Conceptualizing and validating workplace belongingness scale

Workplace Belonging of Women Healthcare Professionals Relates to Likelihood of Leaving

Purpose

There is a high rate of attrition of professionals from healthcare institutions, which threatens the economic viability of these institutions and the quality of care they provide to patients. Women professionals face particular challenges that may lower their sense of belonging in the healthcare workplace. We sought to test the hypothesis that workplace belonging of women healthcare professionals relates to the likelihood that they expect to leave their institution.

Methods

Participants of a continuing education course on women's leadership skills in health care completed a survey about their experiences of belonging in workplace and their likelihood of leaving that institution within the next 2 years. An association between workplace belonging (measured by the cumulative number of belonging factors experienced, scale 0-10) and likelihood of leaving (measured on a 5-point Likert scale) was evaluated using ordinal logistic regression. The relative importance of workplace belonging factors in predicting the likelihood of leaving was assessed using dominance analysis.

Results

Ninety-nine percent of survey participants were women, and 63% were clinicians. Sixty-one percent of participants reported at least a slight likelihood of leaving their healthcare institution within the next 2 years. Greater workplace belonging was found to be associated with a significant reduction in the reported likelihood of leaving their institution after accounting for the number of years having worked in their current institution, underrepresented minority status, and the interaction between the latter two covariates. The workplace belonging factor found to be most important in predicting the likelihood of leaving was the belief that there was an opportunity to thrive professionally in the institution. Belonging factors involving feeling able to freely share thoughts and opinions were also found to be of relatively high importance in predicting the likelihood of leaving.

Conclusion

Greater workplace belonging was found to relate significantly to a reduced likelihood of leaving their institution within the next 2 years. Our findings suggest that leaders of healthcare organizations might reduce attrition of women by fostering workplace belonging with particular attention to empowering professional thriving and creating a culture that values open communication.

Remote, Disconnected, or Detached? Examining the Effects of Psychological Disconnectedness and Cynicism on Employee Performance, Wellbeing, and Work-Family Interface

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations worldwide have implemented remote working arrangements that have blurred the work-family boundaries and brought to the forefront employees' sense of disconnectedness from their workplace (i.e., organizational disconnectedness) as a concern for multiple organizational outcomes. Cynicism, a job burnout subdimension, refers to a negative and excessively detached response to relational overload at work. While both workplace disconnectedness and cynicism involve a toxic sense of detachment, they refer to different psychological mechanisms. The present study aims to examine how employee workplace disconnectedness differs from their cynicism, and how both constructs differentially exert their detrimental effects on employee performance, work-family interface, and wellbeing. Using anonymous survey data collected online in 2021 and 2022 from a sample of in-person and flexible workers nested within organizations, conceptual distinctiveness between workplace disconnectedness and cynicism was supported. Measurement invariance across the two groups was supported, and subsequent structural invariance analyses suggested a similar pattern of results for flexible and in-person workers. Specifically, compared to disconnectedness, cynicism exerted higher negative effects on mental health and higher positive effects on cognitive failures and family-to-work conflict. Conversely, compared to cynicism, disconnectedness exerted higher negative effects on performance and work-to-family conflict. That is, feeling indifferent toward others particularly affects mental health and errors, while feeling excluded especially hampers productivity and family life. Theoretical and practical (e.g., inclusive leadership, support groups) implications of these results are discussed in light of the globally rising rates of hybrid work arrangements and related costs for employee wellbeing and productivity.

Mind the gender gap: The social neuroscience of belonging

Gender gaps persist in the 21st century, in many aspects of society and in many types of organisation. There are earnings gaps in almost all domains, reports of glass ceilings and the “missing middle” in business, finance, law and politics, and dramatic under-representation of women in many branches of science, even in the most “gender equal” countries. This is despite decades of effort to address them, including targeted legislation and many Diversity and Inclusion initiatives. Early essentialist, competence-based explanations for the existence of gender gaps have been largely discredited at the research level, although their persistence in the public consciousness and at the level of education and training can still negatively bias both individual self-belief and organisational processes. Contemporary essentialist explanations are now emerging, with claims that such gaps are the manifestations of the presence or absence of endogenous, brain-based characteristics underpinning career progression or career preferences. The focus remains on the individual as the source of gender imbalances. Less attention has been paid to the contextual aspects of organisations where gender gaps are evident, to inclusion (or the lack of it), or the availability of unbiased reward and progression pathways. Advances in 21st century social cognitive neuroscience are revealing the importance of external organisational processes as powerful brain-changing forces, with their potentially negative impact on self-belief and a sense of belonging. Key research is demonstrating the cortical and behavioural consequences of negative social experiences, with the activation of core inhibitory pathways associated with low self-esteem, lack of engagement, and eventual withdrawal. This paper will argue that reference to such research will provide better explanations for the persistence of gender gaps, and offer evidence-based insights into addressing gender gap issues. Importantly, this is not a rejection of an endogenous, brain-based explanation for gender gaps but the elaboration of a better-informed 21st century model, flagging up the need to take factors such as cultural stereotyping and organisational bias into account in any drive toward true gender equity, or genuinely levelled playing fields.

