Robert R. Sinclair

Performance Differences Among Four Organizational Commitment Profiles

The authors drew from prior research on organizational commitment and from configural organizational theory to propose a framework of affective and continuance commitment profiles. Using cluster analyses, the authors obtained evidence for 4 of these profiles in an energy industry sample (N=970) and a sample of 345 employed college students. The authors labeled the clusters: allied (i.e., moderate affective and continuance commitment), free agents (moderate continuance commitment and low affective commitment), devoted (high affective and continuance commitment), and complacent (moderate affective and low continuance commitment). Using a subset of the employed student sample (n=148), the authors also found that the free agents received significantly poorer supervisor ratings of performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and antisocial behavior than any other group.

A comparison of the stress–strain process for business owners and nonowners: Differences in job demands, emotional exhaustion, satisfaction, and social support.

One hundred sixty licensed morticians were surveyed to examine differences among business owners, managers, and employees on the relations proposed by G. F. Koeske and R. D. Koeskes (1993) stressor-strain-outcome model. Forty-eight percent of the morticians were owners, 16% were managers, and 36% were employees. Owners had less social support from work-related sources and perceived lower levels of role ambiguity and role conflict, less emotional exhaustion, and higher levels of job satisfaction and professional satisfaction than did nonowners. Social support from work-related sources and ownership each moderated the relationship between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction but not between emotional exhaustion and professional satisfaction. Emotional exhaustion partially mediated the effect of stressors on job satisfaction and professional satisfaction.

Empirically supported ethical research practice: the costs and benefits of research from the participants' view.

Researchers and institutional review boards are routinely called upon to evaluate the cost‐benefit status of proposed research protocols that involve human participants. Often these assessments are based on subjective judgments in the absence of empirical data. This reliance on subjective judgments is of particular concern for studies involving clinical samples where unfounded assumptions may adversely affect research progress or clinical outcomes. The Reactions to Research Participation Questionnaire (RRPQ) was designed to address this shortcoming and to help promote ethical decision making about research practice. The present study describes development of the RRPQ and presents a series of exploratory and confirmatory analyses investigating its structure. Based on these findings, a revised version of the instrument and suggestions for future research are presented. This approach provides a foundation for scientifically informed protection of human subjects.

The multilevel effects of occupational stressors on soldiers' well-being, organizational attachment, and readiness.

The U.S. Army typifies the stressful nature of many contemporary work settings, as soldiers face a climate of increasing work demands coupled with declining resources. The authors used social identity theory to propose hypotheses regarding contextual and cross-level effects of shared stressors on individual outcomes critical to the functioning of military units (well-being, attachment, readiness). Although the authors found weak support for direct effects of shared stressors on individual outcomes, they found several compelling moderating effects for shared stressors on person-level stressor-outcome relationships. For most effects, shared stressors intensified the effects of person-level stressors on morale, commitment, and depression. However, some shared stressors exerted counterintuitive effects on stressor-outcome relationships. Implications for research and military personnel management are discussed.

A typology of the part-time workforce: Differences on job attitudes and turnover

Differences between full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) employees have long been of interest to organizational psychologists. While most research assumes PT employees are a single, undifferentiated group, some studies have established the diversity of the PT workforce, particularly in terms of participation in other work and non-work roles. An important gap in this research concerns how different types of PT employees may differ from one another, as well as from FT employees. In this study, we proposed and tested a typology of the PT workforce. We identified several groups of PT employees with substantially different patterns of involvement in school, family, and work roles. The PT groups had generally more favourable job attitudes than did the FT employees. Although the PT groups generally had higher turnover than the FT employees, we found substantial differences among the groups in their turnover behaviour. We discuss the implications of our findings for future work status research and for managing the PT workforce.

A threat-appraisal perspective on employees' fears about antisocial workplace behavior

This article uses a threat-appraisal model to examine the antecedents and consequences of antisocial behavior in an urban public school system. Teachers (compared with nonteachers) and middle and high school employees (compared with elementary school employees) reported higher levels of exposure to and fears about antisocial behavior. A path analysis demonstrated that threat appraisals partially mediate the relationship between antisocial behavior and job satisfaction and indirectly affect turnover intentions. These effects were consistent across high- and low-contact job types and across elementary, middle, and high school employees. The authors used the threat-appraisal model to describe the consequences of different interventions and found empirical evidence for employee voice and security measures as intervening variables.

