Judith Volmer

Individual-Level Predictors of Task-Related Teamwork Processes The Role of Expertise and Self-Efficacy in Team Meetings

This study investigates expertise (i.e., high level of individual task performance) and self-efficacy as predictors of an individuals contribution to teamwork processes (problem analysis, goal specification) during team meetings. Multilevel, multisource data from a longitudinal field study in 22 professional software design teams reveal large within-team variability in individual contributions to teamwork processes. Expertise positively predicted a team members contribution to meeting processes 1 year later, also when controlling for the initial level of contribution. Contrary to the hypothesis, self-efficacy was negatively related to problem analysis during team meetings.

Expertise in Software Design

In this chapter, we review research evidence on expertise in software design, computer programming, and related tasks. Research in this domain is particularly interesting because it refers both to rather general features and processes associated with expertise (e.g., knowledge representation, problem-solving strategies) and to speci£c characteristics of high performers in an economically relevant real-world setting. Therefore, in this chapter we draw on literature from various £elds, mainly from cognitive psychology, but also from work and organizational psychology and from the software-design literature within computer science. Our chapter is organized as follows: In the first main section we provide a brief description of the domain and give an overview of tasks in software development. Next} we briefly describe the expertise concept and distinguish between a conceptualization of expertise as years of experience and expertise as high performance. The third main section is the core part of this chapter. In this section, we review empirical research on expertise in tasks such as software design, programming, program comprehension, testing, and debugging. Moreover, we describe how expert performers differ from non-experts with respect to knowledge as well as communication and cooperation processes. In the £nal section, we present directions for future research and discuss some practical implications.

What You Do for Your Team Comes Back to You: A Cross-Level Investigation of Individual Goal Specification, Team-Goal Clarity, and Individual Performance

This article reports findings from a longitudinal field study on multilevel processes in teams and examines the role of individual team-goal specification and team-goal clarity with regard to individual performance. It is hypothesized that individual team-goal specification predicts change in individual performance over time, particularly when team-goal clarity is low. Multisource data gathered in 31 project teams supported the hypotheses. Overall, the findings suggest that team members can improve their individual performance when engaging in teamwork processes that are relevant for the team as a whole.

The Career Satisfaction Scale in Context: A Test for Measurement Invariance Across Four Occupational Groups

This study analyzed the influence of the occupational context on the conceptualization of career satisfaction measured by the career satisfaction scale (CSS). In a large sample of N = 729 highly educated professionals, a cross-occupational (i.e., physicians, economists, engineers, and teachers) measurement invariance analysis showed that the CSS was conceptualized according to occupational group membership, that is, 4 of the 5 items of the scale showed measurement noninvariance. More specifically, the relative importance, the response biases, and the reliabilities associated with different career satisfaction content domains measured by the CSS (i.e., achieved success, overall career goals, goals for advancement, goals for income, and goals for development of new skills) varied by occupational context. However, results of a comparison between manifest and latent mean differences between the occupational groups revealed that the observed measurement noninvariance did not affect the estimation of mean differences.

Dual-Career Couples: Specific Challenges for Work-Life Integration

Over the past 40 years, industrialized nations have experienced major changes in their labor market characteristics. Of special importance is the steady increase of women’s participation in the paid workforce. In the United States (US), 72.3% of all women aged between 25 and 54 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009) were in employment, and 59.1% of women aged between 15 and 64 in the European Union (EU) (EUROSTAT, 2009).

Daily within-person effects of job autonomy and work engagement on innovative behaviour: The cross-level moderating role of creative self-efficacy

ABSTRACT Adopting a dynamic within-person perspective on employee innovation, the present study investigates the role of situational job autonomy and momentary work engagement as day-level correlates of innovative behaviour. Anticipating individual differences in the strength of these intraindividual associations, we propose dispositional creative self-efficacy (CSE) to serve as a cross-level moderating influence amplifying the day-specific predictive power of autonomy and work engagement for innovative behaviour. Hierarchical linear modelling analyses of the nested data from 123 employees surveyed over 5 consecutive work days suggest that both autonomy and work engagement positively predict self-reported innovative behaviour on a daily basis. Whereas the engagement–innovation link emerges as homogenous across persons, results indicate that the daily within-person effect of autonomy on innovative behaviour varies significantly as a function of CSE such that it is greater for individuals who hold higher rather than lower CSE beliefs. Implications for future research, limitations, and practical implications are discussed.