The effects of spiritual expression at work during the COVID-19 crisis: evidence from a private hospital

Purpose

This paper aims to explain the effects of spirituality at work on organizational commitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. In detail, it investigates whether the active part of spirituality at work, called spiritual expression, has a positive influence on organizational commitment in a hierarchically organized private hospital. In addition, it explores whether the sense of belonging at work mediates spiritual expressions and a person’s commitment toward the employer during times of severe crisis.

Design/methodology/approach

This study tests the hypotheses on a range of health-care personnel, including doctors, nurses, physicians, administrators, managers and cleaning staff. This study draws on quantitative data of more than one third of the employees of that private Austrian hospital (n = 96) and on insights from 12 qualitative interviews conducted over a period of four months during spring 2021.

Findings

This study finds strong evidence that spiritual expression at work is directly related to belonging and indirectly related to organizational commitment through belonging. This study extracts eight concurrent themes impacting the effectiveness of spirituality at work in the hospital.

Originality/value

This study provides insights on how to facilitate spiritual expression at work to increase flexibility and resilience in the health-care sector. All in all, spirituality at work is better understood as a “multi-authored” process, in which all participants, including the patients, co-create its meaning and implications.

Exploring the inclusive leadership and employee change participation relationship: the role of workplace belongingness and meaning-making

Purpose

By drawing on the need to belong theory, the paper aims to propose a moderated mediation model to examine the role of workplace belongingness and meaning-making in the positive relationship between inclusive leadership and employee change participation.

Design/methodology/approach

Participants were 155 employees from 31 teams from a branch of a multinational pharmaceutical company located in an EU country. The company faces constant legal, regulatory and technology-related changes after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak. Data were collected in three waves, approximately three weeks apart between March 2020 and May 2020. To test the mediating effect of workplace belongingness were performed first – a series of regression analyses – and second, bootstrapping to assess the statistical significance of the indirect effect (Preacher and Hayes, 2008).

Findings

Workplace belongingness mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and employees change participation. Further, the research findings provide support that meaning-making moderates the relationship between workplace belongingness and change participation as well as the indirect relationship between inclusive leadership and change participation through workplace belongingness such that the positive relationships are stronger when meaning-making is higher.

Practical implications

The results indicate that should leaders and change management practitioners manage to influence positively employees' workplace belongingness by employing inclusive practices and procedures; leaders and change management practitioners will increase the level of participation during change and further the results note from an applied perspective the importance of mean-making as a facilitating factor during change in organizational settings. Relevant suggestions are made.

Originality/value

The findings provide new insights into how inclusive leadership and workplace belongingness can affect employees' change participation. Further, the research findings note the significant moderating role of meaning-making regarding both the relationship between workplace belongingness and change participation as well as the indirect relationship between inclusive leadership and change participation through workplace belongingness.

Diversity climate and workplace belongingness as organizational facilitators of tacit knowledge sharing

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between diversity climate and tacit knowledge sharing and the mediating role of workplace belongingness between them.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample for this study consists of 495 employees (52.1% male, n = 258) drawn from varied occupational groups. Data were collected online using existing self-report measures. Hypotheses were tested with ordinary least squares regression-based path analysis.

Findings

This study provides evidence that diversity climate is positively related to workplace belongingness and tacit knowledge sharing. Furthermore, workplace belongingness is positively related to tacit knowledge sharing. Finally, workplace belongingness mediates the relationship between diversity climate and tacit knowledge sharing.

Practical implications

The findings highlight the need for organizations to promote fair human resource (HR) policies and practices by enacting and judiciously implementing policies that promote inclusiveness and fair treatment to stand a chance of benefiting from employees’ tacit knowledge sharing.

Originality/value

This study builds on existing research but shifts the focus to the influence of diversity climate on tacit knowledge sharing and thus sets up a precedent for subsequent research in this area. This study is, therefore, the first to attempt to link diversity climate to tacit knowledge sharing through workplace belongingness.

Self-deception, emotional neglect and workplace victimization

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to define workplace victimization as any behavior that impairs employees’ basic psychological needs and explores the mutually interactive association between trait self-deception; emotional neglect, especially by supervisors, and workplace victimization.

Design/methodology/approach

Workplace victimization is identified as a pervasive problem in organization. This paper zeroes in on self-deception and emotional neglect as two possible antecedents of workplace victimization, explores the genesis of the two concepts and analyzes their conceptual relationship with each other and with workplace victimization. Based on the conceptual analysis, it identifies the lack of intentionality as a common element in both constructs and identifies a set of possible frameworks linking self-deception, emotional neglect and workplace victimization for future research.

Findings

This paper explores four possible frameworks to model the expected association while advocating for investigation of these given models to check whether one has considerable expository success than other by either connecting or disassociating these two constructs.

Research limitations/implications

The amount of linkage between self-deception and emotional neglect at workplace is worth investigating, and this research paper presents several possible models that might help to focus and organize the future workplace investigations.

Practical implications

The current paper postulates that supervisors’ and subordinates’ ability to display appropriate leadership and follower behavior and interaction will be impaired if they are high in trait self-deception and have been the victim or perpetrators of emotional neglect.

Originality/value

In the workplace, self-deceptive individuals display behaviors such as conscientiousness, resilience, optimism and competitiveness that are considered characteristics of good employees and, hence, are more likely to be promoted to supervisory positions, where emotional neglect of others such as subordinates becomes more pertinent.