Five-factor model of personality and organizational commitment: The mediating role of positive and negative affective states

Virtual reality and immersive technologies to promote workplace wellbeing: a systematic review

BACKGROUND

Work-related stress negatively impacts employee wellbeing. Stress-management interventions that reduce workplace stress can be challenging. Immersive technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), may provide an alternative.

AIMS

This systematic review aimed to evaluate feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of immersive technologies to promote workplace wellbeing (PROSPERO 268460).

METHODS

Databases MEDLINE, Web of Science, PsycINFO and Embase were searched until 22nd July 2021. Studies were included if they tested a workforce or were designed for a workplace. Effective Public Health Practice Project quality assessment tool (EPHPP) was used for quality ratings.

RESULTS

There were 17 studies (N = 1270), published 2011-2021. Over half were conducted in Europe. Eight studies were controlled trials. Most studies involved brief, single sessions of immersive VR and provided evidence of feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness when measuring wellbeing-related variables such as stress, relaxation, and restoration. VR environments included relaxation tasks such as meditation or breathing exercises, and nature-based stimuli, such as forests, beaches, and water. Studies tested office workers, healthcare professionals, social workers, teachers, and military personnel. EPHPP ratings were "strong" (N = 1), "moderate" (N = 13), and "weak" (N = 3).

CONCLUSIONS

VR relaxation appears helpful for workplaces. However, limited longer-term data, controlled trials, and naturalistic studies mean conclusions must be drawn cautiously.

Parental Educational Practices and Life Satisfaction: The Role of Positive Affect and Agreeableness in Adolescents

Introduction

Researchers have investigated the external elements that can condition a person's satisfaction with life, although it has been proven that they do not explain a large part of the phenomenon. For this reason, other variables such as perceived competence, personality styles and personal autonomy are being investigated more successfully. The main objective of this paper is to study the influence of parental educational practices on adolescent life satisfaction considering the role played by adolescent's positive affect and the agreeableness personality trait by implementing a statistical Mediation Model that explains such relationship.

Methods

The population sample is a total of 742 Spanish adolescents, of which 45.1% were boys and 51.5% were girls. The age ranged between 13 and 19 years (15.63, SD = 1.24).

Results

The results revealed that the relationship between parental educational practices and life satisfaction in adolescence was mediated by positive affect and the personality trait of agreeableness. Both variables did act as serial mediators in this relationship. On the other hand, the serial multiple mediation structural model explained 31.72% of the variability in life satisfaction for the dimension of affection and communication and promotion of autonomy, 29.70% for the psychological control dimension, 26.58% for self-disclosure and 28.21% for the humor dimension of parental educational practices.

Conclusion

These findings have important implications to understand the relationship between parental educational practices and the adolescent life satisfaction, indicating that different parental educational practices will have a positive or negative effect on adolescent positive affect, which will lead to increased or decreased agreeableness influencing the adolescent life satisfaction.

The bright and dark sides of the Dark Triad traits among senior managers: effects on organizational commitment

Senior managers play a fundamental role in organizations. They shape organizational strategy and culture, set the mission, including opportunities for new markets, and construct the business models. Their commitment to the organization is vital to organizational performance, yet research on personality traits of senior managers and their commitment to organizations is limited. Drawing on self-affirmation theory, we investigate the consequences of senior managers’ ‘Dark Triad Traits’ (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) for their organizational commitment. We use the three-component model developed by Allen and Meyer (J Occup Psychol 63:1–18, 1990) to distinguish affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Our findings from a dataset of 394 senior French managers collected between 2017 and 2018 show that narcissism positively affects continuance commitment and normative commitment. This study contributes to a neglected stream of research investigating the relationship between Dark Triad traits and organizational commitment; contributes to ‘destigmatizing’ Dark Triad traits, often considered problematic for individuals; and adds to the minimal research currently on manager personality and organizational commitment.

More efforts after feeling rejected: the effects of poor voice quality on employee's motivation to make high-quality voice

Purpose

This study aims to reveal the positive side of poor voice quality. Grounding on sociometer theory, this study proposes a model to explore how poor voice quality affects employee's motivation to make high-quality voice via managerial non-endorsement and employee's self-perception of poor voice quality.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample consisted of 247 employees and immediate supervisors of employees in China. To minimize potential common method biases and reduce participants' fatigue, a three-wave method for the data collection with each wave separated by one month was executed. Path analysis and bootstrapping approach were adopted to verify the hypotheses.

