What does volunteering say about how much your job means to you, and how well you perform in it?

What motivates someone to volunteer? This question lies at the heart of Jessica Rodell's dissertation research, now published in the Academy of Management Journal. Rodell looked at two differing perspectives on why we take on meaningful activities outside of a paying job. Are we after something we can't get from our nine to five? Or is it that the meaning we taste in our job makes us hungry - voracious, even - for more?

Rodell's first study surveyed 208 people, students who also had jobs that occupied them on average 30 hours per week, all of whom had volunteered in the past year. In a first survey they rated the meaningfulness of their current job, and it trned out that more, not less, job meaning led to more volunteering, measured in a second survey. The second survey also included a measure of voracity for meaning, typified by the item 'I volunteer to acquire more of what I enjoy about my job' and the analysis suggested that this measure was the key mechanism: job meaning increases voracity which leads to more volunteering. 

This finding was replicated in a study of a further 173 participants - three quarters of whom were women, working mostly full-time hours, all of whom had volunteered in the past year. The study incorporated a few additional features. Job meaningfulness was now rated by co-workers in order to avoid self-report bias. And the meaning generated by volunteering - taken as read in the first study - was actually rated by participants. Regardless of how much meaning the volunteering offered, participants were likely to do more of it if their job was more meaningful.  Meaning-rich work doesn't satiate our hunger for meaning, but galvanises us to seek roles that might supply even a little more.

However, the analysis also revealed that when a participant was receiving little meaning from their job, their amount of volunteering was especially driven by how much meaning they felt it offered. So volunteering can also fill a deficit, in addition to feeding a nurtured appetite.

Rodell also asked co-workers to rate the work performance of their volunteering colleagues, who also rated their own absorption in their work. The data showed a relationship, with participants who volunteer more feeling more absorbed and their absorption being associated with better work performance. As with any such results, we should bear in mind that the personal traits that drive someone to volunteering may also influence their absorption, rather than the volunteering itself doing so, but the fact remains: those who volunteered more performed better - in terms of discretional activities, abstinence from unproductive behaviours, and the quality of their work. 

These results have practical implications for any organisation, as people from all walks of life volunteer. We already know that volunteering can help recover resources, and here we see its benefits for performance. And if a manager has cause to worry that volunteering suggests their employee would rather be elsewhere, in Rodell's words, 'the current results suggest that the opposite is more likely—that employee volunteering is an indication that their jobs have inspired them. In the alternative scenario, where employees believe they are lacking desired meaning in their jobs, volunteering may serve to compensate for that deficit.' So in many ways, volunteering is a win-win for organisations.

Jessica B Rodell (2013). Finding Meaning Through Volunteering: Why Do Employees Volunteer And What Does It Mean For Their Jobs? Academy of Management Journal, 56 (5), 1274-1294 DOI: 10.5465/amj.2012.0611

Further reading:
Clary, E. G., & Snyder, M. 1999. The motivations to volunteer: Theoretical and practical considerations. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8: 156 –159.

Rebooting Organisational Citizenship Behaviour for the 21st Century

Fans of comics are well acquainted with franchises being 'rebooted', and aficionados of TV and film may have experienced this with the Battlestar Galactica series or Star Trek movies. What seems cutting edge and on-the-nose in one era can begin to look dated and out of touch in another, so a deft hand is needed to sharpen things up. But did you ever consider that psychological concepts get rebooted too? Just like TV media, what makes sense in one era can be anachronistic in another. So, here's an introduction to a reboot of organisational citizenship behaviours for the 21st Century.

In their article in Academy of Management Perspectives, Kathryn Dekas and colleagues explain how Organisational Citizenship Behaviour, or OCB, was developed as a concept in the late 70s and the 80s as a response to the lack of relationship between job satisfaction and traditional measures of performance. Dennis Organ and colleagues had identified that research was narrowly focused on job performance in terms of performance of obligatory activity, and that the consequences of high job satisfaction would instead be for positive acts that are discretionary in nature. So the OCB construct was born, and research over the years has variously defined it in terms of five main components: altruism, conscientiousness, sportsmanship, courtesy, and civic virtue.

