Effects of Prior Robot Experience, Speed, and Proximity on Psychosocial Reactions to a Soft Growing Robot

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONSAfter viewing video vignettes of human interactions with a novel soft growing robot, we found that participants reported fewer perceived safety hazards, less anxiety and fear about robots, reduced social hesitancy about human-robot collaboration (HRC), and lower technology-induced fears of job insecurity. Unlike prior research with traditional rigid manipulators, we found that the manipulated proximity of the human-robot interactions was unrelated to any of these outcomes, suggesting closer interactions may be possible without adverse psychological resistance. On the other hand, fear of robots, perceived hazards, technology-induced job insecurity, and robot anxiety were all significantly lower when human-robot interactions were slower. Interestingly, participants with more extensive prior robot experience displayed preferences for faster HRC interactions. Many occupations are ripe for automation within the next two decades, yet technical and psychological barriers to adoption remain. Our research suggests that novel soft growing flexible robots may be a fruitful area for future advancements.

The impact of emotional contagion on workplace safety: Investigating the roles of sleep, health, and production pressure

Using emotional contagion theory and the Job Demands-Resources model as a theoretical foundation, we tested the proposition that higher levels of contagion of anger (i.e., a demand) vs. higher levels of contagion of joy (i.e., a resource) will be associated respectively with more vs. fewer sleep disturbances and health problems, which in turn are related to more workplace accidents and injuries. Moreover, we examined the moderating impact of production pressure (i.e., a contextual demand) on the relationship between emotional contagion and employee poor sleep and health. Data from 1000 employees in Italy showed that the conditional indirect effects of contagion of anger, but not of joy, on accidents and injuries via sleep and health problems were intensified as levels of production pressure increased. Furthermore, contagion of anger was positively associated with both sleep disturbances and health problems whereas contagion of joy was negatively related to only sleep disturbances. These findings suggest that the effect of anger that employees absorb during social interactions at work likely persists when coming at home and represents an emotional demand that impairs the physiological functions that regulate restorative sleep and energies recharging; and, this effect is even stronger among employees who perceived higher levels of organizational production pressure.

National work-family policies: Multilevel effects on employee reactions to work/family conflict

BACKGROUND: Despite considerable differences in national work-family (WF) policies offered in countries around the world, research concerning the implications of such policies for employee reactions to work-family and family-work conflict (WFC/FWC) is limited. OBJECTIVE: The current study examines the contextual role of country-level national WF policies as a moderator of the relationships between individual-level WFC/FWC and job stress, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, organizational commitment, and general health. METHODS: Using archival data sources, the ISSP Work Orientations Survey (2015) and the WORLD Policy Analysis Center Adults Labor Database (2014), multilevel analyses tested the predicted cross-level interaction effect in a sample of 49,637 individuals (54% female; M age = 48 years) nested across 36 countries. RESULTS: Results were largely counter to expectations: while more supportive national WF policies attenuated the positive relationship between FWC and job stress, it exacerbated the negative relationships between WFC and organizational commitment, WFC and job stress, and FWC and general health. CONCLUSIONS: Our study responds to calls to consider phenomena functioning at multiple levels of analysis. While reactions were more negative in countries with more robust national-level policies, it suggests an unexpected dark side of such policies. That is, it may not be enough to legislate the availability of national-level policies; it may also be needed to ensure that such policies are meeting employees’ needs.

Technology Advancements and Employees' Qualitative Job Insecurity in the Republic of Korea: Does Training Help? Employer-Provided vs. Self-Paid Training

While technological advancements have proliferated in our daily lives, they also pose threats to the job security of employees. Despite these growing concerns about technology-related job insecurity, little research has been carried out on the antecedents and outcomes of tech-related job insecurity. Using a cross-sectional, nationally representative survey sample of 28,989 Korean workers drawn from the Korean Working Conditions Survey, we examined the impacts of technology advancements on employee perceptions of technology-related qualitative job insecurity (i.e., perceived technology-related threat to the continued existence of valued job features) and subsequent effects on employees' work (i.e., work engagement, job satisfaction), health (i.e., sleep), and life (i.e., work-to-family conflict) outcomes. Furthermore, we investigated the extent to which employer-provided (versus self-funded) training buffers the adverse impacts of technology advancements and associated job insecurity. The path analysis results showed more technology changes were associated with higher job insecurity, which subsequently related to adverse outcomes. While employer-provided training helped workers to reduce the negative impacts of tech changes on job insecurity, workers who paid for their training reported more adverse outcomes in face of job insecurity. We discuss these results in light of the job demands-resources theory and practical implications to buffer the adverse impacts of technology advancements.

