J. Craig Wallace

Workplace safety: a meta-analysis of the roles of person and situation factors.

Recent conceptual and methodological advances in behavioral safety research afford an opportunity to integrate past and recent research findings. Building on theoretical models of worker performance and work climate, this study quantitatively integrates the safety literature by meta-analytically examining person- and situation-based antecedents of safety performance behaviors and safety outcomes (i.e., accidents and injuries). As anticipated, safety knowledge and safety motivation were most strongly related to safety performance behaviors, closely followed by psychological safety climate and group safety climate. With regard to accidents and injuries, however, group safety climate had the strongest association. In addition, tests of a meta-analytic path model provided support for the theoretical model that guided this overall investigation. The implications of these findings for advancing the study and management of workplace safety are discussed.

Safety climate as a mediator between foundation climates and occupational accidents: a group-level investigation.

Building on recent work in occupational safety and climate, the authors examined 2 organizational foundation climates thought to be antecedents of specific safety climate and the relationships among these climates and occupational accidents. It is believed that both foundation climates (i.e., management-employee relations and organizational support) will predict safety climate, which will in turn mediate the relationship between occupational accidents and these 2 distal foundation climates. Using a sample of 9,429 transportation workers in 253 work groups, the authors tested the proposed relationships at the group level. Results supported all hypotheses. Overall it appears that different climates have direct and indirect effects on occupational accidents.

Work stressors, role-based performance, and the moderating influence of organizational support.

As a test of the 2-dimensional model of work stressors, the present study proposed differential relationships between challenge stressors and hindrance stressors and role-based performance, which were expected to be moderated by organizational support. In a sample of 215 employees across 61 offices of a state agency, the authors obtained a positive relationship between challenge stressors and role-based performance and a negative relationship between hindrance stressors and role-based performance. In addition, organizational support moderated the relationship between challenge stressors and role-based performance but did not moderate the relationship between hindrance stressors and role-based performance. This suggests that organizations would benefit from increasing challenges in the workplace as long as they are supportive of employees and removing hindrances. Further implications for organizational theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Structural and psychological empowerment climates, performance, and the moderating role of shared felt accountability: a managerial perspective.

The authors proposed and tested a model in which data were collected from managers (n = 539) at 116 corporate-owned quick service restaurants to assess the structural and psychological empowerment process as moderated by shared-felt accountability on indices of performance from a managerial perspective. The authors found that empowering leadership climate positively relates to psychological empowerment climate. In turn, psychological empowerment climate relates to performance only under conditions of high-felt accountability; it does not relate to performance under conditions of low-felt accountability. Overall, the present results indicate that the quick-service restaurant managers, who feel more empowered, operate restaurants that perform better than managers who feel less empowered, but only when those empowered managers also feel a high sense of accountability.

A Multilevel Model of Employee Innovation Understanding the Effects of Regulatory Focus, Thriving, and Employee Involvement Climate

Drawing from tenets of self-determination theory, we propose and test a multilevel model that examines the effects of employee involvement climate on the individual-level process linking employee regulatory focus (promotion and prevention) to innovation via thriving. Using data collected at three points in time from 346 participants in 75 groups, multilevel path analytic results demonstrated support for a positive indirect effect from promotion focus to innovation via thriving and a negative indirect effect from prevention focus to innovation via thriving. In addition, results showed a positive indirect effect from employee involvement climate to innovation via thriving. Perhaps most important, cross-level moderated mediation results demonstrated that employee involvement climate strengthens the relationship between promotion focus and thriving, which, in turn, positively relates to innovation. The theoretical and practical implications of these multilevel effects on innovation are discussed.

CEO Regulatory Foci, Environmental Dynamism, and Small Firm Performance

This research proposes and tests that regulatory foci of small business chief executive officers (promotion focus and prevention focus) relate to firm performance differentially when levels of environmental uncertainty vary. Results suggest that a promotion focus is positively related to firm performance, whereas a prevention focus is negatively related to firm performance. Further, these relationships are moderated by the degree of environmental dynamism such that in more dynamic environments, the relationship between promotion focus and firm performance is strengthened, whereas the relationship between prevention focus and firm performance is negatively affected. The reverse was found for less dynamic environments. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research avenues are offered.

Examining the Consequences in the Tendency to Suppress and Reappraise Emotions on Task-Related Job Performance

This research tested the effects of individual differences in emotion regulation tendencies on task-related job performance and the mediating role of task focus. Emotion regulation has been divided into two broad classes, suppression and reappraisal, which may differentially relate to performance. By following self-regulation theories, it is believed that suppression requires more resources and will negatively relate to task performance via less task focus. Reappraisal requires fewer resources and should positively relate to performance via greater task focus. Results generally supported our expected relationships across both lab and field studies, and we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

The moderating effects of task complexity on the relationship between regulatory foci and safety and production performance.

Regulatory foci of promotion and prevention have been shown to relate differentially to occupational safety and production. This research proposes that task complexity can help explain the differences reported between these 2 self-regulatory processes and safety and productivity performance. Results revealed that promotion is positively related to production and prevention is positively related to safety regardless of task complexity. However, when task complexity is high, promotion negatively relates to safety and prevention negatively relates production. Implications for work motivation theory and research, as well as avenues for future research, are discussed. Practical implications for managerial interventions to optimize both safety and productivity are also presented.

Change the Referent? A Meta-Analytic Investigation of Direct and Referent-Shift Consensus Models for Organizational Climate

Based on earlier taxonomies of group composition models, aggregating data from individual-level responses to operationalize group-level constructs is a common aspect of management research. The present study contributes to the literature on group composition models by quantitatively integrating the climate literature via meta-analysis to determine which of the two most common methods of aggregation, direct consensus and referent-shift consensus, is the stronger predictor of group-level outcomes. We found that referent-shift consensus was a stronger predictor of job performance and customer service performance than direct consensus. However, we found that direct consensus was a stronger predictor of job attitudes than referent-shift consensus. We also found that climate-performance relationships were moderated by aggregation method of the performance criterion. The implications of these findings for advancing multi-level theory and research are discussed.

A Review of Multilevel Regulatory Focus in Organizations

Over the past 15 years, regulatory focus has gained prominence as a theory of self-regulatory motivation. Building from personality and social psychology research, the nomological network of regulatory focus spans individuals, groups, and organizations. This review provides an appraisal of regulatory focus from a multilevel perspective as it relates to organizational behavior, human resources, strategic management, and entrepreneurship. We begin with a discussion of the theoretical foundations of regulatory focus, including hierarchical motivation and regulatory fit theory. Using these foundations, we summarize empirical research on regulatory focus and provide actionable avenues for future research on regulatory focus, with particular attention paid to how individuals adjust their motivational strategies on the basis of context. We also consider regulatory focus as a collective function of teams to develop our understanding of motivational processes in the workplace.