Just as society has changed a lot within the past 100 years, the concept of identity has also evolved significantly. A big factor in the evolution of identity has been the realization that social and group phenomena influence all conceptualizations of identity. In this review, I explore identity through the lens of Optimal Distinctiveness theory (ODT), which proposes that humans have two opposing social motives (distinctiveness and inclusiveness) that position them amidst an internal battle over identity. I start by defining identity and the self, including the distinction between the two. Next, I explore identity formation and different types of identity (personal, social, collective, and organizational). After that, I analyze the central identity motives of belonging and self-expression. Finally, I discuss theoretical approaches to the central question of this paper: when thinking about identity, what is the optimal balance between conformity and individuality? By reviewing the existing literature, I have found that the optimal balance between distinctiveness and inclusiveness is none other than a balancing act. While identity can loosely be thought of as how a person defines themself both as an individual and in relation to others, it is evidently a very complex concept; there are multiple different types of identity, each of which involve balancing the need to fit in with the need to be unique. In order to reach optimal distinctiveness, it is vital for individuals to regularly engage in social interactions, reflect on their identity motives, and recognize the importance of both individuality and conformity.

To date, research that examines individuals who work and go to school generally aims to examine the effects of doing so on their academic performance. Little literature is available that examines the effects that these dual roles can have on the organization (e.g., lower levels of commitment and higher rates of absenteeism and turnover). Understanding such effects can assist organizations in managing their employees and developing programs tailored to them, such as career counseling. A literature review is presented which examines both the constructs of the multiple forms of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover, and the research currently available on student workers. A study was conducted which examined the differences in levels of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover intentions in employees who attend school as compared to employees who do not. It was hypothesized that student workers and participants enrolled in school would differ in their commitment levels, absenteeism rates, and turnover intentions. The sample consisted of 364 participants. In this sample, 314 participants were currently enrolled in college-level classes, where 169 of the participants were categorized as students who worked, and 85 participants were categorized as workers who studied. Results suggest that employees of an organization who are not enrolled in school are likely to have higher levels of affective commitment, lower turnover intentions, and are likely to miss work more frequently. Additionally, it was found that students who work have lower overall organizational commitment and higher academic commitment compared to workers who study. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The post secondary educational system has come under increased scrutiny due to rising costs and lower numbers than expected of students graduating with their Bachelor's degrees. Many studies have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of student mentoring programs as a viable resource to increase retention and graduation rates. Research on the predictors of academic success has been inconsistent. This current study used archival data from the Office of Institutional Research (IR) database and California State University, San Bernardino Faculty/Student Mentor Program to conduct a matched sample analysis comparing mentored students with non mentored students. Both files were drawn from the same specified period (fall 2003 to fall 2012 academic years) based on a set of control and outcome variables provided with the datasets. Overall, the academic performance of mentored students, based on retention rate, graduation rate, credits completed, and grade point average were similar to that of non mentored students. A logistic regression indicated that at least one variable may be a good predictor of graduation rates (Pre-College Courses). Further research is needed to determine if mentoring, specifically peer mentoring, is an effective resource that supports student success.

This study was designed to investigate the moderating effect of embeddedness on the commitment and turnover intentions relationship. Embeddedness was examined as a key variable that links the commitment and turnover literatures together. Job embeddedness was expected to moderate the relationship between job commitment and job turnover intentions, while organizational embeddedness was expected to moderate the relationship between organizational commitment and organizational turnover intentions. Responses from 154 employed individuals were collect for this study. Data was collected using a web-based survey format. Psychometric data was collected with the use of a demographics questionnaire, as well as embeddedness (job and organizational), organizational commitment, and turnover intentions scales. A moderated regression analysis found that both job and organizational embeddedness moderated the commitment-turnover relationship, but in the opposite way as proposed. These relationships can help us better understand why employees remain within their organizations and jobs.

Heavy Work Investment (HWI), the extent to which individuals invest energy and effort into doing their work, has recently been studied in regards to job-related outcomes and work-life conflict. However, research is negligible on the influence HWI (i.e., workaholism and work engagement) may have on psychological well-being when an individual performs “meaningful” work. Specifically, the present study investigated the role of HWI in the relationships between work meaningfulness and the psychological well-being outcomes of perceived stress, life satisfaction, and the emotional exhaustion sub-dimension of burnout. The existing literature on work meaningfulness, the extent to which an individual considers their work to be valuable and worthwhile, provides positive implications for an individual’s well-being. Additionally, given that workaholism is considered “bad” and that work engagement is considered “good”, the aim of this study was to shed light on whether the presence of HWI moderated the relationship between work meaningfulness and psychological well-being. The sample contained 219 individuals who were either full time working professionals or part time working college students. Hayes’ PROCESS Command was used to test the moderation and mediation effects. Results indicated that workaholism and work engagement did not moderate the relationships of interest. However, work engagement did mediate these relationships. Implications, limitations, and avenues for future research are discussed.

The following study attempted to operationalize the willingness to work hard component of Hogan’s RAW model of employability. Willingness to Work Hard, the W in the model, appears to be multi-faceted; a qualitative synthesis of themes suggests that the construct may be dispositional. I examined proactive personality by using the G ProACT scale to help understand the multi-dimensionality of Willingness to Work Hard. Taking initiative, rigidness, planning, and anticipating opportunities were the four subscales that emerged. The purpose of my study was to collect evidence of construct validity for the proposed measure. I examined the relationship between the G ProACT measure and discriminant and convergent variables. A survey was distributed among CSUSB students that contained the G ProACT measure, demographic related items, and other established measures to gather construct validity. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with 488 participants indicated a lack of support for the hypothesized model. Specifically, the CFA revealed that three of the four factors did not relate to the presumed construct of proactive personality. Rigidness showed no relationship whereas anticipating opportunities and planning demonstrated marginal relationships to the underlying construct. Follow-up analyses indicated that taking initiative was the only subscale deemed as strongly factorable. Findings suggest a need to further explore taking initiative to determine if the measure appropriately captures the dispositional nature of Willingness to Work Hard. Future research should continue to examine if proactive personality or other motivational constructs are an appropriate fit for the RAW model.

