Yujie Zhan

Antecedents of Bridge Employment: A Longitudinal Investigation

Bridge employment is the labor force participation pattern increasingly observed in older workers between their career jobs and their complete labor force withdrawal. It serves as a transition process from career employment to full retirement. Typical bridge employment decisions include full retirement, career bridge employment, and bridge employment in a different field. In the current study, 3 dominant theories (i.e., role theory, continuity theory, and life course perspective) on retirement processes were reviewed. On the basis of these theories, the authors proposed 4 categories of antecedents (i.e., individual attributes, job-related psychological variables, family-related variables, and a retirement-planning-related variable) of different types of bridge employment decisions. The authors used longitudinal data of a large, nationally representative sample from the Health and Retirement Study (F. Juster & R. Suzman, 1995) to test the current hypotheses. These data were analyzed with multinomial logistic regression, and most of the hypotheses were supported by the results. The implications of this study are discussed at both theoretical and practical levels.

Employees’ reactions to customer mistreatment: The moderating role of human resource management practices

ABSTRACT This study examined the moderating roles of human resource management (HRM) practices in employees’ reactions to customer mistreatment. Drawing upon the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and stress appraisal theories, this study hypothesised that training and participation could buffer the negative effect of customer mistreatment on service employees’ work outcomes (i.e. emotional exhaustion and job performance). Data were collected from 730 service representatives and their team leaders at two time points. Results showed that customer mistreatment was less positively related to emotional exhaustion in teams where employees were provided with more participation opportunities, and customer mistreatment was less negatively related to performance in teams where employees received more training. The results suggest that different types of HRM practices could effectively buffer the negative impact of customer mistreatment on different work outcomes for service employees. Theoretically, this study extends the customer mistreatment literature by demonstrating the importance of studying HRM practices in the customer mistreatment context, and supports the integration of JD-R model as an overarching framework and stress appraisal theories as an explanatory theory to understand the role of HRM practices. Practically, the findings provide implications to managers in protecting employees from customer-related interpersonal stressors and maintaining a healthy and productive workforce.

The Role of Workplace Popularity: Links to Employee Characteristics and Supervisor-Rated Outcomes:

Popularity in the workplace is relatively unexplored but has multiple potential applications in organizations. This field study uses data collected from 223 supervisor–subordinate dyads at various organizations in China to examine core self-evaluation (CSE) as an antecedent of employee popularity, the ability of political skill and work engagement to predict popularity above and beyond CSE, and the moderating roles of political skill and work engagement on the relationship between CSE and popularity. The current research also extends potential effects of workplace popularity beyond coworker-related outcomes to supervisor trust and task performance ratings for popular employees. Results showed that political skill and work engagement relate to popularity above and beyond CSE and moderate the CSE–popularity relationship. Employees’ popularity is also positively associated with supervisor trust and task performance ratings. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.