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Organizational approaches to racial inequality have provided contextual insight into a host of traditional stratification outcomes (e.g., hiring, earnings, authority). This chapter extends the organizational approach by drawing on the health-stress framework to explore how organizational context affects experiential and health-related outcomes – discrimination, social support, and psychological distress. Drawing on a sample of Black workers in the United States, we examine the relationship between workplace racial composition and psychological distress, as well as two potential mediators – racial discrimination and workplace social support. Our findings reveal that psychological distress is similar for Black workers in token (<25% Black coworkers), tilted other race (25–49.99% Black coworkers), and tilted same race (50–74.99% Black coworkers) job contexts. Workers in Black-dominated jobs (>75% Black coworkers), however, experience significantly less psychological distress than other compositional thresholds, net of individual, job, and workplace characteristics. This relationship is not explained by either racial discrimination experiences or supervisor and coworker social support. This finding suggests that researchers need to theorize and examine other protective factors stemming from coworker racial similarity.

Purpose: Social rejection is a negative interpersonal experience that leads to emotional, cognitive, and physiological outcomes. We develop a theoretical model arguing that social rejection in workplace settings can alter employees' personal values in either the short- or the long term. Methodology: This is a theoretical essay based on three theories: (1) human values; (2) affective events; and (3) shattered assumptions. Findings: In the proposed model, an employee's emotional reactions to social rejection in the workplace (emotional distress or emotional numbness) partially mediate the relationship between the experience of social rejection and short- or long-term development of self-protective (rather than self-expansive) personal values. Originality: The processes whereby social rejection at work leads to personal value change remain largely unexplored to date. The proposed model represents an initial attempt to understand this process, including the effects of emotional distress (long term) and emotional numbness (short term). Research Implications: The model introduces the mechanisms whereby social rejection in the workplace leads to short-term and long-term changes in individual values and has potential to serve as a launchpad for future research interest in this phenomenon. Practical Implications: The framework proposed in this chapter should help scholars to understand better the dynamics of social rejection in the workplace and how this phenomenon affects employees' values in work settings, both in the short- and long term.

This chapter proposes a more holistic approach to understanding work stress by incorporating eustress, the positive response to stressors. We begin by casting the study of eustress as part of a contemporary movement in both psychology and organizational behavior that accentuates the positive aspects of human adaptation and functioning. We discuss the development of the concept of eustress, and provide extensive evidence, both psychological and physiological, for the purpose of developing an explicit construct definition. An exploratory study of hospital nurses is presented as an initial test of our holistic model of stress. We conclude by asserting that there must exist a complement to coping with distress such that rather than preventing or resolving the negative side of stress, individuals savor the positive side of stress.

Workplace incivility has been identified as a specific form of social mistreatment causing distress despite its low intensity. Research on workplace incivility has touched on a variety of personal and contextual factors associated with incivility’s prevalence including research on both antecedents and outcomes. The research has been especially concerned with identifying a wide range of negative consequences of incivility, including various occupational, interpersonal, and health-related implications. Theoretical explorations have considered links of incivility to sexism and racism, and its reflection of attachment styles, as well as its inherent connection with the stressor-emotion model of counterproductive work behavior (Spector & Fox, 2005). The power of incivility to elicit distress has been attributed to its capacity to signal riskiness of social situations that thwart core social motives (i.e., self-control). Intervention research has been relatively rare, but progress is evident.

Purpose – This study examines the association between social integration at work and health in three societies, urban China, Taiwan, and the United States.Methodology/approach – It analyzes nationally representative survey data collected simultaneously from those three societies. It measures five indicators of social integration at work (the percentage of work contacts among daily contacts, the number of daily work contacts, the percentage of daily work contacts within the company/organization among all daily work contacts, the number of daily work contacts within the company/organization, and the percentage of work discussants within the company/organization) and two health outcomes (psychological distress and self-reported health limitation).Findings – It finds stronger evidence for the positive health effect of social integration at work in urban China than in Taiwan and the United States.Research limitations/implications – The data set has two limitations: (1) it is cross-sectional; and (2) it was collected from national samples of adults aged 21–64, currently or previously employed, and does not have information on elderly employed adults. This study implies that social integration at work is more likely to protect health in urban China than in Taiwan and the United States.

