered as a possible explanation for the emergence of counterproductive work behavior (CWB). The present work aims to examine the role of two personality traits (i.e., Grit and Honesty-Humility) in this process. The results, based on a sample of 208 private service sector employees, confirm the presence of a fully mediated process and show how Honesty-Humility positively moderates the relationship between job demands and exhaustion, whereas Grit has a negative effect on the relation between exhaustion and CWB. Implications for assessment procedure and hiring decisions are discussed.

Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation: How communication and innovation can improve group learning and decision-making performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how dimensions related to teamwork and team climate can influence decision making and learning of teams (performance). In order to understand which factors are more effective, several relevant group and team characteristics drawn from classical literature on groups and more recent empirical team simulation research have been considered. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the results of a longitudinal study carried out during four months. A total of 183 Italian participants, divided into 50 teams of three (n=24), four (n=19) and five (n=7) members, have been involved in a business game developed by several European savings banks and simulating a real stock market environment. The aim of each team is not only to earn virtual money, but also learning long-term strategies to develop profitable investments without losing sight of economic factors. Findings – Based on literature review, the authors tested three group levels (intragroup relations level, self-member level and group-design level) by making three hypotheses concerning the teams involved in the simulation and investigated the communication and innovation (CI) dimension from the Italian version of the team climate inventory (TCI) by Ragazzoni et al. A correlation between team performance and CI was found (r=0.301 p=0.048), which is in line with the hypothesis that such factors as communication and support for innovation can affect the decision-making performance. Originality/value – The results presented in the paper let practitioners understand which dynamics characterize teamwork activities and how such aspects as communication and support for innovation can lead to group learning and decision-making performance. The simulation used in this research is an empirical way to study team performance and group learning without other noise variables.

Decision-making competence predicts domain-specific risk attitudes

Decision-making competence (DMC) reflects individual differences in rational responding across several classic behavioral decision-making tasks. Although it has been associated with real-world risk behavior, less is known about the degree to which DMC contributes to specific components of risk attitudes. Utilizing a psychological risk-return framework, we examined the associations between risk attitudes and DMC. Italian community residents (n = 804) completed an online DMC measure, using a subset of the original Adult-DMC battery. Participants also completed a self-reported risk attitude measure for three components of risk attitudes (risk-taking, risk perceptions, and expected benefits) across six risk domains. Overall, greater performance on the DMC component scales were inversely, albeit modestly, associated with risk-taking tendencies. Structural equation modeling results revealed that DMC was associated with lower perceived expected benefits for all domains. In contrast, its association with perceived risks was more domain-specific. These analyses also revealed stronger indirect effects for the DMC → expected benefits → risk-taking path than the DMC → perceived risk → risk-taking path, especially for behaviors that may be considered more maladaptive in nature. These results suggest that DMC performance differentially impacts specific components of risk attitudes, and may be more strongly related to the evaluation of expected value of a specific behavior.

The career decision-making competence: a new construct for the career realm

Purpose This paper aims to link findings from laboratory-based decision-making research and decision-making competence (DMC) aspects that may be central for career-related decision-making processes. Past research has identified individual differences in rational responses in decision situations, which the authors refer to as DMC. Although there is a robust literature on departures from rational responses focused on heuristics and biases (H&B) in decision-making, such evidence is largely confined to group-level differences observed in psychology laboratories and has not been extended to the realm of career development and workforce behavior. Design/methodology/approach By first introducing the concept of DMC and contextualizing it within organizations and the work environment, the paper outlines a review on recent development concerning debiasing interventions in organizations and provides insights on how these may be effective with regard to organizational performance and individual career development. Findings The contribution presents a perspective to improve knowledge about career decision-making competence (C-DMC) by presenting an approach linking decision-making research to interventions aiming at managing H&B and systematic misperceptions in career processes. Originality/value This contribution is one of the few linking decision-making research to the applied context of organizations and of career competences. Moreover, while some research has treated decision-making skills as traits, this contribution provides support to consider them developable as competencies.

The impact of occupational rewards on risk taking among managers

Managers often have to deal with the financial and ethical risks that companies face. Evidence from risk management research suggests a negative relationship between people’s age and risk taking tendencies. Within such a framework, the present contribution examines how different perceived occupational rewards may mediate or interact with the relationship between age and risk taking of managers at the company level. Our results show that perceived rewards in terms of job security partially mediate the relationship between age and ethical risk taking, while perceived rewards related to job promotion moderate the effect of age on financial risk taking. We further discuss the role of different organizational strategies to preserve an organization’s health.

