Winny Shen

The discussion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the context of the West is uniquely complex. AAPIs are often held up as “model minorities,” resulting in exclusion from many equity conversations. The lack of attention focusing on the experiences of AAPI communities in organizations and society suggests a need for us to remedy this. In this special issue, we curated a collection of eight papers that tackle a broad range of issues that advance conversations of AAPI communities and diasporas. We contend that it may be particularly beneficial to take a critical perspective (using Asian Critical Theory or AsianCrit) to bring to light and challenge systemic issues faced by AAPI communities in Western workplaces and societies. We also call for a post-model minority narrative, which has the potential to mitigate the adverse impacts that the notion of a model minority has on both intragroup and intergroup relations and well-being.

Given the centrality of the job performance construct to organizational researchers, it is critical to understand the reliability of the most common way it is operationalized in the literature. To this end, we conducted an updated meta-analysis on the interrater reliability of supervisory ratings of job performance (k = 132 independent samples) using a new meta-analytic procedure (i.e., the Morris estimator), which includes both within- and between-study variance in the calculation of study weights. An important benefit of this approach is that it prevents large-sample studies from dominating the results. In this investigation, we also examined different factors that may affect interrater reliability, including job complexity, managerial level, rating purpose, performance measure, and rater perspective. We found a higher interrater reliability estimate (r = .65) compared to previous meta-analyses on the topic, and our results converged with an important, but often neglected, finding from a previous meta-analysis by Conway and Huffcutt (1997), such that interrater reliability varies meaningfully by job type (r = .57 for managerial positions vs. r = .68 for nonmanagerial positions). Given this finding, we advise against the use of an overall grand mean of interrater reliability. Instead, we recommend using job-specific or local reliabilities for making corrections for attenuation.

Despite longstanding recognition that organisations are open systems that are affected by the broader environments in which they are situated, scholars have rarely examined how such macrosocietal conditions may influence processes and experiences within the workplace. Integrating research on selective incivility and mega-threats, we conceptualise the COVID-19 pandemic as a racial mega-threat and examine how this context may challenge organisations’ efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. Specifically, we predict that the protective benefits of diversity climate against incivility, an insidious form of modern discrimination incited by the COVID-19 pandemic, will be weaker for workers of Chinese descent compared to workers from other Asian subgroups, leading to more downstream negative outcomes for this group of workers (i.e., higher turnover intentions, poorer job performance and greater emotional exhaustion). This reflects the fact that workplaces are not impervious to the rising xenophobia toward China and Chinese people, who were particularly blamed and stigmatised for the emergence of this virus, as evident in North American society in early 2020. We found support for our predictions in a three-wave, time-separated study of Asian workers (N = 248) in the US and Canada during the first wave of the pandemic.

Although many workers speak with a non-native English accent, our understanding of this phenomenon is limited because prior work predominantly focused on men. This overlooks whether the biases women experience due to their accent manifests differently. To address this omission, we use an intersectional lens to examine how non-native accents associated with more gender-traditional countries may affect women’s hiring outcomes. We argue that the bias women with these accents face is subtle due to an association of non-native (vs. native) accents with perceptions of women’s warmth (whereas there are no such effects for men) and consequently higher perceptions of hireability. Yet we posit that the indirect effect on hireability occurs within feminine, but not masculine, industries, which ultimately undermines equity by pushing women with these non-native accents into lower pay and prestige occupations. We found support for our hypotheses in three vignette-based experiments conducted in Canada using a Mandarin accent. Managers and decision-makers need to be aware of the insidious bias women with these non-native accents experience because it may not be immediately apparent that an association of accent with higher ratings of warmth may undermine women at work. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at Supplementary Material

A large body of research has documented the ill effects of abusive supervision. However, this begs the question of why these behaviors continue to occur. To address this question, we contend that scholars need to understand how leaders—the perpetrators of these actions—make sense of abusive supervision. Specifically, drawing upon theories of appraisal and attribution, this paper examines leaders’ cognitions of who is accountable for incidents of abusive supervision (i.e., the leader or the subordinate) and their future expectations (i.e., are individuals likely to engage in the same behaviors subsequently or are capable of change) and how these appraisals interact to shape emotional reactions. We conducted three complementary studies: a pilot study to identify relevant emotions, an event-based experience sampling study (Study 1), and a retrospective recall study (Study 2). Accountability appraisals were associated with emotions, such that appraisals that oneself (vs. one’s subordinate) was more responsible for the incident were linked to higher levels of guilt and shame. Although growth mindset moderated associations between accountability appraisals and emotions, it did so for different emotions across the two studies (i.e., hostility in Study 1 and shame in Study 2). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Most research on commuting has focused on its negative aspects and consequences (i.e., stress). However, some work has also begun to recognize that there may be positive aspects to commuting. In this paper, we develop a perspective that has so far received limited attention, highlighting how the commute can be experienced as desired and beneficial “me time”, due to the fact that it inhabits a “third space” that is less associated with work or home role requirements. Drawing upon and integrating theories and research on commuting, leisure, recovery, and identity, we first define this construct and then develop a theoretical model that aims to address key questions regarding predicting motivation to engage in “me time”, beneficial outcomes of “me time”, and potential moderators of these effects. Consequently, our proposed model offers both research and practical implications for commuting employees as well as their employers, families, and society.

