The path to a healthy workplace: A critical review linking healthy workplace practices, employee well-being, and organizational improvements.

This review synthesizes much of the previous research since 1990 linking healthy workplace practices in organizations to employee well-being and organizational improvements. Based on the review, both a direct and an indirect link between healthy workplace practices and organizational improvements are proposed. Five general categories of healthy workplace practices were identified in the literature: work-life balance, employee growth and development, health and safety, recognition, and employee involvement. Previous research also suggests that the link between these practices and employee and organizational outcomes is contingent on the effectiveness of communication within the organization and the alignment of workplace practices with the organizational context. Finally, a discussion of some limitations of previous research and recommendations for future work in the area of healthy workplace practices are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Healthy workplace practices and employee outcomes.

The current study explored the relationship between employee satisfaction with different workplace practices (i.e., employee involvement, growth and development, work-life balance, recognition, health, and safety) and employee outcomes (i.e., organizational commitment, emotional exhaustion, mental well-being, and turnover intentions). A total of 152 university faculty and staff completed a web-survey. Overall, regression results indicated that satisfaction with healthy workplace practices was predictive of employee outcomes. In addition, satisfaction with employee involvement practices played a central role in predicting employee outcomes, whereas satisfaction with the other healthy workplace practices was somewhat less influential. Overall, our results suggest that organizations may increase some of the benefits of different healthy workplace programs for employees if they rely on employee involvement in program development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Consulting to the intelligence community: An employee assistance program model.

Over the past 2 decades, the agencies and employees of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) have increasingly come to appreciate the organizational, counterintelligence, and occupational health value added by employee assistance programs (EAPs). The author presents the rationale for such programs; discusses their core components; mentions some of the key professional and ethical challenges faced by consulting psychologists who provide these services; discusses the unique obstacles that must be overcome, in light of the common concern among IC employees that use of mental health services will adversely affect their continuing eligibility for a security clearance and/or their career; gives examples of policies and practices that encourage the use of services by IC employees; and suggests areas for further program development and research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Employee self-enhancement motives and job performance behaviors: Investigating the moderating effects of employee role ambiguity and managerial perceptions of employee commitment.

This study examined the effects of employee self-enhancement motives on job performance behaviors (organizational citizenship behaviors and task performance) and the value of these behaviors to them. The authors propose that employees display job performance behaviors in part to enhance their self-image, especially when their role is not clearly defined. They further argue that the effects of these behaviors on managerial reward recommendation decisions should be stronger when managers believe the employees to be more committed. The results from a sample of 84 working students indicate that role ambiguity moderated the effects of self-enhancement motives on job performance behaviors and that managerial perceptions of an employee's commitment moderated the effects of those organizational citizenship behaviors that are aimed at other individuals on managers' reward allocation decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of tuition payment and involvement on benefit from a management development program.

Investigated the effects of participants' investments of tuition, time, and effort on benefit from a management development program. Measures of benefit consisted of a summated rating scale and the economic scale of the Allport-Vernon Study of Values. Ss were 99 industrial executives in a 5-yr program. Those who paid part of their tuition, spent relatively more time in the program, and found the program difficult, benefited more. It is concluded that programs which do not require commitment and effort are not likely to achieve their immediate value objectives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of employee loyalty and formality in voicing discontent.

This study extends prior research on voice, loyalty, and postvoice outcomes by examining a variety of methods by which an employee may choose to voice a dispute. The authors argue that more loyal employees may prefer and use less formal methods to voice discontent and that the use of less formal voice methods relates to less job search activity and lower intent to quit. This study also investigated the interrelation between loyalty, voice method, and satisfaction with the attempt to resolve the dispute. Findings from a sample of university staff employees (N = 452) provide support for the hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: A meta-analysis.

Based on 7,939 business units in 36 companies, this study used meta-analysis to examine the relationship at the business-unit level between employee satisfaction-engagement and the business-unit outcomes of customer satisfaction, productivity, profit, employee turnover, and accidents. Generalizable relationships large enough to have substantial practical value were found between unit-level employee satisfaction-engagement and these business-unit outcomes. One implication is that changes in management practices that increase employee satisfaction may increase business-unit outcomes, including profit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Getting even for customer mistreatment: The role of moral identity in the relationship between customer interpersonal injustice and employee sabotage.

Research on the dark side of organizational behavior has determined that employee sabotage is most often a reaction by disgruntled employees to perceived mistreatment. To date, however, most studies on employee retaliation have focused on intra-organizational sources of (in)justice. Results from this field study of customer service representatives (N = 358) showed that interpersonal injustice from customers relates positively to customer-directed sabotage over and above intra-organizational sources of fairness. Moreover, the association between unjust treatment and sabotage was moderated by 2 dimensions of moral identity (symbolization and internalization) in the form of a 3-way interaction. The relationship between injustice and sabotage was more pronounced for employees high (vs. low) in symbolization, but this moderation effect was weaker among employees who were high (vs. low) in internalization. Last, employee sabotage was negatively related to job performance ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It's not me, it's you: A multilevel examination of variables that impact employee coaching relationships.

Employee coaching, which we consider to be a critical part of the performance management process, is coaching done by a manager or supervisor with his or her direct reports. The current article builds on recent research on the importance of the employee coaching relationship by investigating individual difference and contextual variables that contribute to the quality of employee coaching relationships. The study uses a multilevel modeling approach to test the effects of such variables as supervisor leadership style, emotional intelligence, empathy, implicit person theory, trust, and feedback environment on employees' perceptions of the coaching relationships they share with their supervisors. Overall, supervisors' individual consideration, empathy, trust, and the feedback environment all accounted for significant variance in employees' evaluations of coaching relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of situational constraints, role stressors, and commitment on employee altruism.

