Thomas A. Wright

Emotional exhaustion as a predictor of job performance and voluntary turnover.

Recent research suggests that a better understanding of emotional exhaustion requires the development of new theoretical perspectives. To that end, with the conservation of resources model (COR) as the theoretical framework, the present 1-year longitudinal study was undertaken. Composed of 52 social welfare workers, this research examined the relationship of emotional exhaustion to job satisfaction, voluntary turnover, and job performance. Positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) were used as control variables. Whereas emotional exhaustion was unrelated to job satisfaction, it was associated with both performance and subsequent turnover. In addition, the relationship between emotional exhaustion and performance and also between emotional exhaustion and turnover remained significant above and beyond the effects of PA and NA. Future research directions and implications of the findings are introduced.

Psychological Well-Being and Job Satisfaction as Predictors of Job Performance

The happy-productive worker hypothesis has most often been examined in organizational research by correlating job satisfaction to performance. Recent research has expanded this to include measures of psychological well-being. However, to date, no field research has provided a comparative test of the relative contribution of job satisfaction and psychological well-being as predictors of employee performance. The authors report 2 field studies that, taken together, provide an opportunity to simultaneously examine the relative contribution of psychological well-being and job satisfaction to job performance. In Study 1, psychological well-being, but not job satisfaction, was predictive of job performance for 47 human services workers. These findings were replicated in Study 2 for 37 juvenile probation officers. These findings are discussed in terms of research on the happy-productive worker hypothesis.

Affect and favorable work outcomes: two longitudinal tests of the happy–productive worker thesis

This research examined relationships between alternative measures of affect and supervisory performance ratings. The first study showed that dispositional rather than state affect significantly predicted supervisory ratings of performance over time. Since the measures of affect differed on both content and temporal dimensions, a follow-up study was conducted to explicate the results. The second study found that a pleasantness-based measure of dispositional affect (Berkman, 1971a) again predicted rated performance over time, but activation-based measures of both dispositional and state affect (using PANAS scales) were not predictive of supervisory evaluations of performance. The implications of these findings in terms of research on affect and the longstanding pursuit of the happy–productive worker are discussed. Copyright

The contribution of burnout to work performance

While the notion that ‘burnout’ is related to a decline in work performance is widely recognized, empirical support for this relationship is lacking. The present study, composed of human services personnel, is the first to empirically test the relationships among Maslachs three dimensions of burnout and work performance. A negative relationship was established between one dimension of burnout, emotional exhaustion, and subsequent work performance. However, the results failed to establish relationships among work performance, depersonalization and diminished personal accomplishment. These results provide further support for emotional exhaustion as a key component of the burnout experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are introduced.

Job Satisfaction and Psychological Well-Being as Nonadditive Predictors of Workplace Turnover

Data from a 2-year field study were used to examine the relationships among psychological well-being, job satisfaction, and employee job performance with employee turnover. Using a sample of 112 managers employed at a large organization on the West Coast of the United States, and controlling for employee age, gender, ethnicity, and job performance, well-being and job satisfaction were found to predict turnover in a nonadditive manner. As expected, well-being was found to moderate the relation between job satisfaction and job separation, such that job satisfaction was most strongly (and negatively) related to turnover when well-being was low.

The Moderating Effects of Employee Tenure on the Relation Between Organizational Commitment and Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis investigated the correlation between attitudinal commitment and job performance for 3,630 employees obtained from 27 independent studies across various levels of employee tenure. Controlling for employee age and other nuisance variables, the authors found that tenure had a very strong nonlinear moderating effect on the commitment-performance correlation, with correlations tending to decrease exponentially with increasing tenure. These findings do not appear to be the result of differences across studies in terms of the type of performance measure (supervisory vs. self), type of tenure (job vs. organizational), or commitment measure (Organizational Commitment Questionnaire [L. W. Porter, R. M. Steers, R. T. Mowday, & P. V. Boulian, 19741 vs. other). The implications and future research directions of these results are discussed.

The Moderating Role of Employee Positive Well Being on the Relation Between Job Satisfaction and Job Performance

This research provides further clarification to the age-old quest to better understand the happy/productive worker thesis. Using data from 109 managers employed by a large (over 5000 employees) customer services organization on the West Coast of the United States, both job satisfaction (r=.36, p<.01, 95% CI=.18 to .52) and psychological well-being (PWB; r=.43, p<.01, 95% CI=.26 to .58) were associated with supervisory performance ratings. Using Fredricksons (2001) broaden-and-build model as the theoretical base, the authors found that PWB moderates the relation between job satisfaction and job performance. Consistent with Fredricksons model, performance was highest when employees reported high scores on both PWB and job satisfaction. This moderating effect of PWB may account for some of the inconsistent results of previous studies.

When a "happy" worker is really a "productive" worker: A review and further refinement of the happy-productive worker thesis.

For decades, organizational scientists and practitioners alike have been fascinated by the happyproductive worker thesis. According to this hypothesis, happy employees exhibit higher levels of job-related performance behaviors than do unhappy employees. However, despite years of research, support for the happy-productive worker thesis remains equivocal. These ambiguous findings result from the variety of ways in which happiness has been operationalized. Researchers have operationalized happiness as job satisfaction, as the presence of positive affect, as the absence of negative affect, as the lack of emotional exhaustion, and as psychological well-being. Some of these measures exhibit appreciable associations with job performance, others do not. The circumplex framework is offered as a potentially useful taxonomy for researchers interested in better understanding and promoting a happy and productive workforce.

Sample size requirements for estimating pearson, Kendall and Spearman correlations

Interval estimates of the Pearson, Kendall tau-a and Spearman correlations are reviewed and an improved standard error for the Spearman correlation is proposed. The sample size required to yield a confidence interval having the desired width is examined. A two-stage approximation to the sample size requirement is shown to give accurate results.

Character Is Not “Dead” in Management Research: A Review of Individual Character and Organizational-Level Virtue†

We propose that strength of character is a potentially important organizational research topic, one that has been largely untapped in applied research. Character (ethos) refers to those inter-penetrable habitual qualities within individuals and applicable to organizations that constrain and lead them to desire and pursue personal and societal good. In our review, we first provide an initial conceptualization of character, partly by distinguishing it from virtue and values. Second, starting with the Old Testament, we examine how character has traditionally been considered across time and culture. Next, we discuss the extant research on strength of character and organizational virtue. We conclude with promising research directions involving individual character strength and organizational virtue.