Dekas' team felt however that in the 21st century things that were once discretionary may be now considered core, and new frontiers of discretionary work may now matter. This may be particularly true for people engaged in knowledge work - 'thinking for a living' - estimated as being the core activity for 25-50% of workers in advanced economies.  To explore this, they conducted 12 focus groups made up of 7-10 participants, principally in the US but with European and Asian representatives. The company? That major epicentre of knowledge work, Google.

Focus groups rated items from the five traditional components of the OCB construct, determining the degree to which their work group saw them as useful and voluntary (as they should be to count as OCB items) or something else. That 'something else' came up a lot: most items were rated as core, expected behaviours by at least one of the groups – for example, attendance at meetings is here seen as expected rather than voluntary - and many items were also rated as simply inapplicable. For instance, "does not spend time in idle conversation" was discarded by many groups: that may be seen as good behaviour on a factory floor, but not at Google.

In a separate task, groups brainstormed behaviours that they did see as discretionary but valuable within their organisation. This data - 615 items in all - was then screened and categorised into new OCB components... eight in all, four that hewed to the original components, together with four further ones. Whereas Helping mapped closely to the pre-existing altruism component, another component of Employee Sustainability referred to helping others - and one's self - to maintain health and wellbeing, an OCB with a much longer-term agenda. Other new components included Administrative Behaviour (such as making sure events happen that could easily slip through the cracks), Knowledge Sharing and Social Participation. Now it becomes clear why 'avoiding idle conversation' didn't resonate as an OCB among these focus groups: employees expect each other to expend discretional effort in conversation, both functional and non-targeted, in order to grease the wheels of exchange and comradeship.

Dekas and her co-authors stress that this is not meant to be the definitive rewriting of OCB, nor that existing measures are now redundant. But it points to the fact that any construct needs to make sense in the context you use it. The team have developed the new components into a new measure of OCB, one that may be more valuable in examining discretionary acts in a knowledge-work environment. Their data - from 300 participants outside of Google – suggests that compared to traditional OCB measures, their measure may correlate better with job satisfaction, fit, and (negatively) with stress. So if you're interested in understanding OCB, watch this space.

Kathryn H. Dekas, Talya N. Bauer, Brian Welle, Jennifer Kurkowski, & Stacy Sullivan (2013). Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Version 2.0: A review and Qualitative Investigation of OCBs for Knowledge Workers at Google and beyond The Academy of Management Perspectives, 27 (3), 219-237 DOI: 10.5465/amp.2011.0097

Further reading:
Podsakoff, N. P., Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Blume, B. D. (2009). Individual- and organizational level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 122–141.

If you love to multitask, you better have the aptitude to back it up

Over a typical working day, I'll juggle all manner of tasks, some important, some urgent, all competing for attention. Multitasking, in this sense, is common to many a modern workplace, and it's been known for some time that people differ in their enjoyment of it.

Over the last decade, studies have confirmed that people vary also in their ability to multitask. A new study by Kristin Sanderson and colleagues suggests that to understand someone's fit to a multitasking role, it's critical to look at how ability and preference interact.

The study's 119 participants came from a range of professional occupations, which all involved multitasking to an Important or Very Important degree, as rated by independent experts. Participants then completed a computer multitasking assessment, which involved solving two types of task in parallel on a split-screen display. Each participant rated their preference for multitasking, which is termed polychronicity and is defined as how much one enjoys working on multiple tasks in parallel, rather than tackling them more sequentially.  Performance data was also available, based on ratings from their supervisors.

For especially polychronic participants – those scoring one standard deviation above the mean – there was a relationship between their multitasking ability and supervisor ratings: more ability led to better ratings. But those with polychronicity ratings 1 SD below the mean received similar ratings regardless of their ability. The data suggested that their multitasking ability just didn't have consequences, which makes sense: if you choose not to do something, it doesn't matter how good you would have been at doing it.