As COVID-19 was a highly novel virus in 2019, it brought risks that are difficult to quantify and rampant uncertainty to the fore. We focus on how leaders navigate such an uncertain context. Drawing upon appraisal theories of emotions, we first argue that under the context of high uncertainty, leaders experience emotions relating to their perceptions of (un)controllability: anxiety and hope. We predict that these have differential behavioural consequences; leaders’ anxiety about the pandemic relates to abusive supervision, whereas leaders’ hope relates to family-supportive supervision. Integrating research on gender roles, we theorize that counter to common stereotypes, men’s leadership would be more affected by their emotions. At the same time, women would provide leadership behaviours needed by their followers irrespective of their emotions; namely, refraining from abusive and providing family-supportive supervision. Our hypotheses were supported using a sample of 137 leader-follower dyads in the early phases of the pandemic. Our research has significant implications for appraisal theories of emotions by demonstrating that the behaviours of women, compared to men, may be less affected by their emotions. These findings present a significant departure from previous literature by revealing an important boundary condition of appraisal theories of emotions.

Speaking with a non-native English accent at work is a prevalent global phenomenon. Yet, our understanding of the impact of having a non-native accent at work is limited, in part because research on accents has been multidisciplinary, fragmented, and difficult for scholars to access and synthesize. To advance research on accents in the workplace, we provide an interdisciplinary and integrative review of research on non-native accents drawing from the communications, social psychology, and organizational sciences literatures. First, we briefly review the dominant approaches taken in each literature. Second, we organize and integrate extant research findings using a 2 × 2 framework that incorporates the two main theoretical perspectives used to explain the effects of accents—stereotypes and processing fluency—and the two primary categories of workplace outcomes examined—interpersonal (i.e., others’ evaluations of speakers with non-native accents, such as hiring recommendations) and intrapersonal (i.e., non-native-accented speakers’ own evaluations and experiences, such as sense of belonging). To facilitate future research, we end by articulating a research agenda including theoretical and methodological expansions related to the study of accents, identifying critical moderators, adopting an intersectional approach, and studying group-level and potential positive effects of speaking with non-native accents.

Integrating human capital theories and the status incongruity hypothesis at the upper echelons, we examine for whom extraversion, the personality trait that has been most strongly and consistently implicated in leader success, influences Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay. To assess the personality traits of CEOs, we used a computerized text analysis approach on the language spoken by CEOs in conference calls. Using a sample of firms listed on the S&P 1500, we find that more extraverted CEOs earned higher pay, indicating that this was a trait valued by boards. Additionally, this relationship was due to enhanced firm performance; specifically, market performance. However, a critical boundary condition is that the relationship between CEO extraversion and pay was weaker for female (vs. male) CEOs, despite the market responding equally positively to extraverted female and male CEOs. Thus, the monetary benefits of higher levels of extraversion did not extend to female CEOs and likely reflects backlash. Supplemental analyses revealed that this devaluation of more extraverted female (vs. male) CEOs was mitigated when the CEO was also the chairperson of the board (i.e., CEO duality) or under conditions of greater female representation on the board of directors.

Despite being seen as a “model minority,” Asian Americans remain underrepresented in organizational leadership roles in North America. The existing and limited research on this topic has primarily focused on external barriers to Asians’ advancement (e.g., discrimination); however, little is currently known regarding potential internal barriers that this group may also experience—and why they may arise. Across two cross-sectional survey studies using undergraduate student samples (Study 1: nAsians = 205, nWhites = 290; Study 2: nAsians = 105, nWhites = 176), we consistently found that Asian Canadians reported lower affective motivation to lead and leadership self-efficacy compared to their White Canadian peers. Integrating intrapsychic versus social structural perspectives on group differences in leadership with research on implicit leadership and followership theories to explore potential explanations, these differences appeared to be driven by intrapsychic processes (i.e., personal views of the self) rather than social structural influences (i.e., metastereotypes or how others stereotype one’s racial group); however, both traits typically associated with leaders and followers seem to play a role in this process. Specifically, Asian Canadians had lower self-perceptions on agency-related traits associated with followership (i.e., more conforming), in line with commonly held stereotypes about Asians, and lower self-perceptions on competence-related traits associated with leadership and followership (i.e., less intelligent and more incompetent), counter to prevalent stereotypes about Asians. Overall, this exploratory research substantiates that Asians in North America may also face significant internal barriers to pursuing leadership roles and uncovers additional complexities that warrant future examination.

