An integration-and-learning perspective on gender diversity in self-managing teams: The roles of learning goal orientation and shared leadership.

Contemporary organizations commonly use self-managing teams to structure work as a way to achieve competitive advantage. Although diversity on visible demographic characteristics-such as gender-is a critical determinant of team functioning, our knowledge about when and how gender diversity affects performance in self-managing teams is still nascent. Building upon the integration-and-learning perspective and recent developments in the information and decision-making approach on diversity, we investigate when (team learning goal orientation as a contingency factor) and how (shared leadership as a structural mediating mechanism) gender diversity benefits task performance in self-managing teams. We conducted two studies to test our hypotheses. In Study 1, we studied 66 teams that participated in a team simulation. As expected, we found that team learning goal orientation acted as a boundary condition qualifying the effect of gender diversity on self-managing team task performance, such that gender diversity benefited task performance for teams that were higher (vs. lower) in learning goal orientation. In Study 2, we tested shared leadership as a mediating mechanism via which gender diversity benefited team task performance in learning-goal-oriented teams. We surveyed 67 teams multiple times over the span of 6 months, and found that gender diversity benefited the task role enactment of teams with higher (vs. lower) learning goal orientation through shared leadership. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Job search self-regulation during COVID-19: Linking search constraints, health concerns, and invulnerability to job search processes and outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused tremendous job loss and made it difficult for unemployed individuals to search for new jobs. Specifically, the pandemic has created numerous job search obstacles, such as increased childcare and community responsibilities, that interfere with job seekers' ability to search for a job. Yet, the job search literature has scantily examined the implications of such job search constraints for job seekers even in normal times, and the limited studies that do exist have produced mostly null findings. Drawing from self-regulation theories, we position COVID-19 job search constraints as a catalyst for lower hopeful search cognitions but greater reflective metacognitive activities. To account for the distinct mechanism via which health concerns highlighted by the pandemic influence job search, we further contend that job search self-regulation is contingent upon job seekers' COVID-19 invulnerability, a novel resource-protective cognition that reflects an optimistic perception regarding how at risk job seekers feel to catching and falling ill due to COVID-19. In turn, we link such self-regulatory cognition and effort to seekers' job search distress, and job search behaviors and outcomes (i.e., number of job interviews), respectively. We also identify health-related resource loss risk factors (i.e., health status and share of family and friends' COVID-19 exposure) that impact COVID-19 invulnerability perceptions. Collecting three waves of data from 228 unemployed job seekers, we found general support for our model. Theoretical and practical implications of the current research for now and after the pandemic are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is student loan debt good or bad for full-time employment upon graduation from college?

Student loan debt represents an important phenomenon in the United States, as around 61% of bachelor's degree recipients graduate with a debt of over $28,100. Although studies emphasize that holding student loan debt delays the transition to adulthood in terms of marriage and home ownership, little is known about its impact on employment and this limited research offers, at best, equivocal evidence. The current study draws from Conservation of Resources theory to argue that student loan debt acts as a major financial stressor for new labor market entrants during job search. Using archival data from 1,248 graduating seniors from 4 geographically diverse universities in the United States collected in the context of a prospective study design, we found evidence for 2 countervailing mechanisms through which student loan debt may influence full-time employment upon graduation. On the one hand, college students who had student loan debt were more likely to experience financial strain, and subsequently more job search strain, which was negatively related to college seniors' odds of securing full-time employment upon graduation. On the other hand, this financial strain was also positively related to students' work hours while in the last semester of college, which was positively related to their odds of securing full-time employment upon graduation. Further mediation tests revealed that only the 3-stage indirect effect through job search strain (i.e., student loan debt → financial strain → job search strain → full-time employment) was statistically significant. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A self-regulation perspective on how and when regulatory focus differentially relates to citizenship behaviors.

