Introducing workplace support can free us to develop ourselves and our organisation

New research suggests that when job support improves working conditions, the benefits are invested in different ways dependent on the individual's current thoughts and feelings.  The study looked at night shift performance of junior doctors and focused on structural support, meaning a part of the workplace designed-in to help employees.

Research on organisational support tends to focus on perceptions of support, such as 'My manager helps me through tough times'. This can make it difficult to identify causality: do supportive managers make high functioning teams or do struggling teams just fail to spot the lifelines their managers try to throw them? Perhaps unsurprisingly, perceived support has a flaky evidence signature, in some cases showing strong effects and in others none.

In response to this Sharon Parker and colleagues study of 48 junior doctors focused on support that varied systematically. This was the introduction of a specialist nurse available on certain shifts, there to coach on skill use, pass on patient information from past shifts, and provide emotional support. The study design looked at within-subject variation - how the same doctor responds when they do or don't have support - which makes the bias of an individual rater less problematic.

The night shift is challenging, calling for the five on-shift doctors to oversee the running of an entire hospital. But for them it's also an opportunity: to gain and develop skills in response to its demands, and to put their fresher eyes to the hospital's processes and call out possible improvements. Parker's team were interested in whether support allowed doctors to pursue these activities - skill development and manifesting voice - or whether the resources it provided would be sunk elsewhere. They predicted doctors experiencing high negative affect would be preoccupied with their struggles and focus on trying to reduce personal overload at the expense of voice and learning. These elements were all measured with surveys taken immediately at end-of-shift, with experiences still fresh.

These hypotheses were confirmed by analysis, which suggested that anxiety, rather than depression, was the element of negative motion that tipped doctors from attempting broader tasks into simply getting a grip on things. In addition, support was associated with better performance of core job activities, but only when the doctor believed they where clear on the roles of other shift colleagues, interpreted as insight that allow support to be used in a more targeted and efficient manner.

This study demonstrates a number of benefits of structural support. Improving core job performance, that here ultimately affects patient care, is clearly important, but the authors fix attention to the activities that fall outside the job specification. When junior doctors are strained and experiencing anxiety, support merely provides an important safety valve. But when they are spared these negative influences, the resources offered from support allow them to broaden and build their skill-set, and engage in changing their organisation for the better: 'their fresh perspective places them in an ideal position to identify unsafe practices and poor methods.' Finding these positive spirals can have long-term benefits for an organisation, building assets and helping it to improve.


Parker, S.K., Johnson, A., Collins, C., & Nguyen, H. (2013). Making the Most of Structural Support: Moderating Influence of Employees Clarity and Negative Affect. Academy of Management Journal,, 56 (3), 867-892 DOI: 10.5465/amj.2010.0927

Further reading:

Viswesvaran, C., Sanchez, J. I., & Fisher, J. 1999. The role of social support in the process of work stress: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 54a2: 314 –334.

Hostility increases unemployment, unemployment increases hostility

We know that unemployment is self-perpetuating, due to reasons including stigma and skill loss. Now new research suggests a further component to this vicious circle: hostile people are more likely to be without work, but periods without work also seem to raise levels of hostility, at least in the short-term.

The research team, led by Christian Hakulinen, made use of a large Finnish longitudinal data set beginning in 1980 with the recruitment of children and adolescents. From this set, data was available on the employment status of 1465 participants at multiple time points, together with personality information related to hostility that participants completed in 1992, 2001, and 2007. This included items that tapped cynicism (e.g. through agreement with statements like 'Most people are honest chiefly through fear of being caught') and others focusing on paranoia and distrustful attitudes (e.g. via items like 'Others do not give me proper credit for my achievements'). Hostility is associated with distrust of others, using social support less effectively, and proneness to conflict. It is a plausible variable to focus on because it’s known to predict sickness leave, which is related to unemployment risk.
 
Hostility ratings in 2001 predicted unemployment status in 2007. The analysis controlled for educational background (including the parents' education, a good proxy for family socio-economic status). A similar effect was found for 1992 hostility and 2001 unemployment , but after controlling for education this relationship was no longer significant.
 This suggests that socio-economic status may be a mediator variable, with more hostile children achieving worse educationally and through this being at higher unemployment risk.