Prior research on ambivalent sexism indicates that hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes together uphold the gender hierarchy or status quo. However, research has generally focused on the ambivalent sexism of others. The current study takes an alternative and complementary approach by examining whether, why, and for whom personal endorsement of hostile and sexist attitudes is related to career success. Integrating ambivalent sexism theory, resource management theories of career success, and social role theory, we theorize differential mechanisms via which hostile and benevolent sexism are divergently related to objective and subjective career success. Results revealed that gender had direct relationships with hostile sexism, whereas gender tended to also moderate relationships between benevolent sexism and choices and experiences at the work-family interface that could be prescribed by traditional gender roles (i.e., length of career interruptions and work-to-family conflict). Additionally, actions and choices that were more visible to others generally mediated relationships between sexist attitudes and objective career success (i.e., hostile sexism → seeking career advice from men → pay), whereas internal experiences and cognitions tended to mediate relationships between sexist attitudes and subjective career success (i.e., benevolent sexism → work-family conflict → satisfaction, but only for women). Overall, these results highlight the importance of studying whether, the process through which, personal endorsement of sexism influences work experiences, choices, and outcomes.

Despite significant attention devoted to outcomes of formal leadership training, little is known about how individuals develop during these programs. The current study examined developmental trajectories of leader efficacy and identity, two proximal outcomes supporting leadership effectiveness, in a six-week leadership training course (N = 240). Testing competing predictions between developmental readiness and developmental need perspectives, we examined whether learning goal orientation (LGO) and motivation to lead (MTL) predicted development of trainees’ leader self-views. Latent growth modeling results revealed leader efficacy developed linearly, whereas leader identity developed quadratically (i.e., positive change with slowing growth over time). Results for leader efficacy supported the developmental need perspective, as individuals lower on affective MTL exhibited greater changes to their leader efficacy, which was further moderated by LGO. In contrast, individuals higher and lower on LGO developed equally on leader identity, albeit via different trajectories. Implications for leadership theory and practice are discussed.

There is a large and growing body of work on gender on leadership, but this literature remains fragmented and incomplete, due in part to insufficient attention paid to nuances of the criterion variable of leadership. To provide a broader perspective on this literature, we draw upon Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, and Sager’s (1993) theory of job performance as a framework to organize our review. First, we position gender as an indirect determinant of leadership and summarize prior work on (a) gender differences in leadership outcomes (i.e., emergence and effectiveness), (b) gender differences in leader behaviors, (c) gender differences in direct determinants of leader behaviors (i.e., declarative knowledge, skill, and motivation), and (d) potential mediated or indirect relationships between gender and these leadership criteria. Second, we explore gender as a moderator of both interpersonal (i.e., leader behaviors → leadership outcomes) and intrapersonal (i.e., direct determinants → leader behaviors) leadership processes. Throughout our review, we highlight new directions for future research to advance the study of gender and leadership.

Diversity, a major societal force that exerts an important influence on contemporary workplaces, may play a role in shaping present-day workers’ psychological contracts. In two studies, we explored diversity as an ideological commitment in psychological contracts and its impacts on workers and organizations. In Study 1, a three-wave longitudinal study following workers from pre- to post-hire, organizations’ use of diversity recruitment was positively associated with job-seekers’ perceptions that ideological diversity climate promises were made pre-employment. In addition, we found that subsequent perceptions of breaching these promises have negative effects on worker attitudes and behaviours above and beyond the consequences of traditional (i.e., transactional and relational) psychological contract breach. Unexpectedly, fulfilment and breach of ideological diversity climate promises were more weakly related to racial minority than majority group workers’ attitudes and behaviours. In Study 2, using both between- and within-person experimental designs, we largely replicate this counter-intuitive moderating effect and uncover that racial minority versus majority workers’ differential reactions can be explained by their prior experiences with racial discrimination. Our work substantiates that diversity is an important ideological commitment and provides novel insights as to the mechanisms and consequences of ideology for workers’ psychological contracts.

Purpose: Many employers struggle with how to have a disability disclosure discussion with their employees and job candidates. The primary purpose of this study was to identify issues relevant to disability disclosure discussions. In addition, we explored how simulations, as an educational tool, may help employers and managers.

Originality/value: Developing a simulation on disability disclosure discussions is a novel approach to educating employers and managers that has the potential to help enhance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Further, the process that we followed can be used as a model for other researchers seeking to develop educational training scenarios on sensitive diversity and inclusion topics.

Design/methodology/approach: Seven participants (four employers and three human resource professionals) took part in this study. We used a qualitative design that involved two focus group discussions to understand participants’ experiences of building a simulation training scenario that focused on how to have a disability disclosure discussion. The simulation sessions were audio-recorded and analyzed using an open-coding thematic approach.

Findings: Four main themes emerged from our analysis. Three themes focused on issues that participants identified as relevant to the disability disclosure process, including: (1) creating a comfortable and safe space for employees to disclose, (2) how to ask employees or job candidates about disability and (3) how to respond to employees disability disclosure. A fourth theme focused on how simulations could be relevant as an educational tool.

Complaints regarding understaffing are common in the workplace, and research has begun to document some of the potential ill effects that can result from understaffing conditions. Despite evidence that understaffing is a relatively prevalent and consequential stressor, research has yet to explore how work groups cope with this stressor and the efficacy of their coping strategies in mitigating poor group performance and burnout. The present study examines these questions by exploring both potential mediating and moderating coping effects using a sample of 96 work groups from four technology organizations. Results indicate that work groups react differently to manpower and expertise understaffing conditions, with leaders engaging in more initiating structure behaviors when faced with manpower understaffing and engaging in more consideration behaviors when faced with expertise understaffing. Further, leaders’ use of consideration in the face of expertise understaffing was negatively associated with group burnout. We also uncovered evidence that leadership behaviors and work group actions (i.e., team–member exchange) moderate relationships between manpower understaffing and outcomes, though differently for group performance and burnout. Overall, this study helps to reframe work groups as active in their efforts to cope with understaffing and highlights that some coping strategies are more effective than others. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

We predicted that presidential election results would spill over to influence the work domain. Individuals who voted for the winning candidate were expected to experience increased engagement, whereas individuals who voted for the losing candidate were expected to experience decreased engagement. We tested these predictions within the context of the 2016 US presidential election. Using a sample of 232 working Americans, work engagement and job performance were assessed one week prior to the election, the day after the election, and one week after the election. Contrary to our prediction, individuals who voted for Trump (the winning candidate) did not report increased work engagement, thereby providing no evidence of positive spillover. However, individuals who voted for Clinton (the losing candidate) were less engaged on the day after the election compared to baseline, demonstrating negative spillover. Downstream, work engagement was positively related to job performance. However, these effects were relatively short‐lived, as engagement returned to baseline levels within one week following the election. Our results suggest that elections can have important implications for work‐related outcomes. From a practical perspective we suggest that to the extent possible it may be prudent to avoid scheduling important work tasks for the days following presidential elections.

Despite a flourishing literature demonstrating the consequences of implicit leadership theories (ILTs) for workplace phenomena, relatively little is known about the antecedents of ILTs, particularly those that are malleable or can be changed to shape ILTs. In two studies of dual-job holders, which allows for the modeling of between- and within-person predictors, I examined the extent to which workers’ ILTs were stable versus dynamic across work contexts. In line with connectionist perspectives, trait identities, a personal factor, promoted stability in ILTs across situations in both studies, whereas there was some limited evidence that organizational culture, a situational factor, only predicted ILTs within a given job context. Furthermore, the relationship between independent identity and ILTs differed when examining workers’ typical versus ideal leadership conceptualizations. Implications for future research on ILTs are also discussed.

Enhancing the employment of people with disabilities can help support healthy and productive work. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to understand employer accommodation practices with youth with disabilities (i.e., as they currently exist and what employers need help with) and how they create an inclusive environment. METHODS: A descriptive qualitative study was conducted involving in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 18 employers who hire young people with disabilities. Thematic analysis explored issues related to disclosure, accommodations, and inclusion. RESULTS: Most employers encouraged youth with disabilities to disclose their condition and emphasized the importance of building trust and rapport. Employers described how and when to provide accommodations, types of accommodations (i.e., formal, informal, physical, and social), and how they addressed unmet needs. Employers’ strategies for creating an inclusive workplace culture included: diversity training, addressing stigma and discrimination, open communication, mentoring and advocacy. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight that most employers hiring youth with disabilities have strategies for encouraging them to disclose their condition and request accommodations, which can help to inform employers who do not hire people with disabilities or have effective strategies in place to support them.

Purpose: Many youths with disabilities find it challenging to disclose their medical condition and request workplace accommodations. Our objective was to explore when and how young people with disabilities disclose their condition and request workplace accommodations.

Methods: We conducted 17 in-depth interviews (11 females, six males) with youth with disabilities aged 15–34 (mean age 26). We analyzed our data using an interpretive, qualitative, and thematic approach.

Results: Our results showed the timing of when youth disclosed their disability to their employer depended on disability type and severity, comfort level, type of job, and industry. Youth’s strategies and reasons for disclosure included advocating for their needs, being knowledgeable about workplace rights, and accommodation solutions. Facilitators for disclosure included job preparation, self-confidence, and self-advocacy skills, and having an inclusive work environment. Challenges to disability disclosure included the fear of stigma and discrimination, lack of employer’s knowledge about disability and accommodations, negative past experiences of disclosing, and not disclosing on your own terms.