Career Stagnation: Underlying Dilemmas and Solutions in Contemporary Work Environments

Employment and career development are important goals in most people’s life. People have to pursue an employment in order to earn their living, but employment is much more than that. It can be both a source of satisfaction and of dissatisfaction. A successful career makes a person proud and happy; failure in one’s career has an impact on self-esteem and makes a person unhappy. The present chapter is concerned with career stagnation, i.e., the involuntary – at least temporary – end of one’s career development. We will cover two major reasons for career stagnation and the dilemmas underlying them. The one has to do with the lack of career opportunities resulting from individual and interpersonal factors (self-efficacy issues, goal issues, attitudinal issues, and dual-career issues) the other has to do with career stagnation resulting from organizational conditions (socialization/support/mentoring, bullying/mobbing, and stereotypes/discrimination).After describing these dilemmas and their consequences, we will address interventions that may help to resolve them in order to increase people’s quality of life (self-efficacy and self-management trainings, career counseling, mentoring, anti-mobbing/anti-bullying interventions, recruitment strategies for dual-career couples, and antidiscrimination strategies). Throughout this chapter, we will refer to unethical behavior as the injury of the employees’ rights of balance, respect, responsibility, autonomy, participation, justice, and voice. Finally, we will discuss directions of future research into career stagnation.

Adaptation to increased work autonomy: The role of task reflection

This experiment investigated how individuals adapt to increased work autonomy and examined the moderating role of task reflection. Work autonomy was manipulated in an experimental setting in which participants (n = 56) completed a scheduling task. Multilevel analyses demonstrated that participants who began work with low autonomy showed poorer performance when autonomy was increased compared to participants who began with a high level of autonomy. Analysis of thinking-aloud protocols revealed that reflection about task accomplishment had a negative impact on performance among those individuals who worked previously with low autonomy. The data suggest that cognitive capacity limitations and prior task-related knowledge led to the detrimental effects of task reflection on performance when experiencing low autonomy.

The Goal Paves the Way: Inspirational Motivation as a Predictor of Career Adaptability

To cope with a changing work world, organizations look for job applicants who rate high on career adaptability. The present study investigates whether leadership influences employees’ career adaptability. Specifically, we investigated whether inspirational motivation fosters career adaptability and whether employees’ future temporal focus mediates this impact. With a time lag of 3 months, 766 employees working in various branches answered two questionnaires. Inspirational motivation by their leaders predicted employee career adaptability, mediated by employee future temporal focus. Findings yield implications for personnel recruitment and development.

Multidimensional Networking Behavior in Germany and China: Measurement Invariance and Associations With Objective Career Success

Prior research has so far established the multidimensional nature of networking behavior in Western but not Asian working populations. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to assess the cross-cultural measurement equivalence and predictive validity of an established multidimensional networking scale across a German and a Chinese sample of individuals employed by the same multinational company (total N = 248). Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated configural and metric, but not scalar measurement invariance, indicating that cross-cultural comparisons of associations between the six theoretically anticipated networking dimensions and other constructs but not of mean scores of networking are meaningful. Path analytic findings showed that some but not all networking dimensions significantly predicted objective career success (i.e., salary and promotions, assessed 2 months later). Relative weight analyses indicated that all intraorganizational (i.e., building, maintaining, and using contacts), but no extraorganizational networking behaviors explained nontrivial variance in Chinese employees’ salary and promotions. In the German group, a largely opposite pattern was found. Interestingly, the relative importance of building and of using internal contacts was significantly greater in China than in Germany. We conclude that the functional but not necessarily the structural facet of a multidimensional conceptualization of networking behavior exhibits meaningful cross-cultural equivalence.