The analysis also found an effect in the reverse direction by looking at the 2001 data. Here, holding constant the likelihood an individual was hostile in the past - by controlling for 1992 hostility scores – the researchers found that a given person was more likely to be more hostile if they had some period of unemployment that year. Other analyses suggested unemployment may also influence  hostility in the future, but controlling for education again saw these effects rendered non-significant. So the only thing we can say with some confidence is that unemployment appears to affect hostility in the short-term.

Hostile individuals tend to be less active in job searches, and their suspicion and disinclination to approach others leaves them open to becoming isolated within the workplace, making higher unemployment understandable. This research draws attention to a second dynamic, where frustration from joblessness hardens exteriors and affects personality, at least in the short term. Such a vicious circle is one that we - through policy, organisational and individual choices - should try to prevent. It's important to note the silver lining of the effect of employment status: ignoring previous hostility levels, having a steady recent employment history is associated with lower hostility. So if there is a vicious circle, it's potentially one that can be broken.

Christian Hakulinen, Markus Jokela, Mirka Hintsanen, Laura Pulkki-Råback, Marko Elovainio, Taina Hintsa, Nina Hutri-Kähönen, Jorma Viikari, Olli T. Raitakari, & Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen (2013). Hostility and unemployment: A two-way relationship? Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 83, 153-160 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2013.04.003

Further reading:

Paul, K. I., & Moser, K. (2009). Unemployment impairs mental health: Meta-analyses. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74(3), 264–282.

A team's goals determine whether diversity helps or hinders

Diversity offers an informational resource to any group, each perspective bringing something different to the table. Yet this isn't always fully leveraged. And diversity can  also disrupt team performance, due to the easier formation of in- and out-groups, where people trust information when it comes from those similar to them, and are slower to share information with those who are different. A new study suggests that one factor that can tip the balance from benefit to harm is how team members prioritise different goals. By prizing learning and acquiring new information, and avoiding focus on the risks of failure, teams can reap the benefits of diversity.

Researchers Anne Neederveen Pieterse, Daan van Knippenberg, and Dirk van Dierendonck of Erasmus University conducted two studies, of which I'll describe the second, being larger and more comprehensive. The participants were 109 teams of business school students. Each 4-person team spent three weeks on assignments relating to the running of a fictional company, but beforehand participants completed surveys allowing each team to be characterised by its degree of cultural diversity - all-Dutch homogeneity, or containing members from other backgrounds such as Indonesian - and mean levels of different 'goal orientation'. The two pertinent measures were learning approach orientation, with high scoring teams caring about opportunities to learn and acquire new information, and performance avoidance orientation, where it is important not to fail or to be seen to fail. Individuals, and hence teams, can score high on both measures. The final measure was team performance, as graded by tutors blind to the study intent.

As predicted, diversity affected team performance in different ways depending on learning approach orientation. When it was high, diverse teams did better, but when it was low, homogenous teams performed more strongly. A reverse pattern was found for performance avoidance: when the team held this goal orientation, diversity counted against them. There are a few reasons why these findings make sense.

A strong learning orientation involves seeking an in-depth understanding of things, which encourages the seeking of viewpoints even - especially - when different to our own. Meanwhile, strong performance avoidance orientation is associated with sticking to tried and tested approaches, so the soliciting of novel viewpoints may be seen as impediments that only introduce risk into the process. Additionally, performance avoiders tend to see others in terms of categories, more likely to see people as static and unchanging, and more concerned with perceptions of their competence, all of which can rack up the negative weight of diversity. Learning approachers tend to discard broad categorisation as too simplistic to describe reality, and seeing people as malleable - if you learn, you change - makes them less likely to see people different from them as fundamentally Other.

Analysis of data from a post-study survey confirmed what other studies by this research group have suggested: when diversity does pay off for team performance, it's because members are harnessing that diversity to exchange information and gather a deeper sense of the situation from it.

The authors point out that although goal orientation does have the aspect of a personal trait, it's also a state of mind that people can enter. Organisations can help achieve this through their reward systems or through using feedback to define and shape culture. They also suggest that selection based on goal orientation may be another way to leverage the benefits of diversity. As they conclude 'With today’s increasingly diverse workforce, the ability to manage the double-edged sword of cultural diversity is of ever greater importance to organizations.'