Conclusions: Our findings highlight that youth encounter several challenges and barriers to disclosing their condition and requesting workplace accommodations. The timing and process for disclosing is complex and further work is needed to help support youth with disclosing their condition.

Pride, a discrete emotion that drives the pursuits of achievement and status, is crucial to consider in leadership contexts. Across three studies, we explored how leaders’ experiences of authentic and hubristic pride were associated with their leadership behaviors. In Study 1, a field study of leader–follower dyads, leader trait authentic pride was associated with the use of more effective (i.e., consideration and initiating structure) and fewer ineffective (i.e., abusive supervision) leadership behaviors, and hubristic pride was associated with more abusive behaviors. In Study 2, a daily diary study, on days when leaders experienced more authentic pride than usual, they used more effective leadership behaviors than usual, whereas on days when leaders experienced more hubristic pride than typical, they were more likely to engage in abusive supervision than typical. In Study 3, a scenario‐based experiment, leaders who experienced more authentic pride in response to our experimental manipulation were more likely to intend to use effective leadership behaviors. In contrast, those who experienced more hubristic pride were less likely to use these behaviors and more likely to intend to be abusive. Overall, this work highlights the importance of pride for leadership processes and the utility of examining discrete and self‐conscious emotions within organizations.

Purpose: Many employers lack disability confidence regarding how to include people with disabilities in the workforce, which can lead to stigma and discrimination. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of disability confidence from two perspectives, employers who hire people with a disability and employees with a disability.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted using 35 semi-structured interviews (18 employers who hire people with disabilities; 17 employees with a disability).

Findings: Themes included the following categories: disability discomfort (i.e. lack of experience, stigma and discrimination); reaching beyond comfort zone (i.e. disability awareness training, business case, shared lived experiences); broadened perspectives (i.e. challenging stigma and stereotypes, minimizing bias and focusing on abilities); and disability confidence (i.e. supportive and inclusive culture and leading and modeling social change). The results highlight that disability confidence among employers is critical for enhancing the social inclusion of people with disabilities.

Originality/value: The study addresses an important gap in the literature by developing a better understanding of the concept of disability from the perspectives of employers who hire people with disabilities and also employees with a disability.

We advance our understanding of women’s continued underrepresentation in leadership positions by highlighting the subtle, but damaging, role benevolent sexism, a covert and socially accepted form of sexism, plays in this process. Drawing on and integrating previously disparate literatures on benevolent sexism and social support, we develop a new theoretical model in which benevolent sexism of both women and those in their social networks (i.e., managers and intimate partners) affect women’s acquisition of career social support for advancement at two levels, interpersonal and intrapersonal, and across multiple domains, work and family. At the interpersonal level, we suggest that managers’ and intimate partners’ benevolent sexism may undermine their provision of the needed career support to advance in leadership positions for women. At the intrapersonal level, we suggest that women’s personal endorsement of benevolent sexism may undermine their ability to recognize and willingness to seek out career support from their family members (i.e., intimate partners) and managers for advancement to leadership positions. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.

Despite theory and empirical work linking employee proactive personality to individual‐level creativity, less is known about why and under what circumstances this relationship occurs. Drawing inspiration from the dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations, we report the results of two complementary, multisource field studies conceptualizing and testing interactional justice and intrinsic motivation as mediators of this relationship in two cultural contexts (i.e., China and Canada). We also investigated two potential moderators of these mediated effects: employees’ personal power distance values (in Study 1) and supervisor proactive personality (in Study 2). Although the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation was robust across the two studies, highlighting the cross‐cultural generalizability of this pathway, supplemental analyses in Study 1 indicate that this mechanism was driven by the self‐determination (vs. meaning, competence, or impact) facet of intrinsic task motivation in particular. In contrast, the mediating effect of interactional justice was contingent on both supervisor proactive personality and employee power distance, though at different stages of the process (i.e., Stage 1 vs. Stage 2 moderation, respectively). Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of relational, in addition to motivational pathways, in explaining the influence of proactive personality on creativity, but also suggest that the relational mechanism may be more sensitive to contextual influences.