As you can see above, when multitasking ability is poor, polychronic participants' performance scores fall below those of their monochronic counterparts (the dotted line); perhaps reflecting such individuals biting off more task-juggling than they can chew - although I should emphasise that the study doesn't explicitly test for differences here.

 So, even in a job that calls for multitasking, being highly polychronic is not a straightforward benefit. If you are recruiting for such a role, bear in mind that both will-do and can-do matter.

Kristin R. Sanderson, Valentina Bruk-Lee, Chockalingam Viswesvaran, Sara Gutierrez, & Tracy Kantrowitz (2013). Multitasking: Do preference and ability interact to predict performance at work? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83, 556-563 DOI: 10.1111/joop.12025

Further reading:
König, C. J., & Waller, M. J. (2010). Time for reflection: A critical examination of polychronicity. Human Performance, 23, 173–190. doi:10.1080/08959281003621703
 

Why we flirt at work: the performance perspective

When we think about sexual behaviour in the workplace, it's easy to conjure up the Christmas-party fling or the clandestine affair; or, if we're in a more sober mood, we might turn to the topic of sexual harassment. Harassment and office romance are also the focus of most of the research in this area. Yet workplace sexual behaviour comes in many flavours, according to a new paper by Marla Baskerville Watkins and colleagues.

The article is interested in how the workplace contains sexual performances, meaning the act of presenting yourself to others in a way that includes a sexual component. Just like a pop concert or piece of theatre, an effective performance is something that has value for its intended audience. The value of a sexual performance can be implicit - such as when a flirtation promises the possibility of something more - but can also be self-contained, such as a flirtation enjoyed simply because flirtation is enjoyable.

The authors emphasise that while some performances snowball into torrid affairs, the vast majority may just bubble along as the froth on top of everyday social interactions. Their purpose, Watkins argues, is ingratiation – getting another party on-side. But the purpose and methods may be quite different for men and women. Women's sexual resources have a high value, so common performances involve emphasising these by adjusting dress and other aspects of appearance. Meanwhile, men tend to enact sexual performance through chivalry and giving favours. Both men and women tend to use a third type of performance, other-enhancing, which involves compliments and raising the status of the other party.

Watkins and her co-authors suggest the general male goal is to maximise the exchange of sexual performances – flirt for the chance of more flirting - whereas women act more tactically to redress power imbalance. For instance, women working in highly masculine industries adopt more instrumental forms of sexuality.

But sexual performances aren't a fail-safe strategy.  The existing literature on workplace ingratiation shows how behaviours  perceived as excessive and insincere end up hurting the performer's status. Here, this may involve being pigeonholed as 'that kind of girl', or for a particularly clumsy man, spill over into harassing behaviour. The paper argues that we shouldn't act as though sexual behaviour in the workplace is binary – you're not doing it or you are doing it wrong – but that there is a continuum of unremarkable behaviour filling in the gaps. A woman judged for being a sexual operator may only be magnifying what her co-workers – women and men – are already doing in moderation.

The authors are aware that their analysis is heteronormative – that is, it focuses on heterosexual norms and interactions – and point out that sadly in many environments sexual performance towards people of the same gender is tacitly or actively discouraged, meaning that it is fairly invisible in the literature and would benefit from more active research.

There may be a benefit to sexual energy at work, and in any case it would be hard to eliminate it entirely: “the reality is that humans are sexual beings and that simply joining an organization does not magically extinguish their desire to express their sexuality.” Rather than taking a zero-tolerance approach, Watkins instead recommends ruling only on behaviours that are clearly out of bounds and letting local culture and individual judgment sort out the subtleties.