Anne Nederveen Pieterse, Daan van Knippenberg, & Dirk van Dierendonck (2013). Cultural Diversity and Team Performance: The Role of Team Member Goal Orientation Academy of Management Journal, 56 (3), 782-804 DOI: 10.5465/amj.2010.0992

Further reading:
Jackson, S. E., Joshi, A., & Erhardt, N. L. 2003. Recent research on team and organizational diversity: SWOT analysis and implications. Journal of Management, 29: 801– 830.

Who feels treated unfairly after taking an assessment?

Applicant reactions are the feelings people have about taking a given set of assessments in order to secure employment. We know that assessment design matters: applicants are happiest when given scope to show their capability through relevant challenges that did not demand inappropriate information.

Applicant factors matter too - obviously passing or failing the assessment can colour their perception, as can their 'attributional style' - but up to now there has been no consistent effect of applicant personality. Recent research takes a different angle that suggests perceptions of fairness depend on the applicant's personality type .

Finnish researchers Laura Honkaniemi and team suspected the problem with previous applicant reaction research was that it focused on correlations with personality traits - individual qualities such as extroversion, neuroticism and so on. This presumes that personality has its effect in a fairly linear way - 'more extraverted people will be happier in assessments', rather than involving an interplay between different features. Honkaniemi's team, working with personality data from applicants to Finnish Fire and Rescue Services, used an analytic technique to find four different personality types within the group of 258 applicants, which I describe below.

These individuals had all completed a set of physical assessments and then a psychological regime including interview, cognitive tests, a group exercise and a personality assessment (the Finnish version of the PRF). The final research sample (40 participants opted out of this) detailed applicant reactions, specifically on the use of psychological assessment, by rating items like 'I don’t understand what the psychological tests have to do with the future job tasks', after the assessment but before the outcomes were known. These items related to three areas: face validity - did the assessments seem relevant to the job?, predictive validity - do I think they can predict job performance? - and fairness perceptions - do I think this is a fair way to do things? No effect was found for the first two variables, but fairness was influenced by personality type for both successful and unsuccessful candidates.

Two of the personality types saw the process as significantly fairer than another. The first, typified by high conscientiousness, low neuroticism, and above average agreeableness and extraversion, is commonly identified within this personality typing process and labelled the Resilient type. Another hasn't been previously reported, the researchers dubbing it the 'Bohemian' due to its combination of low extraversion and low conscientiousness. In contrast the Overcontrolled group gave significantly lower fairness ratings. This is another classic type involving high neuroticism and low extroversion and agreeableness. Previous research has suggested this type is more likely to infer malevolence behind ambiguous behaviour, so their negative perceptions are consistent with this. Conversely, the Resilient profile, as the label implies, carries with it a strong tendency to adjust to circumstances and move forward, so less concerned with picking apart perceived wrongs. The authors speculate that the new type of Bohemian may have a  'let all flowers bloom' approach, their impulsive, uncompetitive nature making judgment unlikely.

A few notes: firstly, these personality types are rarely 'pure' but reflect nuances of the larger sample. Here, the Undercontrolled had higher extroversion than the Resilients, the opposite of what is seen in other studies. Secondly, the personality types are more than the sum of their parts: all these effects were obtained while controlling for the effects of the 14 individual personality traits within the PRF.

Applicant reactions matter. They can influence test performance, sour opinions of the employer, and affect a new hire's self-perception. Understanding who may experience a process as more unfair might be useful to employers for offering targeted support and feedback that takes their likely reactions into account.

Laura Honkaniemi, Taru Feldt, Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto, & Asko Tolvanen (2013). Personality Types and Applicant Reactions in Real-life Selection International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 21 (1), 32-45 DOI: 10.1111/ijsa.12015

Further reading:
Ployhart, R. E., & Harold, C. M. (2004). The Applicant Attribution-Reaction Theory (AART): An integrative theory of applicant attributional processing. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 12, 84–98.

Implementation is the issue when standing up to bullying

Workplace bullying has been estimated to cost the UK £13.75 billion annually. As a consequence, more and more organisations are putting into place anti-bullying policies to protect their employees and themselves. However, recent research explores potential gaps between policy and implementation in organisations, using a case study that digs beneath the official position.

