Sabrina D. Volpone

How do stressors lead to burnout? The mediating role of motivation.

We extend existing stressor-strain theoretical models by including intrinsic motivation as a mediator between well-established job stressors and burnout. Though the link between situational stressors and burnout is well established, little is known about mechanisms behind this relationship. With a sample of 284 self-employed individuals, we examined motivation as a mediator to explain why situational factors impact 3 dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. Motivation is an explanatory mechanism that drives human behavior and thought, and thus may have an impact on important well-being outcomes. As expected, intrinsic motivation was a full mediator for the effect of perceived fit on the inefficacy dimension of burnout. Unexpectedly, neither perceived fit nor motivation was related to the other 2 dimensions of burnout, and role ambiguity had only a direct effect on the inefficacy dimension; it was also unrelated to exhaustion and cynicism. We discuss implications of these findings for researchers as well as for practitioners.

Overworked in America

Purpose – Though a number of demographics (e.g. sex, age) have been associated with work overload, scholars have yet to consider the potential impact of immigrant status. This is important because immigrants constitute a significant proportion of the workforce, and evidence suggests many employers believe they are easier to exploit. This paper aims to examine work hours, interpersonal justice, and immigrant status as predictors of work overload.Design/methodology/approach – The hypotheses were tested using a large, national random telephone survey of employees in the United States (n=2,757).Findings – As expected, employees who worked more hours tended to perceive more work overload. Importantly, however, this effect interacted with interpersonal justice differently for immigrant and native‐born employees. Justice attenuated the effect of work hours for the former but seemed to exacerbate it somewhat for the latter. Of note, the interactive effect was more than five times larger for immigrants than for na...

Investigating the racioethnic differences in the link between workplace racioethnic dissimilarity and life satisfaction.

Though researchers have examined racioethnic dissimilarity in the workplace, few have looked at how it relates to life satisfaction, and none have examined prospective racioethnic differences in this linkage. This study used data from a nationally representative interview survey of more than 500 people employed in the United States to test relationships between workplace dissimilarity, prejudice, racioethnicity, and life satisfaction. We found that the dissimilarity-satisfaction linkage is positive for Black and Hispanic Americans and negative for White Americans. Further exploring the latter finding, our results showed that the negative association between dissimilarity and life satisfaction was present only among White Americans higher in prejudice. This study extends the literature on interracioethnic interactions and further illustrates the importance of reducing prejudice in organizational settings.

Does Teaming Obscure Low Performance? Exploring the Temporal Effects of Team Performance Diversity

Organizations are increasingly using team-based projects to achieve goals. As such, it is important to understand how team members (e.g., their differences) influence team outcomes such as effectiveness. In the present study, we examine performance diversity, differences in members’ past performance, as an antecedent to team effectiveness. In addition, we assessed the length of time the group performed together as a moderator and social loafing among members as a mediator of the performance diversity—team effectiveness relationship. Using multisource data for 673 individuals in 139 project teams, we found that performance diversity had an increasingly negative effect for groups that were together longer. Specifically, greater diversity resulted in more social loafing, thereby diminishing team satisfaction and supervisor-rated team performance.

Minimizing Cross-Cultural Maladaptation: How Minority Status Facilitates Change in International Acculturation.

Culturally savvy organizations recognize that selecting and developing people who can be effective in a global workforce is important in today’s business environment. Nevertheless, many companies struggle to identify and develop talent who are happy and successful working and living outside their home country. We examine 1 factor that may foster success in a host country—minority status in 1’s home country—as a predictor of change in acculturation over time. Specifically, we draw on the conservation of resources model to suggest that international students who have been a member of more minority groups in their home country have unique experiences working with dissimilar others that offer advantages when acculturating to new cultures and novel situations. Then, change in host country acculturation is explored as a mechanism to explain how minority status in the home country relates to intentions to leave the host country and psychological well-being 6 months after entry. Two moderators (cultural intelligence, perceived diversity climate of the host institution) of these relationships are also examined. Results revealed that the relationship between minority status in the home country and change in host country acculturation was positive and stronger for those with higher cultural intelligence. Further, the relationship between change in host country acculturation and psychological well-being was positive when perceived diversity climate of the host institution was high, but was not significant when perceived diversity climate was low.

Blaming the building: How venue quality influences consumer bias against stigmatized leaders.

Because stigmatized individuals are viewed as incongruent with commonly held implicit leadership theories, they are often deemed less fit to lead than their nonstigmatized counterparts (Eagly & Karau, 2002). This suggests consumers might use such views to discredit not only stigmatized leaders, but also the companies they represent. However, cognition based on social categories (1 potential form of stigma) may be more likely when there are readily available alternative factors to account for ones decisions via casuistry. Across 2 complementary studies (field and experiment), we find that customers react negatively to stigmatized leaders only when the physical state of the company venue provides an ostensible defense to mask their biased behavior. When facilities are of lower quality, consumers appear to use a leaders stigma to infer lower product quality, coinciding in less patronage for companies with stigmatized as opposed to nonstigmatized leaders. Thus, consumers penalize companies with stigmatized leaders only when doing so can easily be attributed to an alternative factor (e.g., a lower quality venue) not involving the leaders stigma. (PsycINFO Database Record

Disclosing a Disability: Do Strategy Type and Onset Controllability Make a Difference?

In hiring contexts, individuals with concealable disabilities make decisions about how they should disclose their disability to overcome observers’ biases. Previous research has investigated the effectiveness of binary disclosure decisions—that is, to disclose or conceal a disability—but we know little about how, why, or under what conditions different types of disclosure strategies impact observers’ hiring intentions. In this article, we examine disability onset controllability (i.e., whether the applicant is seen as responsible for their disability onset) as a boundary condition for how disclosure strategy type influences the affective reactions (i.e., pity, admiration) that underlie observers’ hiring intentions. Across 2 experiments, we found that when applicants are seen as responsible for their disability, strategies that de-emphasize the disability (rather than embrace it) lower observers’ hiring intentions by elevating their pity reactions. Thus, the effectiveness of different types of disability disclosure strategies differs as a function of onset controllability. We discuss implications for theory and practice for individuals with disabilities and organizations.