Helen Pluut

Intraindividual models of employee well-being: What have we learned and where do we go from here?

As societal concern shifts from financial survival towards quality of life issues, both in and outside of the workplace, scholarly interest in employee well-being too has risen greatly in recent years. This greater attention to the antecedents and outcomes of employee well-being, such as job satisfaction, work engagement, and job burnout amongst others, is reflected in the proliferation of theories, constructs, and studies seeking to describe and explain why employees flourish or become exhausted at work, and the effect of employee well-being on individual behaviours and the organization at large. In this article, we provide a selective review of the current state of research in employee well-being, as well as key theories that have been employed in its study, with the aim of providing a critical assessment of the current state of employee well-being research as well as suggest future directions for the field. In particular, we discuss how research adopting intraindividual perspectives in the study of employee well-being can not only add value to our understanding of well-being but also complement the findings from between-individual studies, and offer suggestions for the development of a comprehensive theoretical model that integrates the two perspectives.

The magic of collective emotional intelligence in learning groups: No guys needed for the spell!

Using a cross-lagged design, the present study tests an integrative model of emergent collective emotions in learning groups. Our results indicate that the percentage of women in the group fosters the emergence of collective emotional intelligence, which in turn stimulates social integration within groups (increases group cohesion and reduces relationship conflict) and the associated affective similarity, with beneficial effects for group effectiveness.

Perceptions of intragroup conflict: The effect of coping strategies on conflict transformation and escalation

In this longitudinal study, we contribute to the contingency models of intragroup conflict by examining the moderating role of coping strategies in the evolution of conflict over time. We conceptualize coping strategy as a configural group property and focus on whether task conflict evolves into relationship conflict (conflict transformation) and on whether relationship conflict perpetuates over time (conflict escalation). We use a multilevel model to test the way in which individual conflict perceptions interact with other members’ coping strategies to influence the level of intragroup conflict at later stages. The results indicate that (a) the interaction between task conflict and problem-focused coping decreases the chances that task conflict transforms into relationships conflict and (b) the interaction between relationship conflict and emotion-focused coping decreases and the interaction between relationship conflict and problem-focused coping increases the chances that relationship conflict escalates over time.

Studying employee well-being: moving forward

In this article, we attempt to integrate the commentaries to our position paper on intra-individual models of employee well-being (EWB; Ilies, R., Aw, S. S. Y., & Pluut, H. (2015). Intraindividual models of employee well-being: What have we learned and where do we go from here? European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Advance online publication) of Bakker (2015. Towards a multilevel approach of employee well-being. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Advance online publication) and Cropanzano and Dasborough (2015. Dynamic models of well-being: Implications of affective events theory for expanding current views on personality and climate. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Advance online publication) with our original suggestions into a discussion and a set of recommendations aimed at moving theory and research on EWB forward. We hope that this effort, along with our position paper and the two commentaries, will lead to the development of a more comprehensive model of EWB and will stimulate new and interesting research on the topic.

Cognitive synergy in groups and group-to-individual transfer of decision-making competencies.

In a field study (148 participants organized in 38 groups) we tested the effect of group synergy and ones position in relation to the collaborative zone of proximal development (CZPD) on the change of individual decision-making competencies. We used two parallel sets of decision tasks reported in previous research to test rationality and we evaluated individual decision-making competencies in the pre-group and post-group conditions as well as group rationality (as an emergent group level phenomenon). We used multilevel modeling to analyze the data and the results showed that members of synergetic groups had a higher cognitive gain as compared to members of non-synergetic groups, while highly rational members (members above the CZPD) had lower cognitive gains compared to less rational group members (members situated below the CZPD). These insights extend the literature on group-to-individual transfer of learning and have important practical implications as they show that group dynamics influence the development of individual decision-making competencies.

A systematic investigation of absorptive capacity and external information search in groups: Implications for group cognition

Purpose This paper aims to test the influence of external information search (EIS) on knowledge elaboration and group cognitive complexity (GCC) under the moderating effect of absorptive capacity (AC is indicated by prior knowledge base and gender diversity). Design/methodology/approach The results of three studies (one field study and two experimental studies) are reported. The first study tests the interaction between EIS and the two dimensions of AC on group knowledge elaboration in a sample of 65 organizational groups. In the second study, EIS was directly manipulated and the interaction with AC in a sample of 65 groups was tested. In the last experimental study, the AC of the boundary spanner (highest level of expertise versus lowest level of expertise) was manipulated and the effects of EIS in a sample of 37 groups were tested. Findings The first study reveals a significant interaction between EIS and prior knowledge base on knowledge elaboration and points toward a compensatory interplay of EIS and AC on GCC. The results of the second study indicate that EIS increases the time spent on task, as well as the efficiency of knowledge integration (GCC per unit of time). Furthermore, EIS has the strongest positive effect on GCC in groups in which at least one of the AC dimensions is average or high. The results of the last study show that the AC of the boundary spanner compensates for the lack of absorptive capacity of the group and also show that the cognitive distance between the boundary spanner and the rest of the group has a negative influence on the efficiency of knowledge integration in groups. Research limitations/implications The limitations of Study 1, common to non-experimental research (related to causality), are dealt with in the second and third studies that establish causality between EIS and GCC. Practical implications The paper has important implications for the management of information search effort in organizational groups, in particular the groups are advised to: engage in EIS to increase their cognitive repertoire and cognitive complexity, delegate, when possible, their most competent members to engage in boundary spanning activities as they will maximize the cognitive benefits of EIS and finally minimize the cognitive dissimilarity between the boundary spanner and the rest of the group to facilitate the effective integration of novel insights into the group cognition. Originality/value This study is among the first empirical attempts to uncover the causal effect of EIS on knowledge elaboration and GCC in groups and to uncover the role of the boundary spanner in the EIS efforts.

Spousal influence on employees’ career paths in dual ladder systems: a dyadic model

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional field study examines the influence of employee and spousal characteristics on employees’ career-related motivations in dual ladder systems. We go beyond “constraints-based” explanations of spousal influence and focus on the degree to which the spouse has aspirations for the focal employee’s career – referred to as spousal career aspirations. Using a dyadic study design, we tested a model that specifies the influence of both partners’ career salience and materialism on an employee’s motivation for a particular career path: as manager or technical specialist. According to survey responses from a matched sample of 207 employees and their spouses, the spouse’s career salience and materialism (the latter only for women) were associated with higher levels of spousal career aspirations. In turn, those employees whose spouses aspired for them to have a career were less motivated to obtain a specialist position. Employees’ own career salience was positively associated with their motivation for a managerial position and, in combination with high levels of spousal career aspirations, pulled employees away from a career on the technical ladder. Our results shed light on the family-relatedness of career decisions and have notable implications for dual ladder organizations.

A resource-based work-family model of helping and support provision

This study examines how daily helping behaviors at work influence employees’ interactions with their spouses using an experience-sampling design. Drawing from the literature on behavioral spillover...