Although previous research suggests that regulatory focus matters for organizational citizenship behaviors, it is unclear how promotion and prevention focus relate to such behaviors. Integrating regulatory focus theory with theories of self-regulation, we propose a conceptual model that links trait promotion and prevention foci with specific citizenship behaviors through an emotion-related self-regulation mechanism. Using a sample of 227 nurses working in a hospital context, we observed that trait promotion focus and trait prevention focus predict helping and voice via differential effects on emotional exhaustion. Specifically, trait promotion focus had unconditional indirect effects on helping (positive) and voice (negative) through lower levels of emotional exhaustion. In contrast, trait prevention focus was positively related to voice but negatively related to helping through higher levels of emotional exhaustion. Moreover, these indirect effects of trait prevention focus were moderated by employees' reappraisal of their emotional experiences at work, such that trait prevention focus had weaker relations with helping and voice when reappraisal was higher (vs. lower). We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings and highlight avenues for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Does college alcohol consumption impact employment upon graduation? Findings from a prospective study.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 103(1) of Journal of Applied Psychology (see record 2017-44578-001). In the article, the authors incorrectly used the term "probability" instead of the term "odds" when relating to the impact of drinking in college on post-graduation employment. The abstract should note "a roughly 10% reduction in the odds...", and in the 2nd paragraph of the Discussion section, (a) "a roughly 10% lower probability" should be "a roughly 10% lower odds", and (b) "their probability of full-time employment upon graduation is roughly 6% lower than..." should be "their odds of full-time employment upon graduation is roughly 6% lower than..." All versions of this article have been corrected.] Although scholars have extensively studied the impact of academic and vocational factors on college students' employment upon graduation, we still know little as to how students' health-related behaviors influence such outcomes. Focusing on student alcohol use as a widely prevalent, health-related behavior, in the current study, we examined the employment implications of student drinking behavior. Drawing from literature examining the productivity effects of drinking and research on job search, we posited that modal quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption, as well as the frequency of heavy episodic drinking (HED) adversely impact the probability of employment upon graduation. Using data from 827 graduating seniors from 4 geographically diverse universities in the United States collected in the context of a prospective study design, we found modal alcohol consumption to have no adverse effect on the likelihood of employment upon graduation. However, we did find a significant adverse effect for the frequency of heavy drinking, with the data suggesting a roughly 10% reduction in the odds of employment upon graduation among college seniors who reported engaging in the average level of HED. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Eating your feelings? Testing a model of employees' work-related stressors, sleep quality, and unhealthy eating.

Although organizational research on health-related behaviors has become increasingly popular, little attention has been paid to unhealthy eating. Drawing on the self-regulation perspective, we conducted 2 daily diary studies to examine the relationships between work-related stressors, sleep quality, negative mood, and eating behaviors. Study 1 sampled 125 participants from 5 Chinese information technology companies and showed that when participants experienced higher levels of job demands in the morning, they consumed more types of unhealthy food and fewer types of healthy food in the evening. In addition, sleep quality from the previous night buffered the effect of morning job demands on evening unhealthy food consumption. Study 2 used data from 110 customer service employees from a Chinese telecommunications company and further demonstrated a positive association between morning customer mistreatment and evening overeating behaviors, as well as the buffering effect of sleep quality. Results from Study 2 also supported afternoon negative mood as a mediator linking morning customer mistreatment to evening overeating behaviors. Finally, our findings revealed that the buffering effect of sleep quality was channeled through employees' vigor in the morning, which subsequently weakened the effect of customer mistreatment on negative mood. (PsycINFO Database Record

Nonlinear effects of team tenure on team psychological safety climate and climate strength: Implications for average team member performance.

The teams literature suggests that team tenure improves team psychological safety climate and climate strength in a linear fashion, but the empirical findings to date have been mixed. Alternatively, theories of group formation suggest that new and longer tenured teams experience greater team psychological safety climate than moderately tenured teams. Adopting this second perspective, we used a sample of 115 research and development teams and found that team tenure had a curvilinear relationship with team psychological safety climate and climate strength. Supporting group formation theories, team psychological safety climate and climate strength were higher in new and longer tenured teams compared with moderately tenured teams. Moreover, we found a curvilinear relationship between team tenure and average team member creative performance as partially mediated by team psychological safety climate. Team psychological safety climate improved average team member task performance only when team psychological safety climate was strong. Likewise, team tenure influenced average team member task performance in a curvilinear manner via team psychological safety climate only when team psychological safety climate was strong. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and offer several directions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record