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.

The B. F. Goodrich Company spends considerable money selecting and training territory managers. The hiring of territory managers generally rests with local management's "intuition." Since 1967, a substantial percentage of these highly trained salesmen have separated from the company. It was within this attrition context, that an exploratory, objective, selection program was studied. A multiple discriminant function (multigroup model) was used to analyze three groups of B. F. Goodrich Territory Managers' California Psychology Inventory and Edwards Personal Preference Schedule test scores. The data revealed that known territory managers' group membership could be significantly predicted. A longitudinal study (one year later) showed a high percentage of accuracy (i.e. 82 percent) between predicted test score probability group membership and original group membership. Further the multiple discriminant function analysis of territory managers' test scores disclosed that only a few test variables need to be considered in making a probability hiring decision.

Political skill has been described as using human resources and manipulating social exchanges to influence group outcomes (Mintzberg, 1983). Researchers have found that political skill has significant relationships with constructs such as contextual performance, career satisfaction and leadership. Based on these empirical findings it may be beneficial to include a measure of political skill as part of a selection process. In this study, different methods were explored for measuring political skill that may be appropriate for administrative purposes such as the self-rated questionnaire called the Political Skill Inventory (PSI), a situational judgment test (SJT) and the structured interview. A sample of 100 graduate business students, most of whom had extensive managerial experience, completed the previously mentioned measures in exchange for feedback on their assessments. The participants were subsequently rated on political skill by their coworkers. The only significant association with the coworker scores was the PSI; neither the SJT nor the structured interview showed a significant relationship with the peer ratings of political skill. However, there were unforeseen technical limits to the measures that might explain the negative findings. The paper concludes with recommendations for improving the measures prior to a follow-up study.

Although most working adults possess a lay understanding of understaffing in the workplace and may, in fact, feel they are experiencing such a stressor, a review of the research literature reveals a general lack of empirical work on understaffing and its consequences. Hudson and Shen (2013, Development and testing of a new measure of understaffing. Paper presented at the Southern Management Association 2013 Meeting, New Orleans, LA) recently proposed a new model of understaffing that distinguished between two types of personnel deficiencies, manpower and expertise shortages, and linked these dimensions to worker well-being and attitudinal outcomes and identified likely mediating mechanisms. However, Hudson and Shen focused exclusively on the individual level of analysis. Therefore, the current study extends their work by investigating whether prior findings also hold at the group level of analysis. Participants in this study were members of 66 intact work groups and their supervisors (N = 57 for groups with matched supervisor data) from a variety of industries and organizations, who filled out a one-time survey. Results supported that perceptions of understaffing, both manpower and expertise, are shared within work groups and that there is some convergence between work groups and their supervisors regarding levels of understaffing. Results from correlational and regression analyses also supported differential relationships between manpower and expertise understaffing and group outcomes. Finally, structural equation models generally upheld Hudson and Shen's (2013) framework at the group level of analysis; results were consistent with group quantitative workload, potency, and role ambiguity serving as key mediators in the relationships between shared group perceptions of understaffing and unit well-being and attitudinal outcomes (i.e., group emotional exhaustion and cohesion). This study broadens our understanding of the construct of understaffing and presents a number of promising directions to be pursued in future research.

Career satisfaction has become an important research topic in both psychological and business research. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between general managers’ career satisfaction, the Big Five personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and openness), as well as narrow personality traits. An archival data source was used consisting of a sample of 6,042 general managers and 48,726 non-managers from various industries. I investigated the relationship between personality variables and general manager’s career satisfaction. Results indicated that several personality traits were significantly related to managers’ career satisfaction. For example, emotional resilience, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, optimism, and work drive were significantly related to general managers’ career satisfaction. Among all the personality traits, emotional resilience and optimism had the highest correlations with general manager’s career satisfaction. The difference between managers and non-managers were compared. Implications for future research and practice were discussed.