Integrated Patterns of Subjective Job Insecurity: A Multigroup Person-Centered Study

Past research attests to the pivotal role of subjective job insecurity (JI) as a major stressor within the workplace. However, most of this research has used a variable-centered approach to evaluate the relative importance of one (or more) JI facets in explaining employee physical and psychological well-being. Relatively few studies have adopted a person-centered approach to investigate how different appraisals of JI co-occur within employees and how these might lead to the emergence of distinct latent profiles of JI, and, moreover, how those profiles might covary with well-being, personal resources, and performance. Using conservation of resources (COR) theory as our overarching theoretical framework and latent profile analysis as our methodological approach, we sought to fill this gap. To evaluate the external validity of our study results, we used employee sample data from two different countries (Italy and the USA) with, respectively, n = 743 and n = 494 employees. Results suggested the emergence of three profiles (i.e., the "secure", the "average type", and the "insecure") in both country samples. The "secure" group systematically displayed a less vulnerable profile in terms of physical and psychological well-being, self-rated job performance, positive orientation, and self-efficacy beliefs than the "insecure" group, while the "average" type position on the outcomes' continua was narrower. Theoretically, this supports COR's notion of loss spirals by suggesting that differing forms of JI appraisals tend to covary within-person. Practical implications in light of labor market trends and the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.

Taking stock and moving forward: A textual statistics approach to synthesizing four decades of job insecurity research

We collected the abstracts of manuscripts examining job insecurity published between 1984 and 2019 and carried out a textual analysis to investigate the defining clusters, their development over time, and whether there was evidence of siloed knowledge. Results suggested that job insecurity research seems to be fragmented into disciplinary foci (organizational psychology, public health, economics, and sociology). Further analyses on the organizational psychology corpus, revealed 25 topics with distinct temporal trajectories: some were increasing (analytical advances and differentiation between cognitive and affective job insecurity) while other were decreasing (scale development). The remaining abstracts revealed 15 topics with more stable trajectories. Based on these results, we identified five areas for future organizational research on job insecurity: the changing labor market, the need to better understand the experiences of marginalized workers and non-work outcomes of job insecurity, the added-value of qualitative research, and the need to critically evaluate our assumptions as researchers. Plain Language Summary Since the paper by Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt, research on job insecurity has burgeoned. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, we collected the abstracts of all peer-reviewed manuscripts examining job insecurity published between 1984 and 2019 and carried out a textual analysis using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation and the Reinert method to investigate (a) the defining clusters of job insecurity research, (b) the development of such clusters over time, and (c) whether there was any evidence of siloed knowledge. Results suggested that indeed job insecurity research seems to be fragmented into four main disciplinary foci (organizational psychology, public health, economics, and sociology) with relatively little cross-fertilization. We conducted further analyses of the abstracts stemming from organizational research on job insecurity, revealing 25 topics with distinct temporal trajectories (e.g., “hot” topics including the increasing use of advanced analytic techniques and differentiation between cognitive and affective job insecurity) and “cold” topics including the development of job insecurity measures). The remaining abstracts revealed 15 topics with more stable research interests over time (e.g., a continued reliance on appraisal theories). Based on these results, we identified five areas for future organizational research on job insecurity based on: the changing labor market, the need to better understand the experiences of marginalized workers and non-work outcomes of job insecurity, the added-value of qualitative research, and finally the need to critically evaluate our assumptions as researchers.

COVID-19 moral disengagement and prevention behaviors: The impact of perceived workplace COVID-19 safety climate and employee job insecurity

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed recommendations for individual COVID-19 prevention behaviors, as well as guidance for the safe reopening of businesses. Drawing from previous research on occupational safety, business ethics, and economic stressors, we tested the hypothesis that more positive perceptions of the workplace COVID-19 safety climate would be associated with lower employee COVID-19 related moral disengagement. In turn, we predicted that higher COVID-19 moral disengagement would be associated with lower enactment of preventive behaviors both at work and in nonwork settings (i.e., a spillover effect). Further, we investigated whether employee job insecurity would impact organizational socialization processes, such that the relationship between the perceived COVID-19 safety climate and moral disengagement would be weaker at higher levels of job insecurity. By analyzing a three-wave lagged dataset of U.S. employees working on-site during the pandemic using a Bayesian multilevel framework, we found empirical support for the hypothesized moderated mediation model. We discuss the relevance of these findings (i.e., the spillover effect and the role of job insecurity) in light of the extant safety climate literature and outline how our findings have several implications for the scope and conceptualization of safety climate in light of the surge of new working arrangements, infectious diseases, and continuing employment instability.

In Whom Do We Trust? A Multifoci Person-Centered Perspective on Institutional Trust during COVID-19

Institutional trust plays a crucial role when a nation is facing mega crises (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) and has implications for employee work experiences and well-being. To date, researchers largely consider how institutional trust or trust in government may predict variables of interest in isolation. However, this variable-centered perspective ignores the possibility that there are subpopulations of employees who may differ in their trust in different institutions (i.e., the state government, the federal government). To address this, we examined institutional trust with two foci (i.e., trust in state government and trust in federal government) from a person-centered perspective. Using latent profile analysis and data from 492 U.S.-based employees, we identified five trust profiles: high trustors, federal trustors, state trustors, the ambivalent, and distrusters, and found that these profiles differentially predicted attitudes towards and behavioral compliance with CDC recommended COVID-19 prevention practices, job insecurity, affective commitment, helping behavior, and psychological well-being.

