Nancy P. Rothbard

Enriching or Depleting? The Dynamics of Engagement in Work and Family Roles

This study develops a model of engagement in the multiple roles of work and family. I examine two competing arguments about the effects of engaging in multiple roles, depletion and enrichment, and integrate them by identifying the type of emotional response to a role, negative or positive, as a critical contrasting assumption held by these two perspectives. Moreover, I represent depletion and enrichment as complex multistep processes that include multiple constructs, such as engagement and emotion. This study jointly examines both the depleting and enriching processes that link engagement in one role to engagement in another, using structural equation modeling. Findings from a survey of 790 employees reveal evidence for both depletion and enrichment as well as gender differences. Specifically, depletion existed only for women and only in the work-to-family direction. Men experienced enrichment from work to family, while women experienced enrichment from family to work. Overall, more linkages were found between work and family for women than for men.

Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance

As individuals change jobs more frequently, it is increasingly important to understand what they carry from their prior work experience that affects their performance in a new organizational context. So far, explanations about the imperfect portability of experience have primarily been about firm specificity of knowledge and skill. We draw on psychological theory to propose additional sociocognitive factors that interfere with the transfer of knowledge and skill acquired from prior related work experience. As we hypothesized, we find that task-relevant knowledge and skill mediates the relationship between prior related experience and job performance and that it acts as suppressing mediator of a negative direct relationship between prior related experience and current job performance. We also find that the positive effect of prior related experience on task-relevant knowledge and skill is attenuated by higher levels of experience within the current firm.

Mandatory Fun: Consent, Gamification and the Impact of Games at Work

In an effort to create a positive experience at work, managers have deployed a wide range of initiatives and practices designed to improve the affective experience for workers. One such practice is gamification, introducing elements from games into the work environment with the purpose of improving employees’ affective experiences. Games have long been played at work, but they have emerged spontaneously from the employees themselves. Here, we examine whether managerially-imposed games provide the desired benefits for affect and performance predicted by prior studies on games at work or whether they are a form of “mandatory fun.” We highlight the role of consent (Burawoy, 1979) as a psychological response to mandatory fun, which moderates these relationships and, in a field experiment, find that games, when consented to, increase positive affect at work, but, when consent is lacking, decrease positive affect. In a follow up laboratory experiment, we also find that legitimation and a sense of individual agency are important sources of consent.

Getting Closer at the Company Party: Integration Experiences, Racial Dissimilarity, and Workplace Relationships

Using survey data from two distinct samples, we found that reported integration behaviors (e.g., attending company parties, discussing nonwork matters with colleagues) were associated with closer relationships among coworkers but that this effect was qualified by an interaction effect. Racial dissimilarity moderated the relationship between integration and closeness such that integration was positively associated with relationship closeness for those who were demographically similar to their coworkers, but not for those who were demographically dissimilar from their coworkers. Additionally, this moderation effect was mediated by the extent to which respondents experienced comfort and enjoyment when integrating. These findings highlight the importance of creating the right kind of interactions for building closer relationships between employees, particularly relationships that span racial boundaries.

Self-disclosure: Beneficial for cohesion in demographically diverse work groups?

Many organizational efforts to improve co-worker relationships entail inducing employees to bring their “whole selves” into the workplace, which for employees often means disclosing personal experiences at work. Several psychological theories suggest that increased self-disclosure will lead to better relationships in organizational work groups. However, this chapter considers the factors impacting self-disclosure in demographically diverse settings. We posit that although self-disclosure has led to closer relationships in past research, it may not increase cohesion for employees in demographically diverse work groups, or those who are demographically dissimilar from the majority of their co-workers.