Chris Woodrow and David Guest investigated a London-based hospital, high performing with strong clinical results. Analysis of the formal policies on bullying revealed them to be comparable to a benchmark that Woodrow and Guest built from a literature review of best practice policy. The organisation endorsed a zero-tolerance to bullying, provided informal routes for managers to deal with complaints together with a formal resolution system, and additional support for victims such as counselling and a bullying helpline. The hospital had even run an anti-bullying initiative to reinvigorate action on the issue a few years before the study commenced. Yet reported rates of bullying were at or above the national average. Between 2005 and 2008 they rose by 20%, a steeper climb than the national average; the invigorating initiative took place in midst of this in 2006.

Woodrow and Guest used data from staff attitude surveys taken in 2006 and 2007, each with around 400 participants. The bullying rates documented in this varied widely by hospital division, with 11% of the staff in one division reporting bullying in 2007, versus 35% at the other extreme. This range showed no obvious relation to the type of work involved, and didn't reflect the quality of bullying policies, as every division fell under those of the hospital. This suggested a factor may be local implementation, and a regression analysis added substance to this: divisions with less bullying reported that their managers offered more support and that they perceived more  effective action from the organisation.

The researchers were interested in going beyond the quantitative data to find out what this looks like in the organisation, so they interviewed twelve individuals with experience of bullying, including managers who were requested to take action in bullying cases. These accounts shed light on how implementation can stall or fail. Individuals with complaints described their desire to take a formal route meeting with discouragement from managers concerned the situation might reflect badly on them. Managers reported being leant on to go-slow the process: one manager commenting 'Do my senior managers think that I’m doing a bad job because I’m sticking to policy?' Additionally, failures could also be the result of poor quality implementation, such as a manager poorly equipped to give evidence in an investigation leading to delays and preventing timely resolution.

This study is part of broader recent research suggesting that HR implementation is currently of more concern than the presence and content of policies. Woodrow and Guest's regression suggests that manager and organisational commitments against bullying have an influence - via their effects on bullying levels - upon employee stress levels, as well as their intention to leave (2006 regression) and job satisfaction (2007). These are crucial organisational outcomes. The authors suggest that organisations ensure that senior management match their behaviour to the words of the policies they endorse, and that line management provides appropriate support, including via the presence of HR individuals such as business partners.

Chris Woodrow, & David E. Guest (2013). When good HR gets bad results: exploring the challenge of HR implementation in the case of workplace bullying Human Resource Management Journal DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12021

Further reading:
Beswick, J., Gore, J. and Palferman, D. (2006). Bullying at Work: A Review of the Literature, Buxton: Health and Safety Laboratory.
 

Is it better to enter negotiations with a team? It depends on your culture

Research suggests that negotiating parties tend to benefit when fielding a team rather than an individual. Generally, more heads are better than one, providing more ideas, helping to synthesise new information, correct each others biases and keep each other on target. Evidence suggests that even a single team operating in a negotiation (versus a solo counterpart) is sufficient to produce outcomes better for both parties. However, a research team led by Michele Gelfand has explored how universal this finding is, and provides data that suggests a different pattern in certain cultural contexts.

The research was conducted at universities in the United States and Taiwan. In each location, students (144 US, 100 Taiwanese) were recruited into a standard negotiation task, where parties are asked to decide how a new business will be run by finding agreement on four different factors. Each factor had various possible outcomes that led to different points awarded to the two parties, who sought to maximise this. Each negotiation was either between two pairs of negotiators, or between two single negotiators.

In the US sample, negotiations involving teams reached as positive outcomes as those helmed by individuals. (Note that teams didn't actually do better, as previous research would have suggested. The researchers suggest the anomaly may have occurred because the four-factor task was not cognitively demanding enough to benefit from many heads). But in the Taiwanese sample, worse collective outcomes were reached when groups were negotiating rather than individuals. The paper also presents an initial sample with smaller sample sizes that bears out this finding: specifically for Taiwanese negotiators, teams performed worse.

