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Cognitive evaluation theory (CET; Deci, 1975), SDT's first mini-theory, was built from research on the dynamic interplay between external events (e.g., rewards, choice) and people's task interest or enjoyment – that is, intrinsic motivation (IM). At the time, this research was quite controversial, as operant theory (Skinner, 1971) had dominated the psychological landscape. The central assumption of operant theory was that reinforcement contingencies in the environment control behavior, which precluded the existence of inherently satisfying activities performed for non-separable outcomes. During this time, Deci proposed that people – by nature – possess intrinsic motivation (IM), which can manifest as engagement in curiosity-based behaviors, discovery of new perspectives, and seeking out optimal challenges (see also Harlow, 1953; White, 1959). IM thus represents a manifestation of the organismic growth tendency and is readily observed in infants' and toddlers' exploratory behavior and play. Operationally, an intrinsically motivated activity is performed for its own sake – that is, the behavior is experienced as inherently satisfying. From an attributional perspective (deCharms, 1968), such behaviors have an internal perceived locus of causality, as people perceive their behavior as emanating from their sense of self, rather than from experiences of control or coercion.

This paper aims to examine how character strengths have an important dual role in mental health in both promoting well-being and mental wellness and also in reducing symptoms and suffering. While there are many studies that have touched upon variables that character strengths can enhance for mental well-being or reduce for suffering, the author actually knows very little about how character strengths might relate to or impact mental health.

A large-scale study of 12,050 individuals was conducted to explore the self-perceived character strengths that are most helpful for mental health, for handling physical adversity, for handling social adversity and for fostering psychological well-being.

Some character strengths showed a general effect – showing a strong perceived impact across multiple domains – such as love, perspective, kindness, hope, humor and curiosity. Other character strengths showed a specific effect in that there was a strong perceived impact in one domain, such as perseverance and self-regulation for physical health, spirituality and social intelligence for social health and creativity for mental health. A strength-based approach to understanding and managing emotions was substantially more preferred than cognitive or behavioral approaches. Other findings examined the character strengths most desired to be improved upon for mental health.

The research strategy was cross-sectional, thereby causality cannot be determined. Because of the large sample size, researchers are encouraged to consider examining the findings in intervention studies.

This study indicates that character strengths are highly relevant for mental health, all 24 character strengths are possible pathways to impact mental health (some more than others) and individuals can readily connect ways they can use their character strengths to positively improve their well-being and manage their suffering.

Character strengths and their substantial positive potential provide an avenue for public impact on a large scale.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first known study to directly examine multiple intersections among mental health and character strengths in a large sample.

Mindfulness is gaining popularity in the business world as a way to improve mental health and productivity in employees. However, the application of mindfulness for employees in the hospitality sector is still in its nascent stage. This paper aims to synthesize the evidence on the effectiveness of mindfulness practice on employees in this high-pressure service industry.

This narrative review identifies and integrates insights from journal articles researching mindfulness in the hospitality industry. Synthesis and reflective description of the literature reveal an exigent need for practice, policy-making and future research.

This review paper describes mindfulness-based interventions used in the literature. It shows how the practice of mindfulness stimulates a culture of well-being and effectiveness at work, consequently having a positive impact on the customer and the organization. It points to the role of mindfulness in helping hospitality employees deal with stress, depression, anxiety, burnout and emotional labor peculiar to this industry, lowering absenteeism levels and turnover intention.

This paper has implications for hospitality managerial practice, human resource (HR) policy development, employees at all levels in the hospitality industry, business coaches/trainers, educationists, students pursuing hospitality management and researchers.

This first review article on mindfulness in the hospitality industry lays the foundation to accentuate the need and benefits of prioritizing mindfulness in this sector. It provides directions for future research, application in HR management in hospitality and designing effective interventions.

Drawing on self-determination theory, a person-centered approach was used to investigate how the satisfaction and frustration of the basic psychological needs of autonomy and competence produce adaptive vs maladaptive consumer behavior during the online shopping experience.

We collected questionnaire data from 1,399 respondents engaged in online shopping, including 65% females with an average age of 29.9. Latent profile analysis tested the hypotheses, using Mplus 8.3.

The online shopping experience sometimes satisfies and sometimes frustrates consumers’ basic psychological needs for autonomy and competence. This research used latent profile analysis to identify two profiles of the online shopping experience: “satisfied-dominant” and “moderately satisfied/frustrated.” Online shoppers who experienced only need satisfaction showed adaptive consumer behavior in terms of positive word-of-mouth and high loyalty, while online shoppers who experienced both moderate need satisfaction and frustration showed maladaptive consumer behavior.

An online shopping experience of need satisfaction vs frustration explains consumers’ adaptive vs maladaptive behavior. Specifically, when online shoppers experience only autonomy and competence need satisfaction, they engage in positive word-of-mouth and show high loyalty.

This paper aims to show the direct and indirect effects of mindfulness on the employees’ commitment in the employees who perform monotonous work. Moreover, it also shows the role of basic psychological needs proposed by self-determination theory (SDT), on the relationship between mindfulness and commitment.

This paper has used a time-lagged approach. Data has been collected from the nurses in public sector hospitals through a survey strategy. Structural equation modeling has been used to validate the measure and to test the hypotheses.