The concept of “Workplace Spirituality (WPS)” in the field of management has gained great interest in the last decade, especially due to its connection with profitability. There has been a rapid increase in research related to the topic. It is assumed that employees who spend a significant part of their time at work are willing to satisfy their spiritual needs at the workplace. Such unprecedented challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic have posed many difficulties for organizations to remain agile, develop and grow, and innovate to survive. At this very moment, the importance and meaning of WPS for managers appear to have increased even more. Workplace spirituality is related to motivation, belongingness, and loyalty, and the pandemic seems to have created significant issues concerning these topics with employees. Employees have been forced to work from home due to prolonged restrictions and have faced difficulties in returning to work post-pandemic. Workplace spirituality has the potential to help employees stay motivated in their work, increase their job performance, enhance job satisfaction, and improve their mental health during this difficult period. Organizations can support their employees by implementing different practices to develop workplace spirituality. In this article, approaches to satisfy the spiritual needs of employees post-pandemic, and the efforts of workplaces to meet these needs, are examined with insights from theoretical and practical life.

Peter Y. Chen heads the Occupational Health Psychology Training program within the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program at Colorado State University. His primary research interests are in occupational health, performance evaluation, training, and methodology. He has published a book, numerous book chapters and various empirical articles appearing in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Business and Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Organizational and Occupational Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Personality Assessment, Group and Organization Management: An International Journal.Shoshi Chen is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel (M.Sc., Organizational Behavior). Her current research interests are: work and stress, preventive stress management, and IT implementation.Oranit B. Davidson is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel (M.Sc., Organizational Behavior). Her current research interests are: job stress and strain, respite relief, expectation effects and self-fulfilling prophecy.Michelle K. Duffy is an Associate Professor and Gatton Endowed Research Professor in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. She received a B.S. in Psychology from Miami University (Ohio), an M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Xavier University, and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior/Human Resources Management from the University of Arkansas. She previously worked as a Research Psychologist at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Dr. Duffy teaches courses in the area of Organizational Behavior. Her research interests include employee health and well being, social undermining behaviors and processes, and team composition issues. Her research has appeared or been accepted for publication in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Group and Organization Management, Small Group Research, and Security Journal, among others.Rudy Fenwick received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University. He is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Akron. Previously, he taught at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include the effects of markets and organizational structures on jobs characteristics and worker well being, particularly job stress and participation in organizational decision making. His most recent research has appeared in The American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Journal of Family and Economic Issues. In 2003, he served as guest editor of a special edition of Sociological Focus on “Organizations Transforming Work; Work Transforming Organizations.”Glenda M. Fisk is a doctoral student in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University. She earned her B.A. degree in psychology at the University of Calgary. Her primary research interests include emotions in the workplace and organizational justice.Corina Graif received her Masters in Sociology from the University of Akron. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Her interests include studying social organizations, institutions, networks, social justice, deviance, gender, and class inequality. She is also interested in the socio-legal mechanisms behind the adoption of social policy programs in the context of comparative social, political, and economic development.Alicia A. Grandey earned her Ph.D. at Colorado State University and has been an assistant professor in industrial-organizational psychology at Penn State University since 1999. Her research focuses on the experience and expression of emotions and stress in the workplace, particularly within the service industry and as it relates to work-family issues. Her work in these areas has been published in such journals as Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and Journal of Organizational Behavior, as well as several book chapters. Dr. Grandey is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (APA Div. 14), and Academy of Management.Paula L. Grubb is a Research Psychologist in the Division of Applied Research and Technology, Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Grubb received her doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Grubb’s research interests include workplace violence and psychological aggression, racial/ethnic discrimination, traumatic stress, supervisory best practices, organization of work, and job stress. Her current research focuses on developing intervention and evaluation strategies for workplace psychological aggression, as well as examining workplace violence and psychological aggression policies and organizational