Work and Non-Work Sickness Presenteeism: The Role of Workplace COVID-19 Climate

OBJECTIVE

To test the role of workplace coronavirus disease (COVID-19) climate in shaping employee attitudes toward the CDC prevention guidelines and subsequent levels of work and non-work sickness presenteeism.

METHODS

Three waves of anonymous survey data were collected in October and December 2020 and February 2021. Participants were 304 employed adults in the U.S., of whom half were working onsite.

RESULTS

Time 1 workplace COVID-19 climate was positively associated with Time 2 employee attitudes toward the CDC prevention guidelines, which in turn predicted Time 3 levels of non-work and work sickness presenteeism.

CONCLUSIONS

The workplace can shape employee attitudes toward the CDC COVID-19 prevention guidelines and their work and non-work sickness presenteeism, thus highlighting the important role companies have in reducing community spread of the novel coronavirus in work and non-work settings.

Coping with job insecurity: Employees with grit create I-deals

Although job insecurity has been shown to predict numerous adverse outcomes, more is yet to be known about the mechanisms that explain when and why these effects will occur. Using social exchange as our theoretical foundation and three-wave lagged survey data collected from N = 300 employees within the United States, the current study found support for the contention that individuals with greater job insecurity pursue fewer idiosyncratic deals (I-Deals) with their employers. Fewer I-Deals in turn were associated with lower affective commitment, and higher turnover intentions, perceived psychological contract breach, and psychological contract violation. However, these indirect effects were conditional upon employee levels of grit (specifically, perseverance of effort), such that higher grit attenuated the negative relationship between job insecurity and the pursuit of I-Deals. Given that employees often have little control over the source of their experienced job insecurity (e.g., impending layoffs, a poor economy, announced merger or acquisition), these findings hold promise in potentially alleviating the well-documented negative outcomes of job insecurity through interventions designed to increase employee levels of grit and facilitate the creation of I-Deals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Caught between Scylla and Charybdis: How economic stressors and occupational risk factors influence workers' occupational health reactions to COVID-19

Workers and their families bear much of the economic burden of COVID-19. Even though they have declined somewhat, unemployment rates are considerably higher than before the start of the pandemic. Many workers also face uncertainty about their future employment prospects and increasing financial strain. At the same time, the workplace is a common source of transmission of COVID-19 and many jobs previously seen as relatively safe are now viewed as potentially hazardous. Thus, many workers face dual threats of economic stress and COVID-19 exposure. This paper develops a model of workers' responses to these dual threats, including risk perception and resource depletion as mediating factors that influence the relationship of economic stress and occupational risk factors with COVID-19 compliance-related attitudes, safe behavior at work, and physical and mental health outcomes. The paper also describes contextual moderators of these relationships at the individual, unit, and regional level. Directions for future research are discussed.

Economic stressors and the enactment of CDC-recommended COVID-19 prevention behaviors: The impact of state-level context

In order to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a list of recommended preventative health behaviors for Americans to enact, including social distancing, frequent handwashing, and limiting nonessential trips from home. Drawing upon scarcity theory, the purpose of this study was to examine whether the economic stressors of perceived job insecurity and perceived financial insecurity are related to employee self-reports of enacting such behaviors. Moreover, we tested propositions regarding the impact of two state-level contextual variables that may moderate those relationships: the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits and extensiveness of statewide COVID-19-related restrictions. Using a multilevel data set of N = 745 currently employed U.S. workers nested within 43 states, we found that both job insecurity and financial insecurity were negatively related to the enactment of the CDC-recommended guidelines. However, the state-level variables acted as cross-level moderators, such that the negative relationship between job insecurity and compliance with the CDC guidelines was attenuated within states that have a more robust unemployment system. However, working in a state with more extensive COVID-19 restrictions seemed to primarily benefit more financially secure workers. When statewide policies were more restrictive, employees reporting more financial security were more likely to enact the CDC-recommended guidelines compared to their financially insecure counterparts. We discuss these findings in light of the continuing need to develop policies to address the public health crisis while also protecting employees facing economic stressors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Economic stress, emotional contagion and safety outcomes: A cross-country study

BACKGROUND

Economic instability produced by financial crises can increase employment-related (i.e., job insecurity) and income-related (i.e., financial stress) economic stress. While the detrimental impact of job insecurity on safety outcomes has been extensively investigated, no study has examined the concurrent role of financial stress let alone their emotion-related predictors.

