Jaclyn M. Jensen

High-Performance Work Systems and Job Control: Consequences for Anxiety, Role Overload, and Turnover Intentions

This study examines relationships among high-performance work systems (HPWS), job control, employee anxiety, role overload, and turnover intentions. Building on theory that challenges the rhetoric versus reality of HPWS, the authors explore a potential “dark side” of HPWS that suggests that HPWS, which are aimed at creating a competitive advantage for organizations, do so at the expense of workers, thus resulting in negative consequences for individual employees. However, the authors argue that these consequences may be tempered when HPWS are also implemented with a sufficient amount of job control, or discretion given to employees in determining how to implement job responsibilities. The authors draw on job demands–control theory and the stress literatures to hypothesize moderated-mediation relationships relating the interaction of HPWS utilization and job control to anxiety and role overload, with subsequent effects on turnover intentions. The authors examine these relationships in a multilevel sample of 1,592 government workers nested in 87 departments from the country of Wales. Results support their hypotheses, which highlight several negative consequences when HPWS are implemented with low levels of job control. They discuss their findings in light of the critique in the literature toward the utilization of HPWS in organizations and offer suggestions for future research directions.

Building an infrastructure for organizational learning: A multilevel approach

Organizational environments are increasingly turbulent, chaotic, and unpredictable thereby creating demands for organizational flexibility, agility, and adaptability (Terreberry, 1968). Organizations have responded to these pressures in a multitude of ways. They have made structural changes to organize work around teams (Lawler, Mohrman, & Ledford, 1995) to push expertise closer to the source of problems, to enable more rapid decision making, and to empower flexible action. They have made investments in information technology to manage Furthermore, they have invested in human capital to increase their collective knowledge stock and capacities (Davenport, 1999). A key theme running through these responses is the need for learning and adaptive capabilities operating at multiple levels of the organizational system. Learning has been specified as a key individual capability that enables adaptation with respect to their capacity to acquire capabilities and to adapt to changes in their environments. Indeed, organization learning, from its early roots in the development of the science of organizational behavior, and particularly over the last decade, has evolved to become a multidisciplinary, vibrant, and diverse area of inquiry. What is organizational learning and how can it be enhanced? The answer from the literature is diffuse. Since its inception as a concept in the 1960s, organizational learning has been very broadly conceptualized across different levels of analysis – often at the macro or organizational level; more rarely at the meso, work unit, or team level; and frequently at the micro or individual level (see Fiol & Lyles, 1985, for a review). Indeed, the particular level of interest is often not explicitly specified and an explanation can wander across multiple levels. Organizational learning has been viewed as informal processes that promote knowledge acquisition (e.g., organizational culture, socialization, mentoring) and as more formal systems that capture and compile such knowledge (e.g., knowledge management, information systems). Moreover, the different and unique ways that organizational learning has been conceptualized cut across multiple disciplines and literatures that tend to be insular. The result is a very broad, fuzzy, and multifaceted concept that has much intellectual appeal. However, it also has limited operational utility so that the question posed at the beginning of this paragraph cannot easily be answered. The conceptual challenge is a multilevel one. The process of learning can be reasonably well defined as an individual-level psychological phenomenon, but it is ill-defined and more amorphous when applied to higher levels of conceptualization. It is rooted in individual …

When Self-Management and Surveillance Collide: Consequences for Employees’ Organizational Citizenship and Counterproductive Work Behaviors

Despite arguments for the benefits of self-management for enhancing employees’ motivation to work toward organizational goals, many managers fail to give their employees control and instead engage in surveillance to gain compliance. Drawing on personal control and reactance theories, the authors propose self-management would relate to increased discretionary contributions, that is, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), but when supervisory surveillance is also in place, OCB would be diminished and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) would increase. The authors further propose that these effects would be mediated by employees’ perceptions of autonomy and the degree to which they believe the organization trusts them. Two studies establish the beneficial effects of self-management on OCB and illustrate the detrimental effects for employees and organizations when self-management and surveillance collide.

The Effects of Active Constructive and Passive Corrective Leadership on Workplace Incivility and the Mediating Role of Fairness Perceptions

Given the high costs of workplace deviance to employees and organizations, the question of when and how leaders can reduce or prevent uncivil interpersonal interactions at work is important. In this regard, we sought to understand the implications of one of the most widely cited models of leadership, the Full Range Leadership model, on workplace incivility through the lens of active constructive and passive corrective leadership. Analyzing multi-source data collected from 239 employee–coworker dyads working in diverse organizations, we find that active constructive leadership is related to decreased incidence of workplace incivility through its positive impact on fairness perceptions, whereas passive corrective leadership is both directly and indirectly (through diminished fairness perceptions) related to workplace incivility. This study provides theoretical and practical implications regarding the strategic focus of organizational interventions related to leadership in an effort to reduce workplace incivility and the mechanism by which it operates.

Crafting in Context: Exploring When Job Crafting is Dysfunctional for Performance Effectiveness

Job crafting theory purports that the consequences of revising one’s work role can be simultaneously beneficial and detrimental. Previous research, however, has almost exclusively emphasized the beneficial outcomes of job crafting. In the current study, we proposed dysfunctional consequences of crafting for performance-related outcomes in the form of a U-shaped relationship between job crafting and performance effectiveness (managerial ratings of job proficiency and peer ratings of citizenship behavior). We further predicted that elements of the task context (autonomy and ambiguity) and the social context (interdependence and social support) moderate these curvilinear relationships. Consistent with previous research, job crafting displayed positive and linear effects on work-related attitudes (job satisfaction and affective commitment). Consistent with our predictions, moderate levels of crafting were associated with dysfunctional performance-related outcomes and features of work context either exacerbated or dissipated these dysfunctional consequences of job crafting for individuals.

Engagement as a Privilege and Disengagement as a Pathology

Employee engagement research to date has proliferated on the conceptualization that engagement is driven by mutable job design characteristics and related socioemotional resources. This essay explores concerns with that conceptualization. For instance, modern engagement research has defined a “work role” with an almost exclusive focus on employees occupying professional roles, largely ignoring broad swaths of population who hold blue- or pink-collar jobs. These concerns are set forth in a discussion of broadening the definition of engagement. We start by describing the key components of the construct of engagement, followed by a discussion of how changes in the modern work role restrict engagement in ways that do not comport with the traditional view. Next, this essay explores three assumptions inherent in engagement’s research stream: possibility, availability, and directionality. Finally, key research directions and questions are presented in an attempt to focus research attention on studying engagement from a more inclusive lens.

A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Effects of Incivility on Occupational Aspirations.

This study provides evidence regarding the effects of incivility on career intentions across cultures with respondents from the United States (US) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Drawing on social cognitive career theory, we contend that uncivil treatment affects an individual’s psychological well-being, which predicts competence and occupational aspirations. Our hypotheses were largely supported across cultures, such that participants in the US and UAE were negatively affected by incivility in similar ways. In particular, across both cultures, psychological distress was negatively related to competence, consistent with arguments that distress relates to diminished self-views. This research has implications for students’ expectations about future occupational roles, as colleges teach not only job-related skills, but also set the stage for students’ expectations of their future selves.

The effects of socialized charismatic leadership on climate, mistreatment, and work attitudes

Despite the growing attention to interpersonal mistreatment at work, few studies have explored the role of socialized charismatic leadership as a possible deterrent of such behavior. Drawing from s...