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Drawing on Shore and colleagues' model of inclusive workplaces (2018) and the perceptions of social context framework (Borgogni et al., 2010), this study aims to develop and provide a preliminary validation of the Social Drivers of Inclusive Workplaces (SDIW) scale.

Using inductive and deductive approaches, items were developed. The resulting pool of 28 items was administrated to 1,244 employees using an anonymous online survey. The factor structure of the SDIW scale was tested through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Reliabilities were estimated. Alternative models were tested through CFAs. Nomological validity and measurement invariance across gender were explored.

The EFA revealed a three-factor structure, including inclusive colleagues, supervisors and top management. This solution was confirmed by the CFA and outperformed all alternative models, showing good reliabilities. Measurement invariance across gender was confirmed. Correlations indicated that the SDIW total score and each dimension were positively associated with belongingness needs satisfaction and affective commitment, while negatively related to interpersonal strain, negative acts and turnover intention.

This study provides practitioners with a reliable tool to map social drivers of inclusion within workplaces in order to design tailored interventions.

This study contributes to the inclusion literature, as it is the first to provide a scale that simultaneously measures employees' perceptions of inclusive behaviours enacted by the three main social actors within the workplace.

By integrating the conservation of resources and the emotion-as-social-information theories, this study aims to question whether the leader’s effort to calm down when team members perceive intra-team conflict (ITC) may have a counterproductive effect on their interpersonal functioning. Specifically, the authors investigated whether team members with higher individual perceptions of ITC would be more likely to experience interpersonal strain (ISW) when their team leaders downregulate or suppress their emotional responses (i.e. high interpersonal modulation of emotional responses [MER]). A further objective of the study was to