OBJECTIVE

The present cross-country research sought to identify the simultaneous effects of affective job insecurity and financial stress in predicting employee safety injuries and accidents under-reporting, and to examine the extent to which emotional contagion of positive/negative emotions at work contribute to the level of experienced economic stress.

METHODS

We performed multi-group measurement and structural invariance analyses.

RESULTS

Data from employees in the US (N = 498) and Italy (N = 366) suggest that financial stress is the primary mediator between emotional contagion and poor safety outcomes. Moreover, greater anger-contagion predicted higher levels of financial strain and job insecurity whereas greater joy-contagion predicted reduced economic stress.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support the relevance of considering the concurrent role of income-and employment-related stressors as predictors of safety-related outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications for safety are discussed in light of the globally increasing emotional pressure and concerns of income- and employment-related economic stress in today's workplace, particularly given the recent pandemic spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Precarious employment and self-reported experiences of unwanted sexual attention and sexual harassment at work. An analysis of the European Working Conditions Survey

Unwanted sexual attention (UWSA) and sexual harassment (SH) are prevalent experiences for women in working life and often accompanied by poor health. Despite increasing numbers especially of young people working in insecure and irregular employment settings, there is little empirical evidence if such precarious arrangements are associated with UWSA or SH. To investigate this, we used a representative sample of the European working population consisting of 63,966 employees in 33 countries who participated in the European Working Conditions Survey in 2010 or 2015. Precarious employment (PE) was assessed on the basis of seven indicators and a formative index derived from them: temporary employment, contractual duration < 1 year, schedule unpredictability, involuntary part-time, low information on occupational health and safety risks (OSH), low pay (wage < 60%), and multiple job-holding. We measured self-reported experiences of workplace UWSA during the last month and SH during the last 12 months each using a single-item questionnaire. Multi-level Poisson regressions were used to estimate prevalence ratios for UWSA and SH according to PE adjusted for survey year, age, education, type of household, migration background, job tenure, weekly working hours, occupational position, working sector, company size, workplace gender ratio, and visiting customers or clients. 0.8% of men reported UWSA in the last month and 2.6% of the women. SH in the last year was reported by 0.4% of the men and 1.3% of the women. For both men and women, PE was significantly associated with elevated prevalence of UWSA and SH, in particular when reporting schedule unpredictability, multiple job-holding and low information on OSH. Our results suggest that precariously employed individuals may be more prone to experience unwanted sexual behaviour at the workplace compared with workers in non-precarious settings.

Multilevel Job Demands and Resources: Cross-level Effects of Competing Organizational Facet-Specific Climates on Risky Safety Behaviors

Both individual demands (i.e., workload) and organizational demands and resources (i.e., production pressure and safety climates) may affect the likelihood that employees undertake risky safety behaviors in different ways. Adopting an organizational multilevel perspective, the aim of the present research was fourfold: (1) to examine the impact of individual-level job demands (i.e., workload) on the enactment of risky safety behaviors; (2) to evaluate the effects of coexisting and competing organizational facet-specific climates (i.e., for safety and for production pressure) on the above outcome; (3) to assess their cross-level interactions with individual job demands, and (4) to test the interaction among such organizational demands and resources in shaping risky behaviors. A series of multilevel regression models tested on surveydata from 1375 employees nested within 33 organizations indicated that high workload increases the likelihood of employees enacting risky safety behaviors, while organizational safety and production pressure climates showed significant and opposite direct effects on this safety outcome. Moreover, organizational safety climate significantly mitigated the effect of individual job demands on risky safety behaviors, while organizational production pressure climate exacerbated this individual-level relationship. Finally, organizational safety climate mitigates the cross-level direct effect of organizational production pressure climate on the enactment of risky safety behaviors.

Job insecurity and impression management

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to test competing models of the relationship between job insecurity and two forms of impression management (self- and supervisor-focused) on job performance. Specifically, does job insecurity lead to greater subsequent impression management; or, does preventative use of impression management subsequently lead to reductions in job insecurity? Additionally, how do these both relate to in-role performance?

Design/methodology/approach

Using two-wave survey data collected from 184 working adults in the USA and the two-step approach recommended by Cole and Maxwell (2003) and Taris and Kompier (2006), the authors tested cross-lagged relationship between job insecurity and both forms of impression management by comparing four different models: a stability model, a normal causation model (with cross-lagged paths from T1 job insecurity to T2 impression management), a reversed causation model (with cross-lagged paths from T1 impression management to T2 job insecurity) and a reciprocal causation model (with all cross-lagged paths described in the normal and reversed causation model).

Findings

Results were supportive of the reversed causation model which indicated that greater use of supervisor-focused impression management at Time 1 predicted lower levels of job insecurity at Time 2 (after controlling for prior levels of job insecurity); moreover, job insecurity at Time 1 was then significantly associated with more positive in-role behaviors at Time 2. Moreover, the test of the indirect effect between T1 impression management and T2 performance was significant.

