The following study examines the impact that perceptions of organizational continuity (POC) have on organizational identification (OI) and organizational outcomes, including organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and turnover intentions. It was proposed that POC would be an important factor in determining OI, OCBs, and turnover intentions. In order to test this proposition, a scale was developed that measured an individual’s POC within their organization with regards to the organization’s culture and history. A survey was distributed among working individuals that contained the new measure of POC and other established measures of an organization’s culture and values. The sample consisted of 394 participants. The results showed that the construct of POC consisted of perceiving the organization’s culture and values as continuous over time. Additionally, the measure predicted OCBs and turnover intentions. POC did not, however, predict these outcomes over and above OI. Mediation analyses showed that OI mediated the relationship between POC and OCBs/turnover, thus, providing evidence to show that POC is a contributing factor in the development of an individual’s identification with an organization. This investigation extends research in the area of OI from the social identity perspective by providing the basis for understanding and measuring one of the components that leads to identification with an organization.

As college students are preparing to enter the workforce as professionals, it is important that we examine their explicit and implicit attitudes toward older workers to investigate what organizations can do on behalf of older workers. For instance, organizations may have policies that are giving preferential treatment toward older workers and reinforcing younger workers’ negative attitudes. For the present study, I used a scenario based-procedure in which participants read about an older worker who has been promoted based on an employment policy that favors older workers or the most competent workers. I examined students’ pre- and post explicit and implicit attitudes toward older individuals for each condition. Students in the preferential treatment condition did not have significantly different explicit attitudes from students in the merit condition, thus Hypothesis 1 was supported. Aside from treatment, students’ post implicit attitudes significantly decreased (i.e., were less negative) from students’ pre-implicit attitudes. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was partially supported. In addition, students in the preferential treatment condition exhibited only negative emotions toward the older worker and not harmful behaviors. Therefore, Hypothesis 3 was partially supported. Finally, there was no impact of preferential treatment toward older workers on students’ aging anxiety. Implications of these findings with regard to both implicit and explicit attitudes toward older workers are discussed.

This research examined if differences in social categories between two groups, natural—born U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants with deferred action (DACA) led to differences in self-perceptions at work in areas such as Occupational Self-Efficacy (OSE), Organization Based Self-Esteem (OBSE), and Perceived Employability (PE). Additionally, the effect of Perceived Supervisor Similarity (PSS) on these relationships was also observed. Results showed significant differences only in PE with the DACA group having an unexpectedly higher level than the citizen group. The model was supported as OSE, OBSE, and PSS all significantly predicted PSS in both groups. Lastly, interaction effects were only found in the citizen group with PSS moderating the relationship between OSE and OBSE predicting PE. Specifically, PSS affected levels of PE at high levels of OSE and at low levels of OBSE. Lastly, I explored how temporal self-appraisals may have lead the DACA group to be less of an out-group along with additional implications to this field of research with this population.

The primary objective of this study is to foster career outcomes such as job satisfaction and turnover intentions in early childhood educators (ECEs). ECEs are defined as individuals teaching children from the age range of birth to 5 years old and work in child care programs. The focus on ECEs population was due to the fact they work in demanding environments with little wage incentives, and as a result, they experience high levels of job dissatisfaction, which in turn leads to turnover. Research has demonstrated that most ECEs are intrinsically motivated, but previous research has not quantitatively tested this construct in a model. A third objective is to explore the role of person-organization fit (P-O fit) and person-job fit (P-J fit) as mediators. Prior research has examined fit a mediator for the K-12 teacher population but it has not been explored in ECEs. The last objective of this study is to investigate distributive justice on career outcomes through P-O fit and P-J fit. Data for the study were collected from a community-based sample. The participants were teachers that worked in the field of early childhood education. Our findings show educators’ motivation and perceptions of organizational justice have a considerable impact on their career outcomes. Our results provide support for the mediation model that we hypothesized. This study can also assist in the selection of early childhood educators by utilizing the intrinsic motivation to work with children to identify which educators are intrinsically motivated and assess their fit as it relates to a specific organization.

Autonomy is one of the most commonly studied job characteristics in the work design literature and is commonly associated with large and positive effects on job satisfaction. There is reason to believe that autonomy may interact with personality characteristics to affect attitudinal outcomes, but prior research has tended to focus on the original growth-need-strength construct as a potential moderator with mixed results. One glaring gap in the literature is the lack of research that examines the Big Five constructs of personality as a potential class of moderators. Grant, Fried, and Juillerat (2010) have suggested additional research into the Big Five as moderators of individuals' attitudinal reactions to job characteristics. Moreover, several researchers (e.g., Dudley, Orvis, Lebiecki, & Cortina, 2006; Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002; Major, Turner, & Fletcher, 2006) have called for increased attention to the facets of the Big Five in conducting such research. This dissertation addressed these two gaps in the research literature. First, the study examined conscientiousness as a potential moderator of the relationship between the job design characteristic of autonomy and the outcomes of job satisfaction and person-job fit. Second, the study tested specific hypotheses regarding these interactions using both the global construct of conscientiousness and the narrower sub-traits--or facets--that exist underneath the broader trait. This dissertation also contributes to the research literature by creating a new measure of person autonomy fit adapted from an existing person job fit measure (Cable & DeRue, 2002) and by showing that person autonomy fit mediates the effect of autonomy and job satisfaction and person job fit. Data were collected at two time points from 181 employees at a national wholesale distribution cooperative. Participants came from the corporate office and 10 independently owned locations across the United States, and held a wide variety of jobs. The results indicated strong main effects for autonomy and conscientiousness and its facets on job satisfaction, and a strong effect of autonomy on person-job fit, but did not find evidence of interactions between autonomy and conscientiousness or any of its facets. Moreover, the results indicate that person autonomy fit mediates the effect of autonomy on these two attitudinal outcomes. Based on these results, I suggest that organizations interested in creating work environments that foster high levels of job satisfaction can do so using at least two mechanisms: 1) by selecting individuals with higher levels of conscientiousness and 2) by providing high levels of autonomy in the workplace. I also argue that the potential payoff of providing autonomous work environments is far higher than for selecting workers predisposed to be more satisfied with their jobs. Finally, I suggest that more research is needed to understand the complex interaction between individual differences and workplace environments.

Workplace aggression has been associated with a number of detrimental employee and organizational outcomes, both at work and away from work. This dissertation includes three studies that expand our knowledge of the implications of workplace aggression in the work and nonwork domains. Further, this research illuminates the processes through which this relationship occurs by utilizing various sources of data from employees in a variety of contexts including universities, long term health care, and the USDA Forest Service. In Study 1, which was published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, multi-source data are utilized to identify the indirect effects of coworker-reported workplace aggression on self and significant-other reported work-family conflict via self-reported psychological detachment from work. Study 2 identifies an indirect effect of workplace aggression on parental warmth via increased perceived stress utilizing longitudinal data from the Work, Family, and Health Network. Finally, Study 3 utilizes data from the USDA Forest Service to examine associations between workplace aggression and safety outcomes. Workplace aggression was found to be associated with increased resource depletion (i.e., rumination, cognitive failure) and decreased workplace safety (i.e., increased workplace accidents, decreased safety compliance). Workplace aggression was indirectly associated with safety participation and workplace injuries via cognitive failure and rumination, respectively. Safety climate, an organizational resource, moderated the relationship between rumination and safety behaviors. Finally, the indirect effect of coworker aggression on safety compliance via rumination was found to be conditional on low levels of safety climate, while the indirect effect of supervisor aggression on safety participation via rumination was also found to be conditional on low levels of safety climate. The current body of work provides implications for developing workplace interventions to reduce negative outcomes of workplace aggression, such as general stress management and recovery from work interventions. Several avenues for future research are suggested as well, including examining objective health outcomes of workplace aggression, utilizing longitudinal designs, and identifying additional moderators of the association between workplace aggression and employee outcomes.

In this dissertation, I investigated job satisfaction from a dynamic perspective. Specifically, I integrated the momentum model of job satisfaction with the affective shift model and crossover theory in an effort to move beyond traditional, static conceptions of job satisfaction and other constructs. Recent research and theoretical development has focused on the meaning of job satisfaction change for workers and how such change impacts their decisions to leave an organization. To extend this line of inquiry, I posited hypotheses pertaining to: (a) job satisfaction change with respect to positive work behavior (i.e., organizational citizenship behavior, family-supportive supervisor behavior); (b) the potential moderating effect of changes in negative work events (i.e., job demands, interpersonal conflict) on the relation between job satisfaction change and turnover intentions change and positive work behavior; and (c) the crossover of job satisfaction change from managers to employees and the potential underlying behavioral mechanisms. An archival dataset collected by the Work, Family & Health Network was used to investigate the aforementioned phenomena. Data were collected at two time points with a six-month interval via face-to-face computer-assisted personal interviews from individuals working at 30 facilities from a U.S. extended-healthcare organization. In total, data from 184 managers and 1,524 of their employees were used to test hypotheses. Data were analyzed using multilevel structural equation modeling. In an extension of the momentum model, I found that managers’ job satisfaction change positively related to changes in employee reports of their FSSB; in addition, I replicated prior findings in which job satisfaction change negatively related to turnover intentions change. Furthermore, based on my integration of the momentum model and the affective shift model, I tested the proposition that changes in negative work events (i.e., job demands, interpersonal conflict) would moderate the relationship between changes in job satisfaction and focal outcomes. For certain operationalizations of negative work events, hypothesis testing revealed significant interactions with respect to changes in all three outcomes: turnover intentions, OCB, and FSSB. The form of the interactions, however, deviated from my predictions for models including changes in turnover intentions and OCB, although my predictions were supported for models including changes in FSSB. In my integration of the momentum model and crossover theory, the associated hypotheses were met with very limited support. Specifically, the relationship between managers' job satisfaction change and employees' job satisfaction change approached significance, but the relationship between managers' level of job satisfaction and their employees' subsequent level of job satisfaction did not receive support. Similarly, the proposed mediational mechanisms (i.e., managers' OCB and FSSB) of these crossover relations went unsupported. In sum, while my contributions to the momentum model and the affective shift model were notable, my proposed integration of the momentum model and crossover theory was met with limited support. Overall, findings from this dissertation yield important implications for both theory and practice, as they may draw more attention to changes in job satisfaction, as well as the potentially beneficial role of changes in perceived negative work events.

Research on vocational behavior has made progress in identifying broad personality traits associated with career indecision; however, important questions remain unanswered about the temporal stability of relationships between broad personality traits and Career Decidedness (CD), and about the role of narrow personality traits as predictors of CD, both of which were addressed in this longitudinal field study. A total of 2,046 undergraduate students completed an online personality inventory and CD questionnaire. A sub-group (N=267) responded to a follow-up questionnaire seven months later. Results indicated, as hypothesized, that CD correlated positively with the broad (Big Five) personality traits, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. However, CD did not correlate as expected with the broad trait, extraversion, and correlated significantly and inversely with the broad trait, neuroticism, only for low-achievement students. Results showed that the narrow traits of optimism and work drive correlated significantly and positively with CD, and that these narrow traits accounted for more variance in CD (11.2%) than broad traits (.5%). CD correlated positively with chronological age, as predicted. However, Career Decidedness only increased through the first three of four years of college, and contrary to predictions, showed a non-significant decline in the senior year. In an unexpected finding based only on the sub-group who completed the second set of questionnaires, the relationship of personality and CD strengthened over the 7-month span of this study, yet instability within CD warrants caution. Results suggest questions for future research and implications for practice in vocational psychology.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Millennials' beliefs and attitudes and how that will affect their conception of the employer-employee psychological contract. This analysis should provide a greater understanding of how the childhoods of Millennials have affected their attitudes for life and career aspirations. Further, it explores retention strategies for workplace culture, management style, and growth and advancement.

It is generally assumed that monetary incentivization is the most effective means of motivating organizationally-beneficial behaviors. Individuals, under this line of thought, pursue their own objective self-interest above all else. However, evidence is being uncovered that indicates that human motivation may be a much more complicated facet of the human psyche. The purpose of this study is to examine the deeper underpinnings that drive people work that might lie beyond financial rewards. In order to do this, the Shakedown Café, a student-run restaurant on Pitzer College’s campus, will be examined. This specific organization is of particular interest because it does not have the ability to reward employees in the manner that most businesses are able to employ. In looking at the Shakedown, the author's direct experiences while working in the restaurant, observations, a variety or intra-organizational correspondences, and modern organizational behavior theories will be utilized. The findings of this research indicate that the human drives to learn, bond with others, and defend oneself and one's surroundings are all just as important aspects of motivation as is the drive to acquire money. Within the organization of interest, these drives manifest themselves through organizational purpose, group learning, and shared leadership. From this example of the Shakedown Café, it is suggested that proliferation of financial rewards in today's organizations may well be an outdated model of motivating which could be prohibiting organizations and the people within them from reaching their full potentials.