Findings

The results illustrated that employee's poor voice quality was able to promote employee's motivation to make high-quality voice via managerial non-endorsement and employee's self-perception of poor voice quality.

Originality/value

First, this study extends our knowledge of the consequences of employee voice. Second, this study further contributes to the literature on voice quality by emphasizing the positive effects of poor voice quality. Third, this study enriches the sociometer theory by the explication of chain mediation as a key mechanism through which poor voice quality affects employee's motivation to make high-quality voice.

How does coaching leadership promote employee's constructive deviance? Affective events perspective

Purpose

Adopting an affective events perspective, this paper proposes and tests a moderated-mediation model linking coaching leadership (CL), positive emotion at work (PEW), proactive personality (PP) and constructive deviance (CD).

Design/methodology/approach

Altogether, 225 supervisor-subordinate pairs from 45 teams within a large Chinese manufacturing enterprise took part in our study. To keep common method bias to a minimal, two sources of data were used (subordinates and their direct supervisors).

Findings

(1) CL and employee CD have a positive association; (2) employee PEW mediates the connection between CL and employee CD; (3) the positive association between CL and follower PEW is moderated by employee PP such that PP strengthens the CL-PEW relationship (4) employee PP accentuates the indirect impact of CL on employee CD via employee PEW. Specifically, the indirect link is insignificant when PP is low.

Originality/value

(1) The results of this study enrich the CD literature; (2) the work puts forward a simple but foundational framework for understanding the CL process; (3) the third contribution arises from examining the influence of employee PP on the relationship between CL and employee CD.

Wish-making during the COVID-19 pandemic enhances positive appraisals and job satisfaction

Guided by cognitive appraisal theory, we argue that wish-making is a conceptually distinct type of coping strategy and that wish-making during the COVID-19 pandemic has functional cognitive-affective consequences. Specifically, it facilitates positive appraisals of the pandemic, which then facilitate job satisfaction. Enhanced job satisfaction in turn reduces counterproductive work behavior during the pandemic. These arguments were tested via two empirical studies involving 546 Hong Kong employees surveyed on two consecutive working days during the pandemic. The individuals who made wishes during the pandemic reported more positive appraisals of the pandemic, which in turn promoted their job satisfaction and lowered their counterproductive work behavior. Crucially, wish-making had significant effects on positive appraisals above and beyond other coping strategies. Thus, we contribute to the employee coping literature by highlighting one relatively easy way for employees to combat the psychological effects of the pandemic (and other challenges in life) and regulate their affective well-being and behaviors at work. Namely, making wishes that envision a better future can enhance employees' job satisfaction, which in turn lowers counterproductive work behavior.

Powered by virtual realities: promoting emotional recovery through technology-based recovery interventions

Previous research indicates that short work breaks in nature can facilitate emotional recovery, but during a workday nature is not always accessible. We conducted two intervention studies (N = 51; N = 101) applying virtual reality technology in a short work break and examined the effect of the degree of immersion into nature and the type of nature (stimulating vs. calming) on the restorative experience and, in turn, on affective states. The results revealed that high immersion promotes being away and perceived fascination. Being away mediated the effect of high immersion on increased positive and decreased negative affect. Perceived fascination mediated the effect of stimulating nature on increased positive affect in both studies and decreased negative affect in Study 2. The present research highlights the unique benefits of virtual realities, degrees of immersion and different types of nature for recovery interventions in organisations.Practitioner Summary: Integrating virtual realities into the work environment is an emerging topic. The present research demonstrates that a short technology-based intervention via virtual reality enhances emotional recovery. The results provide interesting possibilities for the design of work breaks in situations where nature is not within reach or not accessible.

Effects of rectors’ narcissism on academics’ silence and commitment in the context of public universities

Purpose

This paper aims to focus on academics’ in four public universities located in Egypt to explore the effect of narcissistic leadership on affective, continuance and normative commitment approaches with and without the mediating effect of academics’ silence.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a convenience sampling in which academics were handed a questionnaire form to fill. In total, the authors distributed 280 forms and collected 214 completed questionnaire forms. A structural equation was used to determine the effect of narcissistic leadership on the organizational commitment (affective, continuance and normative) of academics. The same measure was later used to assess the mediating role of the academics’ silence on the aforementioned relationship.

