An Introduction to Contemporary Work Psychology (eBook)

Maria C.W. Peeters, Jan de Jonge, Toon Taris (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-118-65250-3 (ISBN)

Infos

This is the first comprehensive overview of work psychology, with coverage of classic models, current theories, and contemporary issues affecting the 21^st-century worker.

 

• Examines the positive aspects of work–motivation, performance, creativity, and engagement—instead of focusing only on adverse effects
• Edited by leaders in the field with chapters written by a global team of experts from the US, UK, Europe,  and Australia
• Discusses topics such as safety at work, technology, working times, work-family interaction, working in teams , recovery, job demands and job resources, and sickness absence
• Suitable for advanced courses focused on work psychology as a sub discipline of work and organizational psychology
• Didactic features include questions for discussion, boxes with practical applications, further reading sections, and a glossary

Maria Peeters is Associate Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and a licensed occupational health psychologist. Her research interests include job stress, work motivation, job performance, work-home interaction, and aging at work. She has published many book chapters as well as articles on these topics in today’s leading scientific journals.

Jan de Jonge is Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, and Vice-Dean of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences. He is a licensed work and organizational psychologist as well as a licensed occupational health psychologist. His research interests include the optimization of performance at work and at sports, and he has published well over a hundred articles, books and chapters. Until recently, he served as the Editor of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Toon Taris is Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is currently Scientific Editor of Work & Stress and serves on the boards of several other international journals.  He has published hundreds of articles and chapters on topics such as occupational health, stress, engagement, workaholism, authenticity at work, as well as on longitudinal research methods and nonresponse, in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior and the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

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AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY WORK PSYCHOLOGY "e;[This book] provides a comprehensive introduction to the field, featuring contributions from around the world. Not only is the book well-written, it is also very readable and entertaining and provides a thorough and scholarly introduction to all aspects of the field. I strongly and unreservedly endorse and recommend it."e; Anthony Harold Winefield, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of South Australia "e;Work behaviour is crucial to our health and well-being and to organizational performance. Work also impacts on our behaviour outside work and on family life. With contributions of many of the world's leading experts, this strong editorial team has produced the first standard book on work psychology: the scientific study of work behaviour and its antecedents and consequences. It is a must for anyone seriously interested in work, work behaviour and people at work."e; Michiel Kompier, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology, Radboud University Nijmegen An Introduction to Contemporary Work Psychology is the first textbook to provide a comprehensive overview of work psychology. Moving beyond the terrain of introductory industrial/organizational psychology textbooks, this book examines the classic models, current theories and contemporary issues affecting the twenty-first-century worker. This text covers all aspects of the psychology of working, including topics such as safety at work, working times, work family interaction, recovery from work, technology, job demands and job resources, working in teams and sickness absence. While many books in the field focus on the adverse effects of work, this one is unique in emphasizing also the positive aspects and outcomes of work, including motivation, performance, creativity and engagement. The book also contains chapters on job-related prevention and intervention strategies with a special focus on positive interventions and proactive techniques, such as job crafting and promoting positive work behaviours. Edited by respected leaders in the field and with chapters written by a global team of experts, this is the textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses focusing on work psychology.

Autor

Maria C. W. Peeters is Associate Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and a licensed occupational health psychologist. Her research interests include job stress, work motivation, job performance, work-home interaction and ageing at work. She has published many book chapters as well as articles on these topics in leading scientific journals. Jan de Jonge is Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy at the University of South Australia. He is a licensed work and organizational psychologist as well as a licensed occupational health psychologist. His research interests include the optimization of performance at work and at sports, and he has published extensively with over 100 articles, books and chapters. Until recently, he served as the Editor of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Toon W. Taris is Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is currently Editor of Work & Stress and serves on the boards of several other international journals. He has published on topics such as occupational health, stress, engagement, workaholism and authenticity at work, as well as on longitudinal research methods and non-response.

Inhalt

About the Editors vii

About the Contributors viii

Part A Introduction 1

1 Introduction: People at Work 3

Maria C. W. Peeters, Toon W. Taris and Jan de Jonge

2 Research Methods in Work Psychology 31

E. Kevin Kelloway and Arla Day

Part B Theoretical Perspectives on Work 61

3 The Models that Made Job Design 63

Kevin Daniels, Pascale M. Le Blanc and Matthew Davis

4 Current Theoretical Perspectives in Work Psychology 89

Jan de Jonge, Evangelia Demerouti and Christian Dormann

Part C Demands 115

5 Quantitative Job Demands 117

Marc van Veldhoven

6 Qualitative Demands at Work 144

Dieter Zapf, Norbert K. Semmer and Sheena Johnson

Part D Context 169

7 Job Control and Social Aspects of Work 171

Norbert K. Semmer and Terry A. Beehr

8 Recovery from Demanding Work Hours 196

Sabine A. E. Geurts, Debby G. J. Beckers and Philip
Tucker

9 The Design and Use of Work Technologies 220

Patrick Waterson

Part E The Worker 241

10 Individual Characteristics and Work-related Outcomes
243

Beatrice van der Heijden, Karen van Dam, Despoina Xanthopoulou
and Annet H. de Lange