The job demands–resources model is a dominant theoretical framework that describes the influence of job demands and job resources on employee strain. Recent research has highlighted that the effects of job demands on strain vary across cultures, but similar work has not explored whether this is true for job resources. Given that societal characteristics can influence individuals’ cognitive structures and, to a lesser extent, values in a culture, we address this gap in the literature and argue that individuals’ strain in reaction to job resources may differ across cultures. Specifically, we theorize that the societal cultural dimensions of individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance shape individual‐level job resource–strain relationships, as they dictate which types of resources (i.e., individual vs. group preference‐oriented and uncertainty‐reducing vs. not) are more likely to be valued, used, or effective in combating strain within a culture. Results revealed that societal individualism–collectivism and uncertainty avoidance independently moderated the relationships between certain job resources (i.e., job control, participation in decision making, and clear goals and performance feedback) and strain (i.e., job satisfaction and turnover intentions). This study expands our understanding of the cross‐cultural specificity versus generalizability of the job demands–resources model.

Contemporary theories on leadership development emphasize the importance of having a leader identity in building leadership skills and functioning effectively as leaders. We build on this approach by unpacking the role leader identity plays in the leader emergence process. Taking the perspective that leadership is a dynamic social process between group members, we propose a social network-based process model whereby leader role identity predicts network centrality (i.e., betweenness and indegree), which then contributes to leader emergence. We test our model using a sample of 88 cadets participating in a leadership development training course. In support of our model, cadets who possess a stronger leader role identity at the beginning of the course were more likely to emerge as leaders. However this relationship was only mediated by one form of network centrality, indegree centrality, reflecting one’s ability to build relationships within one’s group. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Complaints of chronic understaffing in organizations have become common among workers as employers face increasing pressures to do more with less. Unfortunately, despite its prevalence, there is currently limited research in the literature regarding the nature of workplace understaffing and its consequences. Taking a multilevel approach, this study introduces a new multidimensional conceptualization of subjective work group understaffing, comprising of manpower and expertise understaffing, and examines both its performance and well-being consequences for individual workers (Study 1) and work groups (Study 2). Results show that the relationship between work group understaffing and individual and work group emotional exhaustion is mediated through quantitative workload and role ambiguity for both levels of analysis. Work group understaffing was also related to individual job performance, but not group performance, and this relationship was mediated by role ambiguity. Results were generally similar for the 2 dimensions of understaffing. Implications for theory and research and future research directions are discussed.

We examined the direct and interactive effects of respondents’ implicit leadership theories (ILTs), attribution styles, and performance cues on leadership perceptions. After first assessing respondents’ implicit leadership theories and attribution styles, the participants were randomly assigned to one of nine performance cue conditions ([leader performance: low vs. average vs. high] × [follower performance: low vs. average vs. high]), observed the same leader’s behavior via video, and rated the leader by completing three leadership questionnaires. The results supported the notion that these three components of information have both direct and interactive effects on leadership perceptions as measured by the questionnaires. The three components of information accounted for about 10% of the variance in the three questionnaires. The results contribute to theories of information processing by demonstrating how ILTs, attribution styles, and performance cues interact to predict leadership perceptions. Implications regarding the meaningfulness, construct validity, and utility of leadership scales are discussed.

Implicit in many discussions of work–family issues is the idea that managing the work–family interface is more challenging for women than men. We address whether this intuition is supported by the empirical data via a meta-analysis of gender differences in work–family conflict (WFC) based on more than 350 independent samples (N > 250,000 workers). Challenging lay perceptions, our results demonstrate that men and women generally do not differ on their reports of WFC, though there were some modest moderating effects of dual-earner status, parental status, type of WFC (i.e., time-, strain-, vs. behavior-based), and when limiting samples to men and women who held the same job. To better understand the relationship between gender and WFC, we engaged in theory-testing of mediating mechanisms based on commonly invoked theoretical perspectives. We found evidence in support of the rational view, no support for the sensitization and male segmentation perspectives, and partial support for the asymmetrical domain permeability model. Finally, we build theory by seeking to identify omitted mediators that explain the relationship between gender and work-interference-with-family, given evidence that existing theoretically specified mechanisms are insufficient to explain this relationship. Overall, we find more evidence for similarity rather than difference in the degree of WFC experienced by men and women.

Recent research has shown that admissions tests retain the vast majority of their predictive power after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES), and that SES provides only a slight increment over SAT and high school grades (high school grade point average [HSGPA]) in predicting academic performance. To address the possibility that these overall analyses obscure differences by race/ethnicity or gender, we examine the role of SES in the test‒grade relationship for men and women as well as for various racial/ethnic subgroups within the United States. For each subgroup, the test‒grade relationship is only slightly diminished when controlling for SES. Further, SES is a substantially less powerful predictor of academic performance than both SAT and HSGPA. Among the indicators of SES (i.e., father’s education, mother’s education, and parental income), father’s education appears to be strongest predictor of freshman grades across subgroups, with the exception of the Asian subgroup. In general, SES appears to behave similarly across subgroups in the prediction of freshman grades with SAT scores and HSGPA.