Originality/value

These results suggest that impression management clearly plays an important role in understanding the relationship between job insecurity and job performance. However, employees appear to utilize impression management as a means of pre-emptively enhancing their job security, rather than as a tool to reactively cope with perceived job insecurity.

The Safety Climate Assessment Tool (S-CAT): A rubric-based approach to measuring construction safety climate

INTRODUCTION

This paper presents the development and validation of a new rubric-based Safety Climate Assessment Tool (S-CAT). The S-CAT gives companies the opportunity to use rubric descriptors, rather than traditional Likert scale responses, to self-assess their level of safety climate maturity and receive a composite score benchmarked against others in the S-CAT database.

METHOD

The S-CAT is composed of 37 separate indicators of 8 safety climate factors identified by construction industry subject matter experts. The eight factors have between three and six indicators each with its own rubric-based response-scale. The scales comprise descriptors for five levels of safety climate maturity ranging from "inattentive" to "exemplary." Nine hundred and eighty-five respondents working in the construction industry completed the S-CAT via our online safety climate website. We used company recordable incident rates (RIR) to assess the S-CAT's criterion-related validity.

RESULTS

Cronbach alphas for each factor ranged from 0.77 to 0.90 and a confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized eight factor structure with a higher-order safety climate factor. Seven of the eight factor scores, as well as the overall S-CAT score, were significantly negatively correlated with RIR. Moreover, a relative weights analysis indicated that a weighted combination of the eight safety climate factors explained 27% of the variance in organizational RIR.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide evidence that the S-CAT is a reliable tool allowing construction companies to self-assess their safety climate along eight different factors. Moreover, the S-CAT was significantly associated with organizational injury rates. Practical applications: We discuss how companies can use the rubric descriptors to strengthen their safety management systems and improve their safety climate maturity.

Do Temporary Workers More Often Decide to Work While Sick? Evidence for the Link between Employment Contract and Presenteeism in Europe

European employees are increasingly likely to work in cases of illness (sickness presenteeism, SP). Past studies found inconsistent evidence for the assumption that temporary workers decide to avoid taking sick leave due to job insecurity. A new measure to identify decision-based determinants of SP is presenteeism propensity (PP), which is the number of days worked while ill in relation to the sum of days worked while ill and days taken sickness absence. We investigated the link between employment contract and PP using cross-sectional data from 20,240 employees participating in the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey. Workers were grouped by type and duration of employment contract. The link between contract and PP was estimated using a multilevel Poisson model adjusted for socio-demographical, occupational and health-related covariates. We found that European employees worked 39% of the days they were ill. In contrast to previous studies, temporary workers were significantly more likely to decide for presenteeism than permanent workers were, especially when the contract was limited to less than 1 year. Controlling for perceived job insecurity did just marginally attenuate this association. Presenteeism was also more common among young and middle-aged workers; however, we did not find a significant interaction between contract and age affecting presenteeism. In conclusion, the employment contract is an important determinant of presenteeism. Our results give reason to believe that temporary workers show increased attendance behavior independent of job insecurity, because they are less likely to have access to social protection in case of illness.

Cognitive failures in response to emotional contagion: Their effects on workplace accidents

The purpose of this study was to examine contagion of positive and negative emotions among employees as an antecedent of cognitive failures and subsequent workplace accidents. Using emotional contagion theory and the neural model of emotion and cognition, we tested the proposition that higher contagion of anger (i.e., a negative emotion accompanied by dysfunctional cognition) would be associated with greater cognitive failures, whereas higher contagion of joy (i.e., a positive emotion accompanied by pleasant information processing, attention and positive cognition) would be associated with fewer cognitive failures. In turn, cognitive failures were predicted to be related to higher rates of subsequent workplace accidents. Using a two-wave lagged design, anonymous survey data collected from N = 390 working adults in the U.S. supported the hypothesized mediation model. Specifically, emotional contagion of anger positively predicted cognitive failures, whereas emotional contagion of joy negatively predicted cognitive failures. Furthermore, cognitive failures positively predicted experienced accidents and fully mediated the relationship between contagion of joy/anger and experienced accidents. These findings suggest that lapses in cognitive functioning may be prevented by positive emotions (and enhanced by negative emotions) that employees absorb during social interactions at work and represent a more proximal source of accidents in comparison to emotions. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed in light of the globally rising rates of workplace accidents and related costs for safety.