Designing a Homo Psychologicus More Psychologicus: Empirical Results on Value Perception in Support to a New Theoretical Organizational-Economic Agent Based Model

The study presents a new approach of modelling human behavior based on empirical evidence on individual differences in cognitive science and behavioral economics fields. Compared to classical studies of economics, empirical research makes use of the descriptive approach to analyze human behavior and to create models able to explain the behavior of investors and organizational traders in a more realistic way. Consistently, an economic assumption that has been strongly disputed by scientists is the concept of Homo Economicus, which is currently considered unable to capture all the details and variability that characterize human behavior (which we define, in opposition to the economic label, Homo Psychologicus). Thanks to recent empirical studies and the development of such advanced techniques as agent based models, new simulation studies are now capable of investigating a higher number of psychological variables. However, models which implement heuristics or fallacies often distribute these characteristics among all agents without distinction. The present study shows how it is possible to design multiple agents considering individual differences, which can have a different impact on organizational and economic behavior. Starting from several empirical studies, which show a negative relation between optimism and loss aversion, coefficients of the Value function of the Prospect theory have been reviewed to create agents characterized by different psychological strategies used to manage costs and risks.

Who is a Distracted Driver? Associations between Mobile Phone Use while Driving, Domain-Specific Risk Taking, and Personality.

Mobile phone use while driving (MPUWD) is an increasingly common form of distracted driving. Given its widespread prevalence, it is important for researchers to identify factors that may predict who is more likely to engage in this risky behavior. The current study investigates associations between MPUWD risk behaviors, domain-specific risk perceptions, and broad personality dimensions. An Italian community sample (n = 804) completed a survey regarding MPUWD risk perceptions and engagement in MPUWD, in addition to the HEXACO-PI-R, a broad six-factor personality inventory (honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience), and the DOSPERT, a six-factor domain-specific self-report risk-taking measure (health/safety, recreational, social, ethical, gambling, and investment). With respect to domain-specific risk taking, greater frequency of SMS use while driving most strongly was associated with greater risk taking for the health/safety, gambling, and ethical risk domains. Further, greater honesty-humility and conscientiousness, two traits related to cognitive control and risk behaviors, and to a lesser extent openness to experience, were associated with less frequent MPUWD, and positively associated with MPUWD risk perceptions. With growing public safety concern surrounding MPUWD, understanding associated personality factors is not only important for identifying psychological mechanisms underlying risk behavior, but also for more effective prevention and intervention programs.

Decision-making processes in the workplace:how exhaustion, lack of resources and job demands impair them and affect performance

The present study aims to connect more the I/O and the decision-making psychological domains, by showing how some common components across jobs interfere with decision-making and affecting performance. Two distinct constructs that can contribute to positive workplace performance have been considered: decision-making competency (DMCy) and decision environment management (DEM). Both factors are presumed to involve self-regulatory mechanisms connected to decision processes by influencing performance in relation to work environment conditions. In the framework of the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, the present study tested how such components as job demands, job resources and exhaustion can moderate decision-making processes and performance, where high resources are advantageous for decision-making processes and performance at work, while the same effect happens with low job demands and/or low exhaustion. In line with the formulated hypotheses, results confirm the relations between both the decision-making competences, performance (i.e., in-role and extra-role) and moderators considered. In particular, employees with low levels of DMCy show to be more sensitive to job demands toward in-role performance, whereas high DEM levels increase the sensitivity of employees toward job resources and exhaustion in relation to extra-role performance. These findings indicate that decision-making processes, as well as work environment conditions, are jointly related to employee functioning.

Cooperate or Defect? How an Agent Based Model Simulation on Helping Behavior Can Be an Educational Tool

Over the last years, Agent Based Models (ABMs) have become an important instrument to simulate social complex phenomena. At the same time, they have shown interesting implications for learning activities. To this purpose, we report a simulation on helping behavior carried out by means of an Agent Based Model (ABM) based on four types of different virtual agents: Warm-Glow Cooperators (WG), who give help because it makes them feel better; Gratitude Cooperators (GC), who give help because they previously received help; Cooperators (C), who give help because of both the reasons mentioned above; Defectors (D) who do not give help at all. We explore the pro-social behavior of each type of agents and the system where they live for a certain amount of time in different situations. This specific ABM shows, in the most effective way, why we should increase the level of helping behavior in the population. Furthermore, assuming that giving and receiving help can be both considered positive activities, WG and GC agent strategies should be those who allow to derive the greatest benefit overall. Taking also in account the pedagogical implications of ABMs, the present simulation can be considered as a good instrument to explain dynamics of helping behavior in a virtual society.

The Pursuit of Happiness: A Model of Group Formation

We developed an agent-based model with the aim of investigating the effect of the interaction among several virtual actors characterized by (1) a certain level of emotional intelligence and (2) an individual behavioral proneness to act positively or negatively within social interactions. The goal of each agent is to achieve a satisfactory internal state, which is consequential to the positive/negative effects derived by the incurred social interactions. As a result, when the simulation run, we observe the spontaneous emergence of groups. Moreover, it could be easily noted that the large majority of the defectors are incapable to join to any group, and the few groups that accept defectors are not able to maintain more than one of this kind of actors. Finally, we studied the ratios between virtual actors when stable configurations are reached.