The results of thi study reveal that there is a positive relationship between mindfulness and employee affective organizational commitment. This study also shows that in the existence of a high level of autonomy, mindfulness does have more effect on commitment. Moreover, this study also shows that this relationship is mediated by employee boredom. However, this mediation is not moderated by the satisfaction of the need for autonomy.

This study serves as a guide for frontline managers in situations where they want their subordinates who perform monotonous and boring work to remain committed to the organization. This study also emphasizes the recruitment of employees who may show more trait mindfulness.

This study enriches the literature in the field of organizational behavior by showing how basic psychological needs proposed by SDT collaborate with mindfulness in producing employees’ positive attitudes.

This paper aims to investigate whether and how enterprise social media (ESM) affordances affect employee agility.

Adopting self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines a model in which the four ESM affordances (i.e. visibility, association, editability and persistence) impact employee agility through the three basic psychological needs satisfaction (i.e. perceived autonomy, perceived relatedness and perceived competence) of employees. Mplus 7.4 was used to analyze survey data gathered from 304 employees who used ESM in the workplace.

The authors’ findings show that all four ESM affordances contribute to perceived relatedness and perceived competence; visibility and association affordances also have positive impacts on perceived autonomy; and all three psychological needs satisfaction positively impact employee agility.

First, this study adapted SDT to explore how ESM influences employee agility. Second, this study enriches the relevant research on the antecedents of employee agility and also provides new evidence and theoretical support for employee agility. Third, this study effectively expands the antecedents and outcomes of employee basic psychological needs satisfaction in the domain of ESM and agility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between three antecedents, namely, work self-determination, managerial support (i.e. interpersonal motivation style) and person–organization fit (P-O) (i.e. shared values among employees and the overall organization) on employee work satisfaction in a French Canadian health care context. Assessing the relationships between such intrapersonal, interpersonal and macro-level variables will help to better comprehend work satisfaction in health care and shed light on applicable transformations for management.

The study tested a judicious model grounded in self-determination theory in order to capture and construe the three levels of influence. Participants were recruited from four health centers in the Suroît (Quèbec, Canada) region. Management was provided with the questionnaire and asked to distribute to all employees including nurses and allied health. A serial multiple mediation analysis was used to test the proposed model.

The findings revealed that nearly 60 percent of the participants from each of the professional groups reported feeling moderately to not at all satisfied with their job (follow-up ANOVA revealed that nurses were the least satisfied). Through closer examination, the findings revealed that 46 percent of the variance in reported job satisfaction was explained by the three focal antecedents from the hypothesized model (work self-determination, managerial support and P-O fit). Therefore the model, in its entirety, represents a comprehensive perspective for influencing employee work satisfaction in particularly demanding health care work contexts.

The study is the first to indicate the prevailing factors necessary to pursue and support employee satisfaction within a health care context among French Canadians.

This paper aims to highlight the positive and negative effects of technostressors on employee attitudes using psychological need satisfaction as an explanatory mechanism and mindfulness as an individual resource, thereby developing an integrative conceptual model.

A narrative literature review was performed in the technostress, job demands-resources and mindfulness literature to develop the propositions of the integrative conceptual model.

This paper posits psychological need satisfaction as a mediator in the process by which technostressors impact important employee outcomes. It also proposes mindfulness as a personal resource that helps alleviate technostressor induced burnout and foster work engagement.

The proposed integrative conceptual framework provides some useful directions for future empirical research on this topic of growing importance.

Based on the findings of this paper, managers can devise and implement a technostressor-specific mitigation strategy to cope with information and communication technology–induced work demands. They can also introduce mindfulness-based programs to support positive outcomes when technostressors are present.

This paper is the first to theoretically delineate specific characteristics of technostressors as challenge and hindrance demands and makes interdisciplinary contributions by extending the role of psychological mechanisms such as psychological need satisfaction and personal resources such as mindfulness in work-related technology use research.

This study investigated a mechanism by which challenge stressors may affect employee well-being outcomes. This study tested a within-person longitudinal model in which the effects of challenge demands relate to basic psychological need satisfaction/thwarting and worker well-being outcomes. In particular, basic psychological need satisfaction and thwarting were hypothesized to mediate challenge demands and outcomes at the intraindividual level.

Data from 84 employees from a weekly survey across four weeks (308 observations) were used in Bayesian multilevel path analyses to test hypotheses.

Although significant indirect effects showed that basic psychological needs mediate between demands and worker outcomes, only a few specific indirect effects (e.g. the path from time pressure via thwarting the need for autonomy to emotional exhaustion) operated as hypothesized. Interestingly, in this study, time pressure was only mediated via thwarting the need for autonomy when considering undesirable worker outcomes (i.e. increased emotional exhaustion, decreased job satisfaction). Job complexity, however, led to decreased emotional exhaustion via the need for competence satisfaction. Implications for need satisfaction and thwarting as mechanisms in the challenge–hindrance framework are discussed.

This study (1) extends the challenge–hindrance framework to include basic psychological needs as a mechanism, (2) expands basic psychological needs to include need thwarting and (3) may enhance our understanding of stressor categories.