Is More Always Merrier? Intersectionality as an Antecedent of Job Insecurity

As modern workplace environments are becoming increasingly diverse, the experiences of disenfranchised employees have become a topic of great interest to scholars and business professionals alike. While the experiences of individuals with singular stigmatized identities have been well-established, a dearth of research has assessed how intersectionality, i.e., holding multiple stigmatized identities, combine and intertwine to shape workplace experiences. We contribute to a growing literature on intersectionality by assessing the extent to which employees identifying with multiple stigmatized identities may constitute a risk factor for the experience of job insecurity, a prevalent and potent economic stressor. Additionally, we propose that job insecurity will partially mediate the relationship between intersectionality and a variety of adverse workplace outcomes associated with increased job insecurity perceptions. In order to test these hypotheses, we collected survey data from 449 employed individuals within the United States over two timepoints. Results of the tests of our direct and indirect hypotheses revealed that individuals with more stigmatized identities reported greater perceptions of job insecurity, and intersectionality indirectly affected workplace outcomes via this heightened job insecurity. Our results highlight a new antecedent of job insecurity for consideration and is meant to motivate others to approach diversity-related research questions with multiple identities in mind, in an effort to encapsulate the full spectrum of one’s experience based on their identity makeup.

Voices carry: Effects of verbal and physical aggression on injuries and accident reporting

Recent years have witnessed a staggeringly high number of workplace aggressive behaviors as well as employee accidents and injuries. Exposure to workplace aggression is associated with a host of negative psychological, emotional, and physiological outcomes, yet research relating workplace aggression to employee safety outcomes is lacking. This study aims to examine the association between exposure to workplace physical and verbal aggression with workplace injuries and underreporting of accidents and near misses. Furthermore, deriving from social exchange theory, we attempt to reveal an underlying mechanism in the association between workplace aggression and underreporting of accidents and near misses. Finally, borrowing from aggression research on intimate relationships, we compare the relative importance of exposure to physical and verbal aggression on workplace injuries and underreporting. Using survey data from 364 public transportation personnel, we found that both verbal and physical aggression significantly predict workplace injuries as well as underreporting. Moreover, mediation analyses found that the relationship between verbal and physical aggression and underreporting was largely explained by an increase in negative reporting attitudes (rather than decreases in safety knowledge or motivation). Compared to exposure to physical aggression, exposure to verbal aggression best predicted employee underreporting of accidents and near misses. However, physical aggression was a better predictor of injuries than verbal aggression. Given these findings, organizational leaders should strive to foster a safe working environment by minimizing interpersonal mistreatment and increasing employee attitudes for reporting accidents.

'First, Do No Harm': The Role of Negative Emotions and Moral Disengagement in Understanding the Relationship Between Workplace Aggression and Misbehavior

Workplace aggression is a critical phenomenon particularly in the healthcare sector, where nurses are especially at risk of bullying and third-party aggression. While workplace aggression has been frequently examined in relation to health problems, less is known about the possible negative impact such aggression may have on the (un)ethical behavior of victims. Our research aims to fill this gap. Drawing on literature on counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and the social-cognitive literature on aggression we investigated in two independent studies (NStudy1 = 439; NStudy2 = 416), the role of negative emotions - in particular anger, fear, and sadness, - and of moral disengagement (MD) in the paths between workplace aggression, CWB and health symptoms. The focus on these relationships is rooted in two reasons. First, misbehavior at work is a pervasive phenomenon worldwide and second, little research has been conducted in the healthcare sector on this type of behavior despite the potential importance of the issue in this context. We empirically tested our hypotheses considering a specific form of workplace aggression in each study: workplace bullying or third-party aggression. Results from the two empirical studies confirm the hypotheses that being target of workplace aggression (bullying or third-party aggression) is not only associated with health symptoms but also with misbehavior. In addition, the results of structural equation modeling attest the importance of examining specific discrete negative emotions and MD for better understanding misbehavior at work. In particular, this research shows for the first time that anger, fear, and sadness, generally aggregated into a single dimension, are indeed differently associated with MD, misbehavior and health symptoms. Specifically, in line with the literature on discrete emotions, while sadness is only associated with health symptoms, anger and fear are related to both health and misbehavior.

Economic stress and well-being: Does population health context matter?

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of county-level population health determinants in predicting individual employee reactions to economic stress. Using multilevel modeling and a population health perspective, we tested a model linking nationally representative individual-level data (N = 100,968) on exposure to economic stressors and county-level population health determinants (N = 3,026) to responses on a composite measure of individual well-being that included the facets of purpose, community, physical, and social well-being, as well as life satisfaction. Results indicate that higher income- and employment-related economic stress were significantly related to poorer well-being. Additionally, living in a county with more positive population health determinants was significantly predictive of individual well-being. Finally, the Level-1 relationship between income-related stress and well-being was significantly attenuated for individuals living in counties with more positive population health determinants. In contrast, employment-related stress had a stronger negative relationship with well-being for individuals who lived in counties with more positive population health determinants. We discuss these findings in light of conservation of resources and relative deprivation theories, as well as how they may extend the scientific foundation for evidence-based social policy and evidence-based intervention programs aimed at lessening the effects of economic stress on individual well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record

Comparing recall vs. recognition measures of accident under-reporting: A two-country examination