11 Work-Family Interaction 267

Ulla Kinnunen, Johanna Rantanen, Saija Mauno and Maria C. W.
Peeters

Part F Outcomes 291

12 Burnout, Boredom and Engagement in the Workplace 293

Wilmar B. Schaufeli and Marisa Salanova

13 Job Satisfaction, Motivation and Performance 321

Nathan A. Bowling

14 Safety at Work 342

Nik Chmiel and Toon W. Taris

15 Sickness Absence and Sickness Presence 367

Rita Claes

Part G Interventions 391

16 Managing Psychosocial Risks in the Workplace: Prevention and
Intervention 393

Silvia Pignata, Caroline Biron and Maureen F. Dollard

17 Job Crafting 414

Evangelia Demerouti and Arnold B. Bakker

18 Teams at Work 434

Amanda L. Thayer, Ramón Rico, Eduardo Salas and Shannon L.
Marlow

19 Positive Interventions: From Prevention to Amplification
458

Carolyn M. Youssef-Morgan and Dale A. Sundermann

Index 481

Rezensionen

"The book is targeted at students of work and organisational psychology but it could certainly be of interest for advanced study in related fields. For a book of this quality the paperback version represents excellent value for money and would be a useful introductory text to anyone studying the psychology of work." (Occupational Health At Work, 1 August 2014)

Textauszug

2

Research Methods in Work Psychology

E. KEVIN KELLOWAY AND ARLA DAY

Chapter Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

• recognize the importance and necessity of establishing the reliability and validity of measures used in organizational research;
• explain the three central dilemmas confronting researchers in selecting an appropriate research design;
• describe and identify the strengths and limitations of the major research designs used in organizational research;
• evaluate the basic characteristics of an empirical study in a balanced and well-informed manner.

The happy–productive worker thesis has been one of the most intensely researched questions in work psychology (Locke, 1976; also see Chapter 13). Essentially, the suggestion was that individuals who are happy with their jobs are more productive. This notion was very popular in the early days of work psychology, from the 1950s until about the mid-1970s. However, by the time Locke wrote his review of the job satisfaction literature in 1976, researchers had largely rejected the hypothesis, concluding that the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance is statistically negligible (Iaffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985). Our understanding of the relationship continues to evolve (research now suggests that there is a relationship between satisfaction and performance; Judge, Thoreson, Bono, & Patton, 2001), and the happy–productive thesis continues to intrigue researchers (Taris & Schreurs, 2009; Zelenski, Murphy, & Jenkins, 2008).

Imagine you are part of our research group, and we want to do a study to test the happy–productive worker relationship. How would we go about conducting such a test? As a first step, you would need to formulate a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a testable prediction about the world. In this case, the hypothesis or prediction is that job satisfaction and job performance are positively related (i.e. people who are more satisfied perform better). Although this statement is a prediction, it is not yet testable. Job satisfaction and job performance are abstract constructs, that is, we cannot ‘see’ job satisfaction or performance. We therefore need to determine how these constructs will be measured. We first would use operational definitions, which define an abstract construct in specific, observable, measurable and behavioural terms. Operational definitions can be very specific to the study in which they are used, and they may differ among studies. In the first section of this chapter, we will review how researchers go about making decisions around how to measure the constructs in which they are interested.

Once we have decided how to measure happiness and productivity, we need to consider how we would go about conducting a research study of the happy–productive worker hypothesis. To do this we need to consider a wide variety of issues, ranging from who should participate in our study (e.g. employees in one local organization, employees across Canada, employees from North America or employees across the world) to what we conclude (e.g. if we find an association between the two variables does that mean that happiness causes productivity or does being productive make you happy or perhaps neither conclusion is correct?). These are questions of research design to which we turn our attention in the latter half of this chapter.

Replay

• A hypothesis is a testable prediction about the world.
• Hypothetical constructs are used to label the concepts (such as job satisfaction) that we cannot directly observe in order to organize and classify observations in a meaningful way.
• Operational definitions define an abstract construct in specific, observable, measurable and behavioural terms.

