Getting worse or getting better? Understanding the antecedents and consequences of emotion profile transitions during COVID-19-induced organizational crisis.

While some organizations are thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic, many are experiencing a crisis-a threat to organizational longevity, time pressure, and inadequate resources. Building on prior work examining emotions during times of crisis and changes that people undergo during major life transitions, as well as media accounts suggesting that employees have had positive and negative emotions tied to aspects of working during COVID-19, we adopt a person-centric view to examine profiles of monthly emotions regarding organizational reopening. Additionally, we consider how employees transition from one profile of emotions to another across months. In so doing, we consider whether feelings of hope, gratitude, fear, and resentment co-occur for employees; how employees transition across profiles from one month to the next as a function of perceptions of organizational leaders' trustworthiness and their handling of the COVID-19 crisis; and how changes in profile membership relate to employee well-being, work outcomes, and prevention behaviors to avoid contracting COVID-19. Using 1,422 total measurements from August 2020 to November 2020 from employees at a single university during two monthly transitions with significant crisis-related events (i.e., return to in-person teaching, students living on campus, announcement of pay cuts and furloughs, and the subsequent announcement that some of those conditions would change), we identified four profiles of monthly emotions, with perceived leader trustworthiness and handling of the pandemic being critical features of why employees belonged to different profiles between August-September and October-November. Further, we found implications of monthly transitions for work and COVID-related outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The influence of COVID-induced job search anxiety and conspiracy beliefs on job search effort: A within-person investigation.

New labor market entrants face significant hurdles when searching for a job, with these stressors likely amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we consider how COVID-induced job search anxiety-feeling anxious about one's job search due to issues imposed by the pandemic-has the potential to affect adaptive, goal-directed efforts, and maladaptive, goal-avoidant reactions. We theorize that this anxiety can prompt job seekers to engage in problem-solving pondering and affect-focused rumination, with these experiences relating to whether job seekers engage in various forms of search-related efforts the following week. In particular, we consider whether job seekers are engaging in dream job search effort (i.e., effort toward pursuing one's dream job), as well as focused (i.e., effort toward a selection of carefully screened jobs), exploratory (i.e., effort toward a wide swath of jobs in a broad manner), and haphazard (i.e., effort toward applying for any job without a clear plan) job search effort. Further, we consider how stable beliefs relevant to the pandemic (i.e., belief in conspiracy theories; belief in COVID-19 being a public health crisis) affect the aforementioned relationships. Using a weekly study of 162 new labor market entrants, results indicated that COVID-induced job search anxiety positively related to problem-solving pondering and affect-focused rumination; problem-solving pondering promoted dream, focused, and exploratory job search effort the following week, whereas affect-focused rumination hindered dream job search effort. Finally, the detrimental effects of COVID-induced job search anxiety via affect-focused rumination were amplified for those who held higher levels of conspiracy theory beliefs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The emotional complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic and organizational life

Applied to COVID-19, individuals could recognize that negative emotions (e.g., frustration) indicate that their current state (e.g., working from home with kids) is discrepant from their ideal state (e.g., being able to hold a call or Zoom meeting without interruption), signaling that added effort is needed to resolve this issue. Fredrickson (2003) also offers sentiments in her broaden-and-build theory, suggesting that positive emotions can help employees foster the resilience they need to make progress during a crisis (Fredrickson etal., 2003). [...]people may feel calm and happy that they are able to work from home and maintain employment, spurring productivity. [...]healthcare workers who face challenging job demands and conditions (e.g., lack of personal protective equipment or working in hospitals where crisis care has been evoked) are likely to feel heightened fear as they expose themselves to the people with the virus, yetalso feel gratitude for their coworkers who are with them and community members who are celebrating them. [...]capturing how emotions are jointly experienced is a crucial means to understanding how working during COVID-19 affects employee health, motivation, and performance.