A growing body of research suggests that national injury surveillance data significantly underestimate the true number of non-fatal occupational injuries due to employee under-reporting of workplace accidents. Given the importance of accurately measuring such under-reporting, the purpose of the current research was to examine the psychometric properties of two different techniques used to operationalize accident under-reporting, one using a free recall methodology and the other a recognition-based approach. Moreover, in order to assess the cross-cultural generalizability of these under-reporting measures, we replicated our psychometric analyses in the United States (N=440) and Italy (N=592). Across both countries, the results suggest that both measures exhibited similar patterns of relationships with known antecedents, including job insecurity, production pressure, safety compliance, and safety reporting attitudes. However, the recall measures had more severe violations of normality and were less correlated with self-report workplace injuries. Considerations, implications, and recommendations for using these different types of accident measures are discussed.

Disentangling the roles of safety climate and safety culture: Multi-level effects on the relationship between supervisor enforcement and safety compliance

Despite increasing attention to contextual effects on the relationship between supervisor enforcement and employee safety compliance, no study has yet explored the conjoint influence exerted simultaneously by organizational safety climate and safety culture. The present study seeks to address this literature shortcoming. We first begin by briefly discussing the theoretical distinctions between safety climate and culture and the rationale for examining these together. Next, using survey data collected from 1342 employees in 32 Italian organizations, we found that employee-level supervisor enforcement, organizational-level safety climate, and autocratic, bureaucratic, and technocratic safety culture dimensions all predicted individual-level safety compliance behaviors. However, the cross-level moderating effect of safety climate was bounded by certain safety culture dimensions, such that safety climate moderated the supervisor enforcement-compliance relationship only under the clan-patronage culture dimension. Additionally, the autocratic and bureaucratic culture dimensions attenuated the relationship between supervisor enforcement and compliance. Finally, when testing the effects of technocratic safety culture and cooperative safety culture, neither safety culture nor climate moderated the relationship between supervisor enforcement and safety compliance. The results suggest a complex relationship between organizational safety culture and safety climate, indicating that organizations with particular safety cultures may be more likely to develop more (or less) positive safety climates. Moreover, employee safety compliance is a function of supervisor safety leadership, as well as the safety climate and safety culture dimensions prevalent within the organization.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer: Country- and state-level income inequality moderates the job insecurity-burnout relationship

Despite the prevalence of income inequality in today's society, research on the implications of income inequality for organizational research is scant. This study takes the first step to explore the contextual role of national- and state- level income inequality as a moderator in the relationship between individual-level job insecurity (JI) and burnout. Drawing from conservation of resource (COR) theory, we argue that income inequality at the country-level and state-level threatens one's obtainment of object (i.e., material coping) and condition (i.e., nonmaterial coping) resources, thus serving as an environmental stressor exacerbating one's burnout reactions to JI. The predicted cross-level interaction effect of income inequality was tested in 2 studies. Study 1 consisting of 23,778 individuals nested in 30 countries explored the moderating effect of country-level income inequality on the relationship between individual JI and exhaustion. Study 2 collected data from 402 employees residing in 48 states in the United States, and tested the moderating effect of state-level income inequality on the relationship between JI and burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion and cynicism). Results of both studies converge to support the exacerbating role of higher-level income inequality on the JI -burnout relationship. Our findings contribute to the literature on psychological health disparities by exploring the contextual role of income inequality as a predictor of differential reactions to JI. (PsycINFO Database Record

Bending without breaking: A two-study examination of employee resilience in the face of job insecurity

Job insecurity is a ubiquitous threat that has been linked to a number of undesirable emotional, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes. Against this backdrop, popular and academic accounts have hailed the ability to bounce back from threats (i.e., resilience) as a crucial competency. We leverage the cognitive-relational model of stress to examine the extent to which resilience (operationalized as both dispositional tendencies and coping strategies) mitigates several negative consequences of job insecurity. We tested the moderating role of resilience in 2 studies. In a cross-sectional study with a sample of 1,071 university employees in the United States, we found resilience weakened the relationships between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and psychological contract breach. In a 2-wave study with 335 employees demographically representative of working population of the United States, we found that resilience mitigated the negative consequences of job insecurity on emotional exhaustion and interpersonal counterproductive work behaviors assessed 1 month later. Results of both studies converge to support the proposed buffering effect of resilience during times of job insecurity. (PsycINFO Database Record

Transformational and passive leadership as cross-level moderators of the relationships between safety knowledge, safety motivation, and safety participation

INTRODUCTION

While safety knowledge and safety motivation are well-established predictors of safety participation, less is known about the impact of leadership styles on these relationships.

METHOD

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the positive relationships between safety knowledge and motivation and safety participation are contingent on transformational and passive forms of safety leadership.

