From Feedback Seeking to Psychological Attachment, the Mediating Role of Adaptive Performance in Perceived Obstruction Context.

Based on proactivity literature, feedback seeking behavior is generally used throughout an individual's career to enable better adaptation to the work environment. However, it has recently been shown that declining levels of feedback seeking behavior may result in decreased psychological attachment over time. This study aims to explore whether individual adaptivity represents a mechanism through which feed-back seeking affects psychological attachment (i.e., well-being involvement and withdrawal). In addition, the interaction effect of organizational obstruction between individual adaptivity and psychological attachment was examined. Based on three-wave survey data obtained from 273 participants from French organizations, a moderated mediation model was tested using structural equation modeling. Results confirmed that adaptive performance mediated positively the relationship between feedback-seeking and well-being involvement and negatively with withdrawal. Moreover, perceived organizational obstruction moderated negatively the relationship between adaptive performance and withdrawal, and positively that with well-being. These results shed new light on the relationship between proactivity (i.e., feedback seeking behavior) and adaptive performance, but also on the positive short-term contribution of successful adaptation in a perceived obstructive organizational context. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for human resource management are discussed.

How Digital Technologies Modify The Work Characteristics: A Preliminary Study.

New technologies with unprecedented agentic capabilities (i.e., action selection, protocol development) are now introduced in organizations such as Big Data, 3D printing or artificial intelligence. Because they are endowed with novel capabilities that might compete with human agency, they might disrupt the way employees work. Based on the work design model, this study aims to examine their introduction in the daily work activities and the consequent perceptions of the work characteristics. Building on Murray's et al. (2020) proposal, we offer a classification of the digital technologies to conceptualize their relationship with the work characteristics. To explore the changes induced by two digital technologies (i.e., drones, robotic automation process), we interviewed 3 types of employees (i.e., experts, managers, users) from an organization which has started a digitalization process and we conducted a thematic analysis. Our analysis revealed three main themes that are discussed: A technological theme (arresting, assisting), a work characteristic theme and a theme about the human-technology relationship (agentic, non-agentic). Results showed that employee autonomy has not been reduced when digital technologies executed repetitive and unmotivated tasks and that jobs in the digital work context may be marked by a high level of knowledge characteristics. Moreover, technologies with agentic capabilities may be perceived as a non-human agent. Theoretical contributions for the work design model are then examined.