A temporal investigation of the direct, interactive, and reverse relations between demand and control and affective strain

Abstract Few studies have tested how stressors affect outcomes over time. We sought to extend the literature by means of a longitudinal study testing for direct, interactive, and causal relations between demands and control and affective strain. We extended prior work testing causal relationships for Karaseks (1979) Job Demand-Control (JDC) model by examining both the effects of demands and control on strain and in turn the effects of strain on demand and control. We tested our hypotheses using hierarchical linear modelling with a military sample of 1539 soldiers who completed six waves of survey data at 3-month time lags. The results replicate earlier cross-sectional studies reporting effects of work characteristics on strain; however, in our study these effects did not persist past three months. The results also provide evidence for reverse causal effects such that higher strain was associated with higher subsequent work overload and lower control over a six month time period. Similar to past research, we did not find support for the interactive effects of work overload and control on strain. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice (such as the optimum time for applying interventions during the management of change), especially in terms of understanding the specific time lags for different stress–strain associations and the need for additional theories to explain reverse relationships.

Dynamic Systems and Organizational Decision-Making Processes in Nonprofits

Social purpose organizations (SPOs) are nonprofit organizations that fulfill their social missions by seeking revenue from traditional business activities. SPOs often face difficulties attracting and retaining organizational members with the necessary mix of social and business skills and values. When coupled with resource limitations and an unstable environment, these issues create serious strategic challenges for leaders of small SPOs. In the present article, the authors describe several systems thinking concepts that may enable leaders to understand and therefore more effectively contend with the challenges of the SPO context. The authors also present a case study demonstrating the utility of systems thinking and system dynamics modeling as decision-making tools leaders can use to analyze the impact of alternative strategies on the financial well-being of the SPO. The modeling process may facilitate organizational learning as leaders use the insight gained from adopting a systems approach to make effective strategic decisions.

Don't fear the reaper: : trait death anxiety, mortality salience, and occupational health

Despite multiple calls for research, there has been little effort to incorporate topics regarding mortality salience and death anxiety into workplace literature. As such, the goals of the current study were to (a) examine how trait differences in death anxiety relate to employee occupational health outcomes and (b) examine how death anxiety might exacerbate the negative effects of mortality salience cues experienced at work. In Study 1, we examined how death anxiety affected nurses in a multitime point survey. These results showed that trait death anxiety was associated with increased burnout and reduced engagement and that death anxiety further exacerbated the relationship between mortality salience cues (e.g., dealing with injured and dying patients) and burnout. These results were replicated and extended in Study 2, which examined the impact of death anxiety in firefighters. In this multitime point study, death anxiety related to burnout, engagement, and absenteeism. The results further showed that death anxiety moderated the relationship between mortality cues and burnout, where people high in trait death anxiety experience higher levels of burnout as a result of mortality cues than people lower in death anxiety. Across the 2 studies, despite differences in the methods (e.g., time lag; measures), the effect sizes and the form of the significant interactions were quite similar. Overall, these results highlight the importance of understanding death anxiety in the workplace, particularly in occupations where mortality salience cues are common. We discuss recommendations, such as death education and vocational counseling, and provide some avenues for future research.

Non-standard work schedules and retention in the entry-level hourly workforce

Non-standard work schedules involve work outside the Monday–Friday daytime hours. Although research has heavily studied the health and family effects of such schedules, few studies have investigated their relationship to retention. We draw from Maertz and Campion’s discussion of motivational forces that influence turnover to propose that employees on non-standard schedules are more likely to quit their employer because of general job dissatisfaction and because of normative pressures from family and/or friends. Specifically, we hypothesized that employees on day shifts or weekday only schedules would remain with their employer longer than those who work on nonday shifts or on the weekends. We also hypothesized that perceived employment mobility would moderate the effects of non-standard schedules on retention length. Hypotheses were tested among 3,178 retail employees who worked five different distinct shift arrangements and different weekday/weekend schedules. Cox regression analyses indicated that, as hypothesized, employees working nonday shifts or schedules including weekends remained with their employer for a shorter duration of time than employees not on such schedules. Perceived mobility moderated the schedule–turnover relationship, though not in the hypothesized manner. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for work schedule assignment and retention strategies.