2.1 Measurement

Although this definition is not accepted by everyone, Stevens (1946) defined measurement as ‘the assignment of numerals to objects or events according to rules’ (p. 670). The rules ensure that the relationships among the numbers convey some information about the relationships among the aspects being measured. As shown in Table 2.1, there are four levels of measurement arranged in ascending order according to how much information they convey about the objects or events being measured: 1, nominal; 2, ordinal; 3, interval; 4, ratio (Stevens, 1946).

Table 2.1 Scaling definition and examples.

The nominal level of measurement simply uses numbers as labels or names. For example, we could assign numbers to differentiate among employees working in different departments within our company), that is, we could label the engineering department ‘1’, the research and development department ‘2’, marketing and sales ‘3’ and human resources ‘4’. The numbers differentiate these different departments, but they are not meaningful and they do not allow for any other inference: the numbers (1, 2, 3, 4) tell us that the employees are from different departments, but because we are using the numbers solely as labels, the numbers do not represent any particular ‘order’ or ‘size’ of these differences. For example, we cannot say that someone who has received a 4 for their department (human resources) is twice as good as an employee who received a 2 for their department (research and development). It simply means that they work in different departments. We can therefore use any four numbers to represent these four different departments (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 or 100, 200, 300, 400, etc.) and we can put the departments in any order (e.g. 1 = marketing and sales, 2 = human resources, 3 = engineering and 4 = research and development).

The ordinal level of measurement not only conveys information about similarity/difference, but also information about rank order. For example, we could ask supervisors to rank their employees in terms of their sales performance. If Zara is ranked 1, we know that she is the top salesperson in the company, so she is not only different from the other employees, but she also is doing better than the others. More specifically, we know that she is doing better than Heinrich, who is ranked second-best salesperson in the company, who is doing better than Miko, who is ranked third. Although we can order employees in this way, the ranks do not convey information about how far apart the employees are, nor can we assume that the differences among the ranks are equal. Thus, Zara may exceed Heinrich by $200,000 in sales, whereas Heinrich may only exceed Miko by $50,000. If we have information only on rank order, we only know that Zara did better than Heinrich, who did better than Miko, but we do not know the magnitude of these differences.

The interval level of measurement incorporates this notion of magnitude of differences. More precisely, interval scales have the property of equal intervals so that the difference between a score of 1 and a score of 2 is exactly the same as the difference between a score of 3 and a score of 4. Most measures in work psychology have, or are assumed to have, an interval level of measurement. For example, when we measure job satisfaction using a five-point scale, we assume that the distance between 4 = satisfied and 5 = very satisfied is the same as the distance between 1 = very dissatisfied and 2 = dissatisfied.

Finally, the ratio level of measurement not only has equal intervals among the scores, but also has a true zero. A true zero is when a score of 0 means the absence of the quantity being measured (e.g. height, weight). If we go back to our salesperson performance example, we may be able create a ratio scale to rate sales performance. If we quantify performance in terms of the amount of product sold, we can directly compare the employees’ performance because sales performance (in terms of dollars) has a true zero point of $0.00. If Zara has annual total sales of $500,000, and Miko has annual total sales of $250,000, we can say that Zara’s sales are double the sales of Miko.

Replay

• Constructs can be measured at different measurement levels, and these levels vary in terms of their meaning and the sort of information they convey.
• Table 2.1 summarizes the key characteristics of these measurement levels and provides some illustrative examples.

2.2 Classical Test Theory

To return to our initial satisfaction and performance example, let us suppose that we will be measuring performance on a ratio scale (e.g. the number of widgets produced or total sales) and job satisfaction on an interval measurement. Having made these initial decisions about measuring variables, our concern for measurement is by no means finished. Now we can ask how well each of our measures reflects its intended construct. More specifically, we are going to be concerned with the reliability and validity of our measures. These issues are the domain of what is usually referred to as classical test theory (CTT).

Reliability

Whenever we measure any construct at work, it is important for us to have confidence that the test is reliably measured, that is, there has to be some consistency in the score. Imagine a situation in which we tried...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.10.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Psychiatrie / Psychotherapie
• Schlagworte: Arbeitspsychologie • Business & Management • Industrial psychology, organizational psychology, working times, job demands, job resources, sickness, job absence, return to work, applied social psychology, occupational health, business administration, management science • Organisations- u. Managementtheorie • Organizational & Industrial Psychology • Organization & Management Theory • Psychologie • Psychologie i. d. Arbeitswelt • Psychology • Wirtschaft u. Management
• ISBN-10: 1-118-65250-9 / 1118652509
• ISBN-13: 978-1-118-65250-3 / 9781118652503