This study investigated relations between 3 work-related stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict, and organizational constraints) and altruistic behavior in the workplace. It was predicted that each stressor would be negatively related to altruism and that these relations would be moderated by affective commitment (AC). Data from 144 incumbent-supervisor dyads revealed that all 3 stressors; were weakly and negatively related to altruism. Two of these relationships were moderated by AC, although not as predicted. Organizational constraints were positively related to altruism among those reporting high levels of AC but negatively related among those reporting low levels of AC. The pattern was exactly opposite for role conflict. Implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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, 1974] vs. other). The implications and future research directions of these results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The changing workforce: The role of health psychology.

Because the federal government is the largest payer of all health costs, unbridled increases in the health workforce have profound fiscal implications. Recent efforts to control health spending through modifications of health delivery systems are related to the consequences of the unlimited production of health professionals. However, the federal government has established processes to review physician workforce changes, and these mechanisms have become important in accessing federal training monies. Psychologists have no concerted workforce policy and receive little federal training money. Moreover, other health professionals have attained statutory authority to perform and provide the same services as psychologists. This diffusion of professional functions impedes the ability to assess the status of the workforce and the development of psychology as a health profession. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's mathematics achievement: The role of parents' perceptions and their involvement in homework.

Two studies examined the accuracy of parents' assessment of their children's mathematics performance and how this relates to the time parents spend on children's homework. Fourth, 5th, and 6th graders completed a mathematics test. Their parents then predicted their child's test performance. Parents overestimated their children's mathematics scores (Study 1: 17.13%; Study 2: 14.40%). The time parents spent helping their children with mathematics homework was unrelated to children's mathematics performance, parents' predictions of their children's mathematics performance, and the accuracy of parents' predictions of their children's mathematics performance. Although increasing parents' knowledge of their children's mathematics competency should remediate poor mathematics performance of U.S. children, neither homework nor traditional report cards effectively inform parents regarding their children's mathematics performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the role of individual differences in the prediction of workplace aggression.

This study investigates the relationship between individual differences and the incidence of workplace aggression in a sample of employees from a transportation company and a public school system. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that measures of trait anger, attribution style, negative affectivity, attitudes toward revenge, self-control, and previous exposure to aggressive cultures accounted for 62% of the variance in the participants' self-reported incidence of workplace aggression. Further research on workplace aggression is advocated, focusing on the role of individual differences and their interactions with organizational and group-level variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual reactions to high involvement work processes: Investigating the role of empowerment and perceived organizational support.

This study sought to understand how high involvement work processes (HIWP) are processed at the employee level. Using structural equation modeling techniques, the authors tested and supported a model in which psychological empowerment mediated the effects of HIWP on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and job stress. Furthermore, perceived organizational support (POS) was hypothesized to moderate the relationships between empowerment and these outcomes. With exception for the empowerment-job satisfaction association, support was found for our predictions. Future directions for research and the practical implications of our findings for both employees and organizations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hazard exposure differentiation necessary for the identification of the accident-prone employee.

Because the theoretical and actual accident distributions for 737 workers were so much alike and few accident-prone individuals were identified, a critierion-group study of personality differences by accident-proneness was impractical. The importance of this controlling of the hazard-exposure variable was emphasized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal effects of lean production on employee outcomes and the mediating role of work characteristics.

The author discusses results from a 3 year quasi-experimental field study (N=368), which suggest negative effects on employee outcomes after the implementation of 3 lean production practices: lean teams, assembly lines, and workflow formalization. Employees in all lean production groups were negatively affected, but those in assembly lines fared the worst, with reduced organizational commitment and role breadth self-efficacy and increased job depression. A nonequivalent control group had no negative changes in outcomes. Mediational analyses showed that the negative effects of lean production were at least partly attributable to declines in perceived work characteristics (job autonomy, skill utilization, and participation in decision making). The study also shows the longitudinal effects of these work characteristics on psychological outcomes. Implications for lean production, work design, and employee well-being are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do it right this time: The role of employee service recovery performance in customer-perceived justice and customer loyalty after service failures.

Integrating justice and customer service literatures, this research examines the role of customer service employees' behaviors of handling customer complaints, or service recovery performance (SRP), in conveying a just image of service organizations and achieving desirable customer outcomes. Results from a field study and a laboratory study demonstrate that the dimensions of SRP--making an apology, problem solving, being courteous, and prompt handling--positively influenced customer satisfaction and then customer repurchase intent through the mediation of customer-perceived justice. In addition, service failure severity and repeated failures reduced the positive impact of some dimensions of SRP on customer satisfaction, and customer-perceived justice again mediated these moderated effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parents' motivations for involvement in children's education: An empirical test of a theoretical model of parental involvement.

This study examined the ability of a theoretical model to predict types and levels of parental involvement during the elementary and middle school years. Predictor variables included parents' motivational beliefs about involvement, perceptions of invitations to involvement from others, and perceived life context variables. Analyses of responses from 853 parents of 1st- through 6th-grade students enrolled in an ethnically diverse metropolitan public school system in the mid-southern United States revealed that model constructs predicted significant portions of variance in parents' home- and school-based involvement even when controlling for family socioeconomic status. The predictive power of specific model constructs differed for elementary and middle school parents. Results are discussed in terms of research on parental involvement and school practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ego involvement: A critical examination of some methodological issues.

To further explore the parameter of ego involvement, college Ss were given tasks on conditions of high and low ego involvement. The results confirmed that degree of ego involvement can facilitate task performance, but not to the degree heretofore thought. Ss have a higher level of aspiration on tasks in which they are ego-involved, but ego-involvement instructions are most effective when S realizes he is participating in an experiment where the dimension of ego-involvement is being explored, i.e., he has the appropriate set. Interest in doing well on a task was seen as a valid measure of ego involvement for at least some Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)