Past research purporting to study employee resilience suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity about both the resilience construct and the methodological designs that examine resilience without ensuring the occurrence of significant adversity. The overall goal of this article is to address our contemporary understanding of employee resilience and identify pathways for the future advancement of resilience research in the workplace. We first address conceptual definitions of resilience both inside and outside of industrial and organizational psychology and make the case that researchers have generally failed to document the experience of significant adversity when studying resilience in working populations. Next, we discuss methods used to examine resilience, with an emphasis on distinguishing the capacity for resilience and the demonstration of resilience. Representative research is then reviewed by examining self-reports of resilience or resilience-related traits along with research on resilient and nonresilient trajectories following significant adversity. We then briefly address the issues involved in selecting resilient employees and building resilience in employees. The article concludes with recommendations for future research studying resilience in the workplace, including documenting significant adversity among employees, assessing multiple outcomes, using longitudinal designs with theoretically supported time lags, broadening the study of resilience to people in occupations outside the military who may face significant adversity, and addressing the potential dark side of an emphasis on resilience.

Studies examining Black–White mean differences in job satisfaction have provided little clarity regarding whether there are meaningful differences between the two racial/ethnic groups on this job attitude. The present study sought to reconcile prior inconsistent findings via a meta-analytic synthesis of this literature (N = 753,791; K = 63 independent samples from 55 studies) and examined whether moderators explained the observed variability in effects. Using Hedges and Vevea’s (1998) random-effects meta-analytic approach, we found that, on average, White workers were slightly more satisfied with their jobs than Black workers (gcorrected = .09; 95% credibility interval = −.21 to .39) and this effect was larger in more nationally representative samples (gcorrected = .24). The substantial true variability around this effect suggests the presence of moderators and the need for caution in interpreting the overall effect as it likely does not generalize across all work settings. Data collection year, geographic location within the U.S., job sector, and measure type were not found to moderate Black–White mean differences in job satisfaction. However, job complexity and sample demographic composition did significantly moderate this relationship. Our results show that the magnitude and direction of Black–White mean differences in job satisfaction are influenced by the context.

Workers often identify understaffing as a major stressor in their work lives. Despite this, relatively little conceptual and empirical work on understaffing exists. This paper describes a new, multidimensional conceptualization of understaffing, specifying that there are three dimensions underlying the understaffing domain: severity of (under)staffing, type of resource shortage, and length of exposure. Drawing upon theory and research on workplace demands and self-regulation, we further argue that different types of understaffing are differentially related to workplace outcomes. After specifying what understaffing is, we then compare and contrast understaffing with conceptually similar or related constructs in the industrial-organizational/organizational behavior (IO/OB) literature to assist in explaining what understaffing is not. Finally, we address practical issues in the study and measurement of understaffing. Implications for future research and theory are discussed.

Organizational scholars have long been concerned with identifying traits that differentiate effective leaders from ineffective leaders. Although there has been renewed interest in the role of emotions in leadership, there is currently no quantitative summary of leader trait affectivity and leadership. Thus, the current paper meta-analyzed the relationship between leader trait affectivity and several leadership criteria, including transformational leadership, transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness. Results show that leader positive affect is positively related to leadership criteria, whereas leader negative affect is negatively related to leadership criteria, and regression analyses indicate that leader trait affect predicts leadership criteria above and beyond leader extraversion and neuroticism. Additionally, mediational analyses reveal that the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness operates through transformational leadership. Taken together, these results contribute to the literature on emotions and leadership by highlighting the role of leader affect as a meaningful predictor of leadership.

This study provides meta-analytic estimates of the antecedents and consequences of feedback-seeking behavior (FSB). Clear support was found for the guiding cost/benefit framework in the feedback-seeking domain. Organizational tenure, job tenure, and age were negatively related to FSB. Learning and performance goal orientation, external feedback propensity, frequent positive feedback, high self-esteem, a transformational leadership style, and a high-quality relationship were positively associated with FSB. Challenging some of the dominant views in the feedback-seeking domain, the relationship between uncertainty and FSB was negative and the relationship between FSB and performance was small. Finally, inquiry and monitoring are not interchangeable feedback-seeking tactics. So FSB is best represented as an aggregate model instead of a latent model. In the discussion, gaps in the current FSB knowledge are identified and a research agenda for the future is put forward. Future research may benefit from (a) a systematic and integrative effort examining antecedents of both feedback-seeking strategies on the basis of a self-motives framework, (b) adopting a process perspective of feedback-seeking interactions, and (c) taking the iterative nature of feedback into account.

In this commentary we answer three questions that are often posed when debating the usefulness and accuracy of correcting criterion-related validity coefficients for unreliability: (a) Is .52 an inaccurate estimate? (b) Do corrections for criterion unreliability lead us to choose different selection tools? (c) Is too much variance explained?

