Outcomes of Safety Climate in Trucking: a Longitudinal Framework Abstract Utilizing a longitudinal approach, this study examined mechanisms explaining how safety climate is associated with truck drivers’ safety behavior and outcomes. The present study also examined the top-down process of how organization-level safety climate (i.e., top management referenced) is related to group-level safety climate (i.e., supervisor referenced). Two waves (matched N = 481) of safety climate and safety behavior data (with a 2-year interval) were obtained from a large US trucking company. Days lost due to road injuries were assessed 6 months after time 2. Autoregressive, cross-lagged, and prospective effects were examined. Safety climate scores and safety behavior were moderately stable across a 2-year period. Both organization- and group-level safety climate scores were positively associated with safety behavior. The top-down association between time 1 organization-level safety climate and time 2 group-level safety climate was supported. Safety behavior mediated the relationship between group-level safety climate and future lost days due to injury. Contrary to suggestions of some prior research, the present study shows that safety climate measures may have lasting ability to predict safety behavior/outcomes in the trucking industry. In particular, the present study supported a hierarchical model in which organization-level safety climate influences safety outcomes through its influence on group-level climate. The top-down model connotes that top management efforts to instill a strong positive safety climate to affect workers’ driving behavior operate through management’s influence on the actions of the workers’ immediate supervisor.

Exploring the Influence of Abusive and Ethical Leadership on Supervisor and Coworker-Targeted Impression Management Abstract The present study was conducted to explore the association between abusive supervision and ethical leadership and employees’ use of workplace impression management (IM) behavior. We investigated five assertive and three defensive IM behaviors and distinguished between IM directed at supervisors versus coworkers. Analysis of data from 288 working adults suggests that self-promotion, exemplification, and apologies were more frequently directed toward supervisors, while supplication, intimidation, ingratiation, and excuses were more frequently directed toward coworkers. Abusive supervision was associated with increased self-promotion, supplication, exemplification, intimidation, justifications, and excuses. Ethical leadership was associated with reduced intimidation, justifications, and excuses. Leader role modeling was a moderator strengthening the positive association between abusive supervision and supplication, intimidation, and excuses, while strengthening the negative association between ethical supervision and excuses. These findings and their implications are discussed.

Investigating the Construct Validity of Performance Comments: Creation of the Great Eight Narrative Dictionary Abstract Performance narratives are qualitative text descriptions of an employee’s work performance. Despite containing rich information that can be leveraged by practitioners and researchers, few efforts have systematically examined performance narratives. This study investigated whether performance narratives can automatically and reliably be scored into meaningful performance dimensions. Using the Great Eight as a conceptual framework, a custom dictionary was developed and comments were scored via automated text mining. This dictionary, labeled the Great Eight Narrative Dictionary, was then validated against a set of convergent measures to establish construct validity evidence for the derived narrative scores. Inter-rater agreement in linking word phrases to performance dimensions was high, and the derived performance dimensions had acceptable internal consistency. Narrative scores also displayed evidence of construct validity, with an expected pattern of correlations with text scores from an alternative text mining dictionary and with developmental performance ratings made using traditional numerical formats. Collectively, findings support the use of the Great Eight Narrative Dictionary to score performance narratives, and the dictionary is provided openly to facilitate future use.

The Incremental Contribution of Complex Problem-Solving Skills to the Prediction of Job Level, Job Complexity, and Salary Abstract As work life becomes increasingly complex, higher order thinking skills, such as complex problem-solving skills (CPS), are becoming critical for occupational success. It has been shown that individuals gravitate toward jobs and occupations that are commensurate with their level of general mental ability (GMA). On the basis of the theory of occupational gravitation, CPS theory, and previous empirical findings on the role of CPS in educational contexts, we examined whether CPS would make an incremental contribution to occupational success after controlling for GMA and education. Administering computerized tests and self-reports in a multinational sample of 671 employees and analyzing the data with structural equation modeling, we found that CPS incrementally explained 7% and 3% of the variance in job complexity and salary, respectively, beyond both GMA and education. We found that CPS offered no incremental increase in predicting job level. CPS appears to be linked to job complexity and salary in a range of occupations, and this link cannot be explained as an artifact of GMA and education. Thus, CPS incrementally predicts success, potentially contributes to the theory of job gravitation, and adds to the understanding of complex cognition in the workplace.

Prime and Performance: Can a CEO Motivate Employees Without Their Awareness? Abstract Work motivation research is at a crossroads with the discovery of the causal effects of primed subconscious goals in addition to those of consciously set goals on performance. Although social psychologists continue to demonstrate positive effects of primed goals on a multitude of dependent variables, priming research has been criticized for its lack of generalizability beyond tightly controlled laboratory experiments. Addressing this skepticism, a field experiment was conducted in a for-profit organization, where the CEO used goal priming to motivate job performance. A performance goal for achievement was primed with achievement-related words embedded in an email from the CEO to employees. The goal priming by the CEO necessitated little to no costs yet it increased objectively measured performance effectiveness by 15% and efficiency by 35% over a 5-day work-week. This field experiment illustrates a new alternative for increasing employee performance. In a second experiment, we conducted a conceptual replication of the field experiment in the laboratory with a larger sample size, and we extended theory by testing a measure of motivation level as a mediator of the primed goal-performance effect. The results affirmed the hypothesized motivational influence. These two experiments increase understanding of subconscious motivation processes.

When Does What Other People Think Matter? The Influence of Age on the Motivators of Organizational Identification Abstract Demographic shifts in the labor market require scholars and practitioners to develop a more nuanced understanding of leading and motivating employees. The current study uses life span psychology theories to examine how age moderates the impact of an external motivator (perceived external prestige) and an internal motivator (learning goal orientation) on organizational identification. A sample of 101 employees completed two surveys with items measuring learning goal orientation, perceived external prestige, and organizational identification over a 4-month period. Demographic data was collected from the organization’s HRIS system and hierarchical regression was used to test the hypotheses. Perceived external prestige positively predicted organizational identification for younger employees, whereas learning goal orientation positively predicted organizational identification for older employees. These findings suggest that organizational leaders should take a life span perspective to human resource management practices, noting that different methods should be used to attract, motivate, and retain employees of different ages. Social identity theory has been used to explain various interpersonal workplace behaviors, but the literature has thus far not addressed how identification motivators differ for younger and older employees. This study begins to address that gap and provides initial support for the use of life span theories in the area of employee motivation.

Espoused Religious Values in Organizations and Their Associations with Applicant Intentions to Pursue a Job Abstract This study investigates the relationship between an organization’s religious values, as espoused by the founder or in media messaging, and applicant intentions to pursue a job. Drawing on person-organization fit theory, we also explored interactions between an organization’s espoused religious values and characteristics of the individual applicant. We tested our predictions via two conjoint analysis experiments, one with 191 employed adults collectively making 2292 employment pursuit decisions and a second with 120 employed adults making 1080 employment pursuit decisions. Espousing religious values as a founder or in media messaging yielded lower intentions to pursue a job than when an organization espouses non-religious values. However, when there was fit based on religious values, these relationships were mitigated. The results expand our understanding of person-organization fit by demonstrating the potential influence of espousing religious values on attracting organizational members.

Share Your Pride: How Expressing Pride in the Self and Others Heightens the Perception of Agentic and Communal Characteristics Abstract We reevaluate the proposition that pride expressions relate positively to ascriptions of agency and negatively to communality by studying self-referential pride and vicarious pride in others. While both signal a positive outcome, they differ in attributing it to one’s own or others’ efforts. Based on these differential attributions, we assume that the asymmetric pattern found for pride pertains to self-referential pride, whereas pride in others relates positively to communal dimensions and could even reverse the negative effect of self-referential pride. We examined expressions of self-referential and vicarious pride in two experiments (N1 = 286, N2 = 309) and a field study (N3 = 210) in peer and leadership contexts. We found pride in the self to relate positively (and independently from expressions of pride in others) to ascribed agency and autocratic leadership for peers, but only to the latter for leaders. For peers, pride in others was found to relate positively with communality and democratic leadership, and could even reverse negative effects of pride in the self. For leaders, the results primarily showed a negative relationship between pride in the self and both communality and democratic leadership. Our results provide first evidence that vicarious pride affects outcomes differently than self-referential pride, and integrate expressers’ power position as a critical moderator. Therein, we contribute to emotion research in outlining boundary conditions for the asymmetrical effects of expressing pride, thus helping individuals to anticipate the effects of self-referential and vicarious pride in peer and leadership contexts.

Within-Individual Age-Related Trends, Cycles, and Event-Driven Changes in Job Performance: a Career-Span Perspective Abstract Past research on age-related differences in job performance have focused primarily between-person comparisons. In the present study, we examine within-individual changes in supervisor-rated job performance to examine the influence of age-related trends, cycles, and event-driven factors. Our analysis is based on an eight-wave dataset from a multiple-cohort sample of employees (N = 750) varying in age from 25 to 65 years. We used an age-sequential design to disentangle maturation effects from historical effects. Results showed that population-level, within-individual change in a general measure of job performance was characterized by an increase in the first phase of the career (workers of 25–30 years), and then by a progressive decline. Within-individual levels of job performance were generally higher for younger workers than for older workers, and mostly reflected the influence of population-level trends but some even-driven effects as well. Results were in line with predictions from Baltes and Baltes’s (1990) meta-theory of selective optimization with compensation and the effects of age-related losses on performance. Results also provide insights into understanding the job performance trajectory over the career span.