In a recent model of employability, Hogan, Chamorro-Premuzic, and Kaiser (2013) defined employability as the ability to gain and maintain employment and find new employment when necessary. The authors presented employability as a formative construct containing an ability dimension (the ability to do the job), a social skills dimension (being rewarding to work with), and a motivational dimension (being willing to work hard). There is no question as to whether these three dimensions affect one’s level of employability; research is abundant on the positive relationships between intelligence, social and emotional skills, motivation and career success. However, little research has been conducted to empirically test employability models in their entirety. Thus, the purpose of this research was to test the RAW model of employability, using various indicators of the three RAW dimensions of employability using structural equation modelling. Surveys were administered electronically eliciting both a student and community sample. Marginal support was found for the hypothesized model with post hoc modifications producing an acceptable fitting model. Findings suggest that having the ability and motivation to do the job are related to being employable. However, being rewarding to work may not impact levels of employability, suggesting that employers may be asking for one thing while rewarding another.

The primary purpose of this study was to observe the dynamics between sexual harassment (SH), social identity theory, and justice perceptions. Furthermore, participants’ past experience with SH may have created conspiracy mentalities to explain outgroup members (e.g., males) behavior towards women. From a social identity perspective, women who strongly identify with being female should be more prone to view lower justice perceptions when a male investigator denies an SH claim, but equally high levels of justice perceptions when male or female investigators confirm SH and when a female investigator denies SH. Four scenarios were created where female participants (N = 283) were randomly assigned to one of four scenarios: Scenario 1 involved a female investigator who confirmed an SH claim; Scenario 2 involved a female investigator who denied an SH claim; Scenario 3 involved a male investigator who confirmed an SH claim; and Scenario 4 involved a male investigator who denied an SH claim. Regression analyses revealed that social identity (i.e., gender identity) had no predictive value regarding justice perceptions, but that the decision of the investigators influenced justice perceptions. Furthermore, an ANOVA was utilized and discovered significant mean differences between the four scenarios, suggesting that there were differences when the investigator confirmed SH (both male and female) or denied SH (both male and female), but there was no significant interaction. Participants had low justice perceptions when SH was denied and higher justice perceptions when SH was confirmed. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed, as well as directions for future research.

The present study was conducted to examine power use patterns and general power use strategies in organizations multidimensionally (i.e., downward, upward, and lateral directions of power use), to extend and explain previous findings by Kipnis et al. (1980), with reference to situational effects on multidimensional power use. The samples in this study consist of 230 full-time managers who were from eight local businesses, and a second sample of 140 college students who worked over 15 hours a week at the time of the study. Two exploratory factor analyses resulted in five commonly used power patterns and two general power use strategies based on the eight factors found from Kipnis et al. (1980) factor analysis. Significant differences between the manager's level and manager's power tactics use were not found in downward, upward, or lateral power tactics use when three corresponding MANOVA analyses were conducted. Two different measures of work unit size were used, and the relationship between the work unit size and manager's power tactics use was significant when tested by a stepwise multiple regression analysis. A final multivariate analysis with repeated measures found no significant difference between the two response formats used on the questionnaires given to the college student sample. The important implications and contributions of the present study are discussed as well as future research directions.

This paper attempts to place the role of transformational leadership within the stressor-strain process by investigating the potential indirect effects of the perceptions of transformational leadership on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) through its influence on perceptions of the communication climate and trust. Leaders perceived as being transformational will offer an ameliorating effect on employee appraisals of stressors (i.e., conflict). Non-task organizational conflict is a stressor that captures employees’ perceptions of conflict with co-workers attributable to organizational factors (e.g., unclear or contradictory policies). Previous studies have found this type of stressor to be associated with negative health and workplace outcomes. Counterproductive work behaviors are a form of workplace incivility in which employees engage in minor acts of retribution. Transactional theories of stress place particular importance on appraisal mechanisms to explain the experience of stress and subsequent engagement in CWBs. Volumes of literature in the field of leadership have suggested that transformational leaders have the ability to influence the ways employees make meaning of events at work. However, few studies have investigated the mechanisms by which employees’ appraisals of stressors are influenced. This study investigated the potential role of trust in leadership and communication climate as possible mechanisms. Organizational climate research focuses on how employees, through their social interactions, create and ascribe meaning to work events. Communication climate specifically focuses on the supportive and defensive qualities of an organization’s communicative norms and expectations. Previous research suggests trust to be a key factor in mitigating the experience of stressors and strains. Participants were primarily recruited from positions in higher education administration, using a sample of convenience, snowball sampling. Survey instruments were administered during two waves of data collection, for a full-panel sample of N = 123. Results suggested transformational leadership indirectly effected engagement in CWBs through its influence on the experience of non-task organizational conflict. Trust in leadership was not a significant predictor. Communication climate provided a mixed picture. While perceptions of a more supportive communication climate were associated with less conflict and fewer CWBs, the data did not support the indirect effects of transformational leadership through communication climate.