RESULTS

Using multilevel modeling with a sample of 171 employees nested in 40 workgroups, we found that transformational safety leadership strengthened the safety knowledge-participation relationship, whereas passive leadership weakened the safety motivation-participation relationship.

CONCLUSIONS

Under low transformational leadership, safety motivation was not related to safety participation; under high passive leadership, safety knowledge was not related to safety participation.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

These results are discussed in light of organizational efforts to increase safety-related citizenship behaviors.

Leader-member exchange: Moderating the health and safety outcomes of job insecurity

INTRODUCTION

Job insecurity has been repeatedly linked with poor employee health and safety outcomes. Although research on high quality leader-member exchange (LMX) has demonstrated many beneficial effects, no research to date has examined the extent to which positive LMX might attenuate those adverse health and safety-related consequences of job insecurity. The current study extends research in this area by specifically examining the buffering impact of LMX on the relationship between job insecurity and safety knowledge, reported accidents, and physical health conditions. Furthermore, the study also examines whether positive LMX mitigates the typically seen negative impact of job insecurity on supervisor satisfaction.

METHODS

The hypotheses were tested using survey data collected from 212 employees of a mine located in southwestern United States.

RESULTS

As predicted, job insecurity was related to lower levels of supervisor satisfaction, more health ailments, and more workplace accidents, and was marginally related to lower levels of safety knowledge. Results indicated that LMX significantly attenuated these observed relationships.

CONCLUSIONS

The quality of the dyadic relationship between supervisor and subordinate has a significant impact on the extent to which job insecurity is associated with adverse health and safety outcomes.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Practical implications for supervisor behavior and developing high quality LMX are discussed in light of today's pervasive job insecurity.

Organizational safety climate and supervisor safety enforcement: Multilevel explorations of the causes of accident underreporting

According to national surveillance statistics, over 3 million employees are injured each year; yet, research indicates that these may be substantial underestimates of the true prevalence. The purpose of the current project was to empirically test the hypothesis that organizational safety climate and transactional supervisor safety leadership would predict the extent to which accidents go unreported by employees. Using hierarchical linear modeling and survey data collected from 1,238 employees in 33 organizations, employee-level supervisor safety enforcement behaviors (and to a less consistent extent, organizational-level safety climate) predicted employee accident underreporting. There was also a significant cross-level interaction, such that the effect of supervisor enforcement on underreporting was attenuated in organizations with a positive safety climate. These results may benefit human resources and safety professionals by pinpointing methods of increasing the accuracy of accident reporting, reducing actual safety incidents, and reducing the costs to individuals and organizations that result from underreporting.

Does safety climate predict safety performance in Italy and the USA? Cross-cultural validation of a theoretical model of safety climate

Previous studies have acknowledged the relevance of assessing the measurement equivalence of safety related measures across different groups, and demonstrating whether the existence of disparities in safety perceptions might impair direct group comparisons. The Griffin and Neal (2000) model of safety climate, and the accompanying measure (Neal et al. [NGH], 2000), are both widely cited and utilized. Yet neither the model in its entirety nor the measure have been previously validated across different national contexts. The current study is the first to examine the NGH measurement equivalence by testing whether their model of safety climate predicting safety performance is tenable in both English speaking and non-English speaking countries. The study involved 616 employees from 21 organizations in the US, and 738 employees from 20 organizations in Italy. A multi-group confirmatory factor analytic approach was used to assess the equivalence of the measures across the two countries. Similarly, the structural model of relations among the NGH variables was examined in order to demonstrate its cross-country invariance. Results substantially support strict invariance across groups for the NGH safety scales. Moreover, the invariance across countries is also demonstrated for the effects of safety climate on safety knowledge and motivation, which in turn positively relate to both compliance and participation. Our findings have relevant theoretical implications by establishing measurement and relational equivalence of the NGH model. Practical implications are discussed for managers and practitioners dealing with multi-national organizational contexts. Future research should continue to investigate potential differences in safety related perceptions across additional non-English speaking countries.

Opposite Ends of the Same Stick? Multi-Method Test of the Dimensionality of Individualism and Collectivism

The construct of individualism–collectivism (IND-COL) has become the definitive standard in cross-cultural psychology, management, and related fields. It is also among the most controversial, in particular, with regard to the ambiguity of its dimensionality: Some view IND and COL as the opposites of a single continuum, whereas others argue that the two are independent constructs. We explored the issue through seven different tests using original individual-level data from 50 studies and meta-analytic data from 149 empirical publications yielding a total of 295 sample-level observations that were collected using six established instruments for assessing IND and COL as separate constructs. Results indicated that the dimensionality of IND-COL may depend on (a) the specific instrument used to collect the data, (b) the sample characteristics and the cultural region from which the data were collected, and (c) the level of analysis. We also review inconsistencies, deficiencies, and challenges of conceptualizing IND-COL and provide guidelines for developing and selecting instruments for measuring the construct, and for reporting and meta-analyzing results from this line of research.