decision-making.Stevan Hobfoll has authored and edited 11 books, including Stress, Social Support and Women, Traumatic Stress, The Ecology of Stress, and Stress Culture and Community. In addition, he has authored over 150 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports, and has been a frequent workshop leader on stress, war, and terrorism. He has received over $9 million in research grants on stress and health. Dr. Hobfoll is currently Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Kent State University and Director of the Applied Psychology Center and the Summa-KSU Center for the Treatment and Study of Traumatic Stress. Formerly at Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Universities, he has also been involved with the problem of stress in Israel. Dr. Hobfoll received special commendation for his research on The Psychology of Women and for his AIDS prevention programs with ethnic minority populations, and was cited by the Encyclopædia Britannica for his contribution to knowledge and understanding for his Ecology of Stress volume. He was co-chair of the American Psychological Association Commission on Stress and War during Operation Desert Storm, helping plan for the prevention of prolonged distress among military personnel and their families, and a member of APA’s Task Force on Resilience in Response to Terrorism. He maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist and organizational consultant.Michiel A. J. Kompier has a full chair in Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands). His research area is occupational health psychology. He has published many (inter)national articles, books and book chapters on topics such as work stress, the psychosocial work environment, mental work load, sickness absenteeism, work disability, work and health, productivity, work-home interaction, and working conditions policies. In his studies the emphasis is on prevention and intervention studies in organizations and applied research methodology. Michiel Kompier is chairman of the scientific Committee “Work Organization and Psychosocial Factors” of ICOH (International Commission on Occupational Health), co-editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, and member of the editorial boards of Work and Stress and the International Journal of Stress and Health.Shavit Laski is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Faculty of Management, Tel-Aviv University, Israel (M.Sc., Organizational Behavior). Her current research interests are: work stress, burnout and work-non-work relationship.Lawrence R. Murphy, Ph.D. received from DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois and did postdoctoral training at the Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research, Michael Reese Medical Center. He joined the Work Organization and Stress Research Section, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), as a Research Psychologist in 1977. He has published articles and book chapters on job stress, stress management, and safety climate, and co-edited several books, including Stress Management in Work Settings (1989), Organizational Risk Factors for Job Stress (1995), and Healthy and Productive Work: An International Perspective (2000). He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Work and Stress, and Journal of Business and Psychology. His current research involves identifying characteristics of healthy and productive work organizations, and assessing the quality of work life using a national sample of U.S. workers.Anne M. O’Leary-Kelly is a Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Arkansas. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources Management from Michigan State University in 1990 and previously has been on the faculty at Texas A&M University and the University of Dayton. Her research interests include the study of aggressive work behavior (violence, sexual harassment) and individual attachments to work organizations (psychological contracts, identification, cynicism). Her work has appeared in (among others) the Academy of Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Management, the Journal of Management Inquiry, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Research in Organizational Change and Development, and the American Business Law Journal. She is a member of the Academy of Management and has been co-recipient of the Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior Award (given by the Organizational Behavior Division) and co-recipient of the Dorothy Harlow Outstanding Paper Award (given by the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division). She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the OB Division of the Academy of Management.Rashaun K. Roberts is a Research Psychologist in the Division of Applied Research and Technology, Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Roberts received her master’s and doctorate degrees in Clinical Psychology from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining the research team at NIOSH in 2002, Dr. Roberts was a fellow at Duke University Medical Center in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, where she developed an expertise in occupational mental health. Dr. Roberts’ current research at NIOSH focuses on the contributions of structural and psychosocial variables to the emergence of psychological aggression in the workplace and on understanding the implications of psychologically aggressive behaviors for occupational safety and health. As a member of the Federal Interagency Task Force on Workplace Violence Research and Prevention, she is collaborating to develop NIOSH’s research agenda in these areas. Dr. Roberts’ other research interests include issues related racial/ethnic health disparities, occupational mental health, and women’s health.Steven L. Sauter received his Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and held an appointment in the University of Wisconsin, Department of Preventive Medicine until joining the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1985. He currently serves as Chief of the Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch at NIOSH, and leads the NIOSH research program on work organization and health. He also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Professor of Human Factors Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, Department of Industrial Engineering. His research interests focus on work organization and occupational stress. He serves on editorial boards of several scholarly journals – including Work and Stress and the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, he has prepared several books and articles on psychosocial aspects of occupational health, and he is one of the senior editors of the 4th Edition of the International Encyclopedia of Occupational Safety and Health.Kristin L. Scott is a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior/Human Resources Management in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. She received a B.S. in Business Administration from Villanova University and an M.A. in Human Resources from the University of South Carolina. She previously worked as a Human Resources Manager at General Electric Company. Her research interests include employee emotional responses, justice issues, employee antisocial behavior, and compensation and reward systems. Currently, she has manuscripts under review at the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management and the Leadership Quarterly.Lori Anderson Snyder received her Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Colorado State University. She is now an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include workplace aggression, safety, performance errors, multisource feedback, and the Assessment Center method.Naomi G. Swanson is head of the Work Organization and Stress Research group at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the U.S. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989. Along with Dr. Steven Sauter, NIOSH, she was involved in some of the initial research in the U.S. examining the relationship of organizational factors to non-fatal workplace violence. She is currently participating in research examining the relationship between workplace stressors and depression, the assessment of work organization interventions designed to improve worker health and well being, and the assessment of workplace violence programs and practices.Toon W. Taris is an associate professor at the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology of the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He holds a MA degree in Administrative Science (1988) and took his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1994, both from the Free University of Amsterdam. Since 1993 he has been affiliated with various psychology departments of several Dutch universities and also served as a research consultant. His research interests include work motivation, psychosocial work stress models, and longitudinal reearch methods. Taris has published on a wide range of topics in journals such as Journal of Vocational Behavior, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational and Occupational Psychology, and Sociological Methods and Resarch. Further, he serves on the boards of several journals, including Work & Stress and the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health.Mark Tausig received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Albany. He is has been at the University of Akron since 1983 and currently holds the title of Professor of Sociology. His research interests include investigating the relationships between macro-economic conditions, work organization and worker well being. His most recent research has appeared in The American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Family and Economic Issues and, The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. He is also co-author of A Sociology of Mental Illness.Mina Westman an associate professor and Researcher, at Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University, Israel (Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, Tel Aviv University). Her primary research interests include determinants and consequences of job and life stress, negative and positive crossover between partners and team members, work-family interchange, effects of vacation on psychological and behavioral strain and the impact of short business trips on the individual, the family and the organization. She has authores empirical and conceptual articles that have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Journal, and Journal of Vocational Psychology. In addition, she has also contributed to several book chapters and presented numerous scholarly papers at international conferences. She is on the editorial board of Journal of Organizational Behavior and Applied Psychology: An International Journal.Thomas A. Wright is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior and industrial relations from the University of California, Berkeley. Similar to the Claude Rains character from the classic movie, Casablanca, he has published his work in many of the “usual suspects” including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychometrika, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Management and the Journal of Management Inquiry. He has consulted with a number of organizations over the years on such topics as: optimizing employee performance and organizational productivity, sustaining employee commitment, stimulating employee motivation, developing employee recruitment and retention strategies, and enhancing employee health and well being.Angela Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at California State University, Los Angeles. Current research interests include mentoring relationships, organizational relationships, equity and fairness in the workplace, and the interview process. Her work has been published in Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Review, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, and other journals. She has presented her research at numerous conferences including National Academy of Management, American Psychological Association, Western Academy of Management, and Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology.