Men's job and partner roles: Spillover effects and psychological distress

What is the relationship between the quality of men's job and partnership roles on the one hand and men's mental health on the other? This question was addressed in a random sample of 300 men, ages 25–40, in dual-earner couples. Predictions were made from both main-effects and two interaction-effects models of this relationship. More specifically, negative-spillover effects, as predicted by the role-stress model, were estimated both from work to home and home to work. Positive-spillover effects, as predicted by the role-enhancement model, were estimated from home to work and from work to home. The general finding was that the effects are additive not interactive, thus supporting the main-effects model. With respect to spillover effects, there was some support for the role-stress model, but no support for the role-enhancement model. More specifically, the relationship between job stress and psychological distress was exacerbated among men who had troubled relationships with their partners.     

Response allocation to concurrent fixed-ratio reinforcement schedules with work requirements by adults with mental retardation and typical preschool children.

The present experiments examined the effect of work requirements in combination with reinforcement schedule on the choice behavior of adults with mental retardation and preschool children. The work requirements of age-appropriate tasks (i.e., sorting silverware, jumping hurdles, tossing beanbags) were manipulated. Participants were presented with their choice of two response options for each trial that varied simultaneously on both work requirement and reinforcement schedule. Results showed that when responding to both choices occurred on the same reinforcement schedule, participants allocated most of their responses to the option with the easier work requirement. When the response option requiring less work was on a leaner reinforcement schedule, most participants shifted their choice to exert more work. There were individual differences across participants regarding their pattern of responding and when they switched from the lesser to the greater work requirement. Data showed that participants' responding was largely controlled by the reinforcement received for responding to each level of work. Various conceptualizations regarding the effects of work requirements on choice behavior are discussed.     

Work and family domain stressors and support: Within‐ and cross‐domain influences on work–family conflict

The purpose of this study is to examine the within‐ and cross‐domain influences of work and family domain stressors and support on two forms of work–family conflict (i.e. WIF: work interference with family, and FIW: family interference with work). To test our hypotheses, we collected multi‐source data from 248 Hong Kong employees and their spouses. Among the proposed work domain antecedents of WIF, time commitment and work role expectation were significant. Among the proposed family domain antecedents of FIW, parental demands were significant. Direct cross‐domain effects included family role expectation and parental demand on WIF and work role expectation and family‐friendly policies on FIW. Tests of the moderating effects of work and family support resulted in support for both within‐domain and cross‐domain interactions. Implications for researchers and human resource managers are discussed.     

Work and home boundary violations during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of segmentation preferences and unfinished tasks

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented number of employees faced the challenges of telework. However, the current literature has a limited understanding of the implications of employees' obligated home-based telework and their satisfaction with the work and home domains. We use boundary theory to examine work and home boundary violations in relation to satisfaction with domain investment in two daily diary studies, examining both domain-specific and cross-domain effects. In addition, we examine the moderating role of segmentation preferences in both studies and investigate the mediating role of work- and home-related unfinished tasks in Study 2. Both studies provide empirical evidence of the domain-specific relationship between boundary violations and domain satisfaction and provide limited support for cross-domain effects. Neither study finds support for the notion that segmentation preferences moderate the relationship between boundary violations and domain satisfaction. Finally, the results of Study 2 highlight the importance of unfinished tasks in the relationship between boundary violations and domain satisfaction. Specifically, work and home boundary violations relate to an increase in unfinished tasks in both domains. Finally, the indirect effects suggest that home-related unfinished tasks may be detrimental to satisfaction in both domains, while work-related unfinished tasks may be detrimental for work-related, but not home-related, satisfaction.     

Linking parents' work pressure and adolescents' well-being: insights into dynamics in dual-earner families

This study focused on the connections between mothers' and fathers' work pressure and the psychological adjustment of their older (M = 15 years) and younger (M = 12.5 years) adolescent offspring in a sample of 190 dual-earner families. Structural equation models revealed that the effects of work pressure on adolescent well-being were mediated by parental role overload and parent-adolescent conflict. Work-family linkages were similar for mothers and fathers with one exception: Fathers' work pressure predicted both parents' feelings of role overload, whereas mothers' work pressure predicted only their own overload, not their spouses'. The patterns of association were consistent for older and younger adolescent siblings.     

An examination of crossover and spillover effects of spousal and expatriate cross-cultural adjustment on expatriate outcomes

Integrating work-family and cross-cultural adjustment literatures, the researchers proposed and tested a spillover and crossover model of expatriates' cross-cultural adjustment with reciprocal relationships. Spillover effects refer to the influence that expatriate attitudes in a particular domain (e.g., work) have on attitudes in other domains (e.g., nonwork), whereas crossover effects refer to the influence of expatriate attitudes on the spouse's attitudes (and vice versa). Data collected from Japanese expatriates, their spouses, and their superiors strongly supported both spillover and crossover effects between expatriate and spousal cross-cultural adjustment. In addition, expatriates' cross-cultural adjustment was found to be related to satisfaction, which, in turn, was found to be negatively related to expatriates' intention to return to their homeland early.     

Design Fixation in the Wild: Design Environments and Their Influence on Fixation

Many studies of design fixation ask designers to work in controlled laboratory or classroom environments, but innovative design work frequently occurs in dynamic, social environments. The two studies reviewed in this paper investigated how three independent variables likely to be present in many design environments affect design fixation. The first study found that working with physical prototypes significantly reduced fixation effects, and that working in groups can reduce fixation effects under certain conditions. The second study found that brief interruptions in designers' thought processes during the initial states of the design process also reduce fixation effects. I conclude by discussing what the data from both studies may indicate about the theoretical causes of fixation effects, and what designers might do to prevent fixation from affecting their creative output.     

For Better and For Worse: Differential Susceptibility to Environmental Influences

ABSTRACT— Evidence that adverse rearing environments exert negative effects particularly on children presumed "vulnerable" for temperamental or genetic reasons may actually reflect something else: heightened susceptibility to the negative effects of risky environments and to the beneficial effects of supportive environments. Building on Belsky's (1997, 2005) evolutionary-inspired proposition that some children are more affected—both for better and for worse—by their rearing experiences than are others, we consider recent work on child vulnerability, including that involving measured genes, along with evidence showing that putatively vulnerable children are especially susceptible to both positive and negative rearing effects. We also consider methodological issues and unanswered questions in the differential-susceptibility equation.     

Great Expectations – and What Comes of it: The Effects of Unmet Expectations on Work Motivation and Outcomes Among Newcomers

The present research focused on newcomers' socialization process in a three‐wave study among 1477 newcomers from seven Western (mainly European) countries. Based on previous research, we expected that unmet expectations regarding selected intrinsic work aspects would have adverse effects on work outcomes such as worker motivation for learning, effort, and turnover. Further, we expected that the strength of the effects of unmet expectations would vary as a function of the perceived importance of the work aspects in question. Structural equation modeling supported our expectations regarding the adverse effects of unmet expectations. However, the strength of these relationships did not depend on the importance attached to the work aspects. Instead, workers who attached much importance to particular work aspects reported higher levels of effort and a higher motivation for learning new behavior patterns. Further, newcomers tended to consider work aspects for which their expectations were not met as less important across time. We conclude that unmet expectations affect work outcomes both directly and indirectly, through the importance attached to particular work aspects.     

Self-Efficacy,Emotions and Work Engagement Among Teachers: A Two Wave Cross-Lagged Analysis

The aim of this study was to examine the reciprocal relations between teachers’ work engagement and their emotions, both positive and negative, and experienced in relation to their students, by implementing a two-wave panel design. The predictive role of self-efficacy with respect to teachers’ emotions and work engagement was also explored. The study included a sample of 941 teachers from various state schools in Croatia. A cross-lagged analysis demonstrated the reciprocal nature of the relationship between emotions and work engagement. Teachers who reported higher levels of positive emotions of joy, pride and love at first time point, tended to be more engaged in their work at subsequent assessment. The association between negative emotions and work engagement showed the opposite direction—teachers who experienced more anger, fatigue, and hopelessness in the first measurement point, were also less engaged at second time of assessment. Furthermore, teachers who were more engaged in their work in the first time point, also reported about lower levels of negative emotions but higher levels of positive emotions 6 months later. At last, teachers with higher perceived self-efficacy are more engaged in their work, experience more joy, pride and love, and less anger, fatigue and hopelessness, towards their students. However, these effects did not hold upon control of baseline levels of emotions and work engagement.     

Work engagement during life-span: The role of interaction outside the organization and task significance

Growing proportion of older employees in the workforce has pushed scholars and managers to examine the changes of individual work-related attitudes and behavior during the life-span and accordingly reconsider work design to sustain the engagement of aging workforces. This study contributes to ambiguous previous findings by investigating age–work engagement linkage and moderating effects of such job characteristics as employees' perceived task significance and interaction outside organization. Survey of bank employees revealed an overall positive linear effect of age on work engagement; task significance was further positively related to work engagement. Although the direct impact of interaction outside the organization to work engagement was not found, the interaction outside the organization moderated the relationship between age and work engagement: older employees with more external interactions reported higher engagement levels than older employees with fewer interactions. Work engagement was highest for older employees who experienced more interaction outside the organization, or perceived their work as significant or both. There was no positive effect of age on work engagement for employees with both lower levels of interaction outside organization and lower task significance.     

Employee adjustment to stress: The role of coping resources, situational factors, and coping responses

Abstract The present study was designed to examine further the stress-adjustment relationship in employees. Specifically, the relations among employees' coping resources (self-esteem, generalized control beliefs, neuroticism, and social support), their appraisals of a recent stressful event experienced at work (appraised stress, self-efficacy, and situational control beliefs), the coping strategies (problem- and emotion-focused coping) used to deal with the event, and levels of employee adjustment (psychological well-being and job satisfaction) were examined. Data were collected from 153 male and female employees in a public sector department, employed in a range of middle-management administrative activities. The data provided support for a modified version of a model that proposed that both situational appraisals and coping strategies are mediating processes in the stress-adjustment relationship. There was evidence that employees' coping responses to the recent stressful event experienced at work were related to concurrent levels of adjustment. As predicted, the use of problem-focused coping, in general, had positive relationships with the measures of adjustment, whereas the effects of emotion-focused coping were generally negative (there was, however, some evidence that the effects of coping were dependent on event controllability). There was also evidence that coping resources had both direct and indirect effects (via coping and via situational appraisals) on employee adjustment. The latter effects were most marked for generalized control beliefs and self-esteem. Situational appraisals (in particular, efficacy expectancies) also had indirect effects on employee adjustment, through their effects on coping responses.     

Linking Availability Expectations,Bidirectional Boundary Management Behavior and Preferences,and Employee Well-Being: an Integrative Study Approach

Information and communication technologies enable employees to be available anywhere and anytime, raising availability expectations of work and nonwork contacts. Building on the theory of planned behavior and the person-environment fit theory, the present study examines how others’ availability expectations predict employees’ management of work and nonwork boundaries, and how these bidirectional boundary management behaviors relate to well-being. Results of structural equation modeling with data from 401 employees collected in two waves show that availability expectations of both coworkers and nonwork contacts predict how employees manage the boundaries of work and nonwork domains. Thereby, availability expectations are negatively related to segmentation of the two domains and coworkers' expectations show an indirect effect on employee well-being. Further, our study shows that work-nonwork and nonwork-work segmentation behavior have divergent effects on employee well-being, indicating that asymmetric boundary management behavior with high work-nonwork segmentation and low nonwork-work segmentation may be beneficial. Besides, moderation analyses underline the importance of enabling individuals to align their boundary management preferences with their actual behavior, especially when individuals have high work-nonwork segmentation preferences. By integrating and unveiling distinct antecedents of work-nonwork and nonwork-work segmentation behavior and their divergent effects on well-being, the present study contributes to a comprehensive framework for investigating and understanding bidirectional boundary management in the face of technology-enabled availability.

     

Spending time: The impact of hours worked on work–family conflict

Scholars have long assumed that as workers spend more time at work fewer hours are available for their non-work lives leading to negative effects in both domains, and most studies examining the impact of work hours on work and life domains have supported this viewpoint. However, the majority of these studies have used one-dimensional measures of work–family conflict (WFC) and family–work conflict (FWC) on homogenous samples which included primarily married managers and professionals with children. Further, despite calls to examine non-linear relationships between work hours and WFC and FWC, few studies have done so. This study uses multi-dimensional measures to examine the linear and non-linear (quadratic) effects of work hours on WFC and FWC in a heterogeneous sample and examines the moderating effects of several work and family characteristics on these relationships. The findings indicate that whereas work hours have a linear relationship with WFC, the relationship between work hours and FWC is curvilinear. Managerial support was found to moderate the relationship between work hours and one dimension of FWC. Number of children moderated the relationships between work hours and WFC and another dimension of FWC.     

Coping with work and family: How do dual‐earners interact?

Juggling the demands of both work and family has become increasingly difficult, especially for dual‐earner households; nevertheless, families have developed strategies to deal with work‐family challenges. This paper uses couple level analyses (APIM models) with 100 dual‐earner couples to provide insight about partners' mutual influence on the use of work‐family coping strategies. The results show that women's use of coping strategies is more associated with work‐family conflict and work‐family enrichment than men's coping. In addition, using partner coping, having a positive attitude towards multiple roles, using planning and management skills and avoiding having to cut back on professional responsibilities is associated with better outcomes (more enrichment and less conflict). Surprisingly, the use of childcare facilities is associated with women's conflict and partner effects were only found concerning the use of management and planning skills. These skills, however, have distinct effects for men and women's outcomes: their use by men reduces their own conflict but increases their wives', while their use by women decreases their own conflict and increases their own and their partner's enrichment. These results point to the fact that gender roles continue to be a hallmark of work‐family issues. Our design and results point out the need for new interventions that take couple interdependences into account.     

THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES ON EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT: A MULTILEVEL INVESTIGATION

Organizations are concerned with the impact organizational change can have on both individuals' response to the change itself and their ongoing relationship with the organization. This study investigated how organizational changes in 32 different organizations (public and private) affected individuals' commitment to the specific change and their broader commitment to the organization. The results indicate that both types of commitment may be best understood in terms of a 3-way interaction between the overall favorableness (positive/negative) of the change for the work unit members, the extent of the change in the work unit, and the impact of the change on the individual's job. In addition, the fairness of the change process was found to interact with the effects of work unit change on organizational commitment. The implications of these results for future research and practice are discussed.     

Effects of LMX and differential treatment on work unit commitment

The Leader-Member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership states that leaders do behave differently towards the various members in their work unit. Relatively little attention has been devoted to the question of whether members' perceptions of differential treatment on the part of the leader affects their commitment to the work unit. Perceptions of the amount of differential treatment within their work unit did not explain additional variance in members' work unit commitment after the effects of LMX quality were accounted for. There was, however, a significant interaction effect of LMX quality and differential treatment on work unit commitment. The perception of a large number of differential treatment incidents seems to act as a neutralizer with respect to the positive effects LMX quality may have.     

Work-Family Conflict and Work-Related Withdrawal Behaviors

This survey study explored the effects of work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict on withdrawal behaviors at work (family interruptions at work, lateness to work, and absenteeism) among both members of 359 dual-earner couples. Using a systems theory framework, regression analyses revealed significant individual-level and crossover effects for both types of work-family conflict on withdrawal behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications of the study of work-family conflict crossover effects on withdrawal behaviors at work are discussed.     

African American and Mexican American Youths’ College Adjustment and Perceptions of Parental Academic Socialization: Interactions Between Ethnicity and Parental Education

In a sample of 283 African American and Mexican American college students, we investigated the effects of ethnicity and parental education on three dimensions of parental academic socialization (PAS), active involvement, autonomy support, and demanding hard work, and their impact on college adjustment. Controlling for parental education, African Americans reported higher parental active involvement. Academic self-efficacy mediated the effects of both demanding hard work and autonomy support on college adjustment, controlling for parental education. Moderated mediation models suggested that effects of both demanding hard work and autonomy support on academic self-efficacy were stronger for African Americans than for Mexican Americans.