Marla Baskerville Watkins, Alexis Nicole Smith, & Karl Aquino (2013). The Use and Consequences of Strategic Sexual Performances The Academy of Management Perspectives, 27 (3), 173-186 DOI: 10.5465/amp.2010.0109

Further reading:
Hearn, J., & Parkin, W. (1995). Sex at work: The power and paradox of organization sexuality. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
 

Want a spate of good deeds? Confront the ne'er do wells...

Discovering you are racking up more work misdemeanours than the organisation considers acceptable can lead people to perform reparation behaviours to compensate for their misdeeds. The study that reports this new finding did not rely on public or interpersonal shaming for its effect; anonymous feedback that the individual had committed an above-average amount of counterproductive work actions was enough to provoke guilt, and through that, altruism.

On day one of Remus Ilies's survey-based study, 146 university employees recorded the counter-productive work behaviours (CWBs) they got up to, such as playing pranks on others or taking extra-long breaks. The next day, half of them received feedback on their CWB levels compared to the average. The feedback noted that above-average CWBs were harmful to the wellbeing of the organisation. Participants were then asked how much they intended to engage in another kind of extra-role behaviour, positive organisational citizenship behaviours such as assisting others or offering ideas. Three days later, they were surveyed again about how much citizenship behaviour they had actually engaged in.

Above average offenders who received no feedback were least likely to plan or carry out citizenship acts for others. Typical of those lot, eh? But when feedback was provided, the intentions of high offenders, and their actual efforts to do good, shot up to levels similar to those of the well-behaved, low CWB participants. The Day two survey also recorded ratings of emotional guilt, and this was what mediated the relationship between feedback on high CWBs and more citizenship behaviours: the more guilt, the more they tried to make up with good deeds.

Previous work has suggested going the extra mile at work is related to positive emotions, but here we see a benefit from a negative emotion, and one that produces a crossover from harmful work behaviours to constructive behaviours. The authors characterise it as 'a dynamic phenomenon in which negative and positive voluntary behaviours influence each other' until employees find their own balance according to 'their personal level of comfort.' They call for future work to see whether the compensatory behaviours occur in the same domain - teasing a co-worker leading to helping that person out - or whether guilt leads to indirect compensation such as more active work participation, rather than looking the bad deed in the face.

Remus Ilies, Ann Chunyan Peng, Krishna Savani, & Nikos Dimotakis (2013). Guilty and Helpful: An Emotion-Based Reparatory Model of Voluntary Work Behavior Journal of Applied Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0034162

How space and time collide for self-employed teleworkers

I'm self-employed and often need to get work done in a variety of locations. In theory, I should be most productive at home, with everything at my fingertips, but sometimes the exact reverse is true (which explains why I'm writing this from a cafe). So it was a treat to read a recent article by Mona Mustafa and Michael Gold on managing 'temporal and physical boundaries among self-employed teleworkers.' The article reports on a number of practices that may be useful to anyone in this situation.

The researchers interviewed 20 self-employed teleworkers – people who work outside a formal office and engaged in non face-to-face work -  from France, the US and UK. Most respondents regarded having a clear separate physical location for work as necessary even though in the main no-one else was in the house when work took place. Respondents who began only quasi-separated soon became dissatisfied: for instance, one interviewee ended up introducing a room divider into her bedroom-work space: 'I did not want to be trying to go to sleep and kind of looking at my work, I wanted to have some kind of physical separation of work from sleep...'

The paper references Alan Felstead's continuum used to describe how work-life and home-life interrelate. At one extreme, these are totally detached and invisible to one another, and at the other they are fully assimilated. Mustafa and Gold found their interviewees’ insights suggest that this continuum might exist for three different features of the work-home divide: equipment, activity, and ambience. For example, a work area may be decorated distinctly from the rest of the house, and all work equipment may be restricted to that area - keeping these areas detached - yet the worker might use the area for chats with a visitor or to go through household accounts, thus blending activities.

Without a remote manager providing external pressure, many of the interviewees found it hard to get it across to family and friends that their hours were sacrosanct and that they were 'really' working. Separating space was important for creating boundaries, essentially consecrating a corner of home as not-Home-but-Work. A more insidious danger was a self-inflicted one: use of mobile technology.

We've reported on how this can undermine work-home distinctions in remote working employees, but the problems are compounded for the self-employed, who rely on client requests to get revenue and so may be reluctant to switch off in the fear of missing the call for a piece of work. Mobile technology therefore breaks down the boundaries that the self-employed may dearly depend on.

Mustafa and Gold conclude that the lack of strong temporal boundaries for the self-employed – working beyond 9 to 5; commissions potentially coming in at any time – makes it all the more vital to get the physical ones in place. They emphasise that a range of strategies may be workable, but that it is important to recognise that your workspace is defined – or left defined – by how you manage equipment, ambience/design, and how disciplined you are in assigning work and non-work to the appropriate locations. Just as their respondents do, 'make choices, experiment and adapt to the environment' that you have to make work, to do your work.

Mona Mustafa, & Michael Gold (2013). ‘Chained to my work’? Strategies to manage temporal and physical boundaries among self-employed teleworkers Human Resource Management Journal, 23 (4), 413-429

Further reading:
Felstead, A., Jewson, N. and Walters, S. (2005). Changing Places of Work, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
 

Transformational leaders craft the right emotional states. Positive people are already in them

At their best, leaders get something from their workforce that would have been impossible otherwise. Research on this 'transformational leadership' style suggests that it can inspire employees to more creative performance - such as coming up with new and useful products – as well as encouraging helping behaviours. However, these benefits aren't seen across every study. A new paper suggests one reason is that some people simply don't need what the transformational leader has to offer.

Phillip Gilmore's team proposed that transformational leaders are effective partly through influencing their followers’ feelings . This leadership style is defined by an 'intense emotional component', and its associated behaviours include offering personalised care and concern, demonstrating selflessness, generating optimism for the present and future,  and making people feel safe to think dangerously.

The researchers argue that these behaviours help get followers into a state of positive affect (PA), and that this is the reason for more creative and proactive actions. This is consistent with Barbara Frederickson's Broaden and Build theory, and widespread evidence that we explore, act more prosocially and find more possibilities when in a positive state.


But Gilmore's team asked a simple question: what if followers are feeling good already? They invited their sample - 212 employees in the research department of a China-based pharmaceutical company – to rate their trait positive affect: i.e. their day-on-day tendency to see the world positively and bring energy and curiosity to it. The sample also rated their supervisors in terms of their transformational leadership style, and in return supervisors rated their employees’ creative performance and tendency to perform citizen behaviours like helping others.

The researchers predicted that low PA trait scorers - those 1 SD below the average - would benefit from the emotional lift and encouragement to be open that sits at the heart of the transformational leader's focus, leading to more creative and citizen-like behaviours, but high PA trait scorers wouldn't need this, so their outputs would be unaffected. Analysis confirmed this pattern for creative performance. For organisational citizenship, the pattern was in the right direction but while low PA people showed more behaviours under a transformational leader, it didn't reach statistical significance.

The authors suggest that the employees who may benefit most from transformational leaders are those with lower trait PA, characterised by 'low energy, sluggishness, and melancholy.' But given that the transformational style is commonly adopted by extraverted types likely to have higher trait PA themselves, it's probable that they gravitate toward the like-minded, meaning they may spend more time preaching to the converted. Such leaders may need to roll up their sleeves and engage with those who share their mindset least, seeking to lift them into states of higher PA and reap the dividends this provides.

Phillip Gilmore, Xiaoxiao Hui, Feng Wei, Lois Tetrick, & Stephen Zaccaro (2013). Positive affectivity neutralizes transformational leadership’s influence on creative performance and organizational citizenship behaviors Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34, 1061-1075 DOI: 10.1002/job.1833

Further reading:
Wang, G., Oh, I.-S., Courtright, S. H., & Colbert, A. E. (2011). Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and
levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36(2), 223–270.