Ruggs et al. (2013) have argued compellingly that industrial–organizational (I–O) psychologists have missed opportunities to understand the experiences of marginalized groups in the workplace, particularly in generating research that will be relevant in the formation of social policies. We fully agree with Ruggs et al.’s assessment of the literature and highlight three important extensions that should be considered when conducting research with marginalized groups: the social construction of identities, the intersection of multiple identities, and the experience of exclusion.

This three-week longitudinal field study with an experimental intervention examines the association between daily events and employee stress and health, with a specific focus on positive events. Results suggest that both naturally occurring positive work events and a positive reflection intervention are associated with reduced stress and improved health, though effects vary across momentary, lagged, daily, and day-to-evening spillover analyses. Findings are consistent with theory-based predictions: positive events, negative events, and family-to-work conflict independently contribute to perceived stress, blood pressure, physical symptoms, mental health, and work detachment, suggesting that organizations should focus not only on reducing negative events, but also on increasing positive events. These findings show that a brief, end-of-workday positive reflection led to decreased stress and improved health in the evening.

Previous research has demonstrated that cognitive test validities are generalizable and predictive of academic performance across situations. However, even after accounting for statistical artifacts (e.g., sampling error, range restriction, criterion reliability), substantial variability often remains around estimates of cognitive test–performance relationships suggesting the presence of additional moderators. In the present study, we examine the sources of institutional variation in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) validity across a sample of 110 institutions. Institutional characteristics moderated the size of SAT validities, such that more selective schools and schools that emphasize traditional assessment techniques (i.e., school records, standardized tests) showed higher SAT validities while schools that were larger and where students demonstrated more financial need, schools that emphasized the usage of alternative assessment techniques (i.e., essays, letters of recommendations, extracurricular activities), and schools that enrolled higher percentages of historically disadvantaged minority students generally exhibited lower SAT validities. Future directions in the understanding of situational influences on SAT–grade point average validities are discussed.

This article examines the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in the relationships among college admissions-test scores, secondary school grades, and subsequent academic performance. Scores on the SAT (a test widely used in the admissions process in the United States), secondary school grades, college grades, and SES measures from 143,606 students at 110 colleges and universities were examined, and results of these analyses were compared with results obtained using a 41-school data set including scores from the prior version of the SAT and using University of California data from prior research on the role of SES. In all the data sets, the SAT showed incremental validity over secondary school grades in predicting subsequent academic performance, and this incremental relationship was not substantially affected by controlling for SES. The SES of enrolled students was very similar to that of specific schools’ applicant pools, which suggests that the barrier to college for low-SES students in the United States is a lower rate of entering the college admissions process, rather than exclusion on the part of colleges.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has transformed the way we work, with many employees working under isolating and difficult conditions. However, research on the antecedents, consequences, and buffers of work loneliness is scarce. Integrating research on need for belonging, regulatory loop models of loneliness, and self-compassion, the current study addresses this critical issue by developing and testing a conceptual model that highlights how COVID-related stressors frustrate employees’ need for belonging (i.e., telecommuting frequency, job insecurity, and a lack of COVID-related informational justice), negatively impacting worker well-being (i.e., depression) and helping behaviors [i.e., organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)] through work loneliness. Furthermore, we examine the buffering role of self-compassion in this process. Results from a weekly diary study of U.S. employees conducted over 2 months during the initial stage of the pandemic provide support for the mediating role of work loneliness in relations between all three proposed antecedents and both outcomes. In addition, self-compassion mitigated the positive within-person relationship between work loneliness and employee depression, indicating that more self-compassionate employees were better able to cope with their feelings of work loneliness. Although self-compassion also moderated the within-person relationship between work loneliness and OCB, this interaction was different in form from our prediction. Implications for enhancing employee well-being and helping behaviors during and beyond the pandemic are discussed.

Integrating theoretical perspectives on tokenism and perceived preferential selection, we explore whether the relationship between chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) external board memberships and CEO compensation is gendered. Based on recent pressures to diversify corporate boards, we theorize that female CEOs’ memberships on external boards will result in less monetary compensation relative to male CEOs due to concerns of organizational decision‐makers that female CEOs generally inhabit token or “symbolic” positions of limited value. Additionally, we present competing hypotheses (i.e., mitigation vs. exacerbation) regarding how this devaluation will be affected by female representation on the board of directors and compensation committee, respectively. Using a panel sample of 12,464 firm‐year observations comprising of 1,805 unique firms and 2,782 unique CEOs, the relationship between CEO external board memberships and compensation is indeed weaker for female compared to male CEOs. Furthermore, this devaluation primarily occurred in organizations where there was stronger (vs. weaker) female representation on the board of directors or compensation committee. However, supplemental analyses revealed that this differential devaluation was mitigated when female executives on the board held greater power (i.e., chaired important committees), highlighting the importance of moving beyond mere representation to ensuring influence on boards for female directors.