Neither national culture nor type of negotiation alone influenced performance, but their interaction did. Why? Gelfand's team decided to conduct this research because one effect of groups is norm amplification: a greater likelihood of behaving in line with your culture. This can be in sync with your goals or in tension with them. The researchers believed that individualistic norms found in the US encourage fighting for your corner and thus help push negotiations into hard but fruitful places. But collectivist norms that prize harmony and agreement may mean negotiations are handled tentatively and non-optimally; this is a component of Taiwanese culture. After the negotiation, all participants identified via a questionnaire how much they believed group harmony was important. Analysis showed that in the team conditions, was what was driving the performance difference between US and Taiwanese students was the higher harmony emphasis in the Taiwanese negotiations.

This research is important for a few reasons. Firstly, it helps us tease out the various effects teams have on negotiations. here raising the importance of norm amplification. It may be for instance that negotiations between friends also evoke a harmony norm, regardless of nationality, making teamwork possibly unwise. Secondly, this work illustrates 'the value of shifting the focus from static cultural differences to cultural dynamics'. By looking at behaviour across contexts, we arrive at a richer understanding of how cultures differ.

Michele J. Gelfand, Jeanne Brett, Brian C. Gunia, Lynn Imai, Tsai-Jung Huang, & Bi-Fen Hsu (2013). Toward a Culture-by-Context Perspective on Negotiation: Negotiating Teams in the United States and Taiwan Journal of Applied Psychology, 98 (3), 504-513 DOI: 10.1037/a0031908

Women leaders don't get a free pass for acting tentatively - but men do

Women seeking leadership have historically been hampered by stereotypical beliefs that they don't - and shouldn't - behave actively, confidently, with agency. Leaders need to be agentic, shaping an organisation toward a desired vision. But traditional gender roles demand that women take a more nurturing, passive stance, and when they do not, as copious research from the 1980s and 1990s found, they are met with disapproval.

However, society has changed over the decades, to the extent that agency in female leaders may no longer be an impediment. However, researchers Renata Bongiorno, Paul Bain and Barbara David suspected that the lifting of this barrier may reveal another, more subtle one for women leaders: that non-agentic behaviour is unfairly punished.

Why might this be? Real-life demonstrations that women can demonstrate agentic behaviour enter into culture (and are propagated through media and narratives) and change baseline beliefs. But these successes may be considered curious exceptions, with the associative link between 'leader' and 'male' still largely intact. This means that women may be considered as possible leaders, but scrutinised much more carefully for any evidence of non-leadership behaviour - scrutiny that men, as 'leaders-in-waiting' - may escape. There already exists some evidence that men have a freer hand in leadership - they receive positive endorsements for a wider range of leadership styles than female leaders do.

Bongiorno and her colleagues' first study presented students with manuscripts that detailed a speech on action on climate change. In a first condition the speech was designed to be assertive, with unapologetic speech and italicised components to denote emphasis. The other was tentative, containing hedges, hesitations and qualifiers. The speech was attributed to a male or female politician, who participants then rated in terms of likeability, perceived influence and agency. After controlling for communality (a measure of the speaker's warmth and sensitivity), the sample of 167 partcipants rated the male politician's likeability and influence the same regardless of the agency of his speech. But the female politician was rated more poorly on both measures when her speech was tentative rather than assertive. When acting assertively, the male and female leaders were rated the same way, but when the male example became tentative, he received a free pass that his female counterpart didn't.

A second study replicated this using audio speeches and a topic more personally relevant to their student sample, tuition fees. The only difference in findings was that in this case the assertive female leader was rated as even more likeable than the male one. My one nit to pick with this is that  having the audio produced by four different actors (two men, two women) introduces a lot of variance. Perhaps the agentic and non-agentic women have vocal attributes that really set them apart in terms of likeability, whereas the men were much of a muchness.

As the authors note, this is a subtle form of prejudice. It is legitimate to hold your leaders to certain standards of agency - it is part of the job. But observers – both men and women in this study – are far more forgiving of men when their behaviours deviate from this. We still need to understand why, or the many whys: there may be unfairly high expectations that women demonstrate 'female capability', whereas others may use this as a safe outlet to express sexism. And while leadership is still dominated by men, the curiosity factor of female leadership may draw attention and disproportionate scrutiny. It's on us to be aware that successful leaders can operate in many different ways, whether they are male or female. 

Bongiorno R, Bain PG, & David B (2013). If you're going to be a leader, at least act like it! Prejudice towards women who are tentative in leader roles. The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society PMID: 23509967