Findings

The authors of this paper found that narcissistic leadership positively associates with academics’ silence. Moreover, their perceptions of the narcissism of their leaders alleviate academics’ emotional attachments (affective commitment) and moral obligations (normative commitment) toward their universities, whereas the same perceptions of the narcissism of their leaders have no effect on their continuance commitment. Finally, the authors discovered a significant role for academics’ silence in mediating the negative relationship between narcissistic leadership and their affective and normative commitments.

Originality/value

This paper contributes by filling a gap in leadership, HR management and organization literature in the higher education sector, in which empirical studies on the relationship between narcissistic leadership, academics’ silence and organizational commitment have been limited until now.

Understanding the effects of personality traits on solver engagement in crowdsourcing communities: a moderated mediation investigation

Purpose

Crowdsourcing communities enable companies to post challenges that are completed by solvers (workers); their success depends on engagement, requiring both creativity and effort. This study explores solver engagement in online crowdsourcing communities, advancing the theory of trait engagement by investigating the mediating roles of: (a) task-related self-efficacy in linking conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion, with solver engagement, and (b) task complexity in influencing the mediation.

Design/methodology/approach

215 valid responses were obtained from solvers engaged in the popular Chinese crowdsourcing community, Epwk.com, using an online questionnaire. PLS was then used to analyze the data.

Findings

Results show that self-efficacy mediates the relationships for conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion, with solver engagement. Moderated mediation analysis revealed that self-efficacy mediates the relationships for: (a) conscientiousness and extraversion, for only solvers with high task complexity; and (b) neuroticism, for only solvers with low task complexity.

Originality/value

The authors’ findings underscore the importance of accounting for solvers' situational contexts when examining the relationships between personality, self-efficacy and solver engagement in online crowdsourcing communities.

Personality Traits, Loneliness, and Affect Among Boxers

This study aimed to test the association between personality traits and affect among boxers and to figure out whether loneliness mediated this relationship. This study used The Big Five Personality Traits Scale, The UCLA Loneliness Scale, and The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) which were administered to N = 231 boxers (age: M = 20.28; SD = 2.60), of which 62% were male (n = 144) and 38% were female (n = 87). The results showed that (1) conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were negatively related with negative affect, neuroticism was positively associated with negative affect, and openness showed no relationship with negative affect; (2) conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness were all positively correlated with positive affect, neuroticism was negatively associated with positive affect, and openness showed no relationship with positive affect; (3) conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, and agreeableness were negatively related with loneliness and neuroticism was positively associated with loneliness; and (4) loneliness was positively associated with negative affect; loneliness was negatively associated with positive affect; and loneliness had mediating effect on the relationship between the personality traits and affect. Furthermore, these findings suggest that loneliness might be one mechanism explaining how boxer’s personality traits influence their athletic performance. Therefore, in the future, we should start by helping them reduce their loneliness to reduce their negative affect and improve their positive affect and also, in some degree, to enhance boxers’ athletic ability and mental quality health.

“Dirty” Workplace Politics and Well-Being

We build and empirically test an integrative model of gender, workplace politics, and stress by integrating social role theory and prescriptive gender stereotypes with the transactional theory of stress. To examine the effect of gender on the relation between exposure to non-sanctioned political influence tactics (NPITs; e.g., self-serving and socially undesirable behaviors such as manipulation and intimidation) and stress outcomes, we employed a daily diary design with 64 employed adults over the course of 12 working days. In support of our hypotheses, exposure to NPITs––that is, “dirty politics”––elicited a threat appraisal that, in turn, related to the activation of negative emotions. Moreover, unlike men, women who reported higher levels of NPITs experienced heightened levels of threat appraisal and ultimately negative emotions. We demonstrate that pairing social role theory with the transactional theory of stress is a useful approach for researchers interested in better understanding gender differences in the occupational stress process. Anyone interested in reducing stress in the workplace is encouraged not only to reduce the occurrence of NPITs, but also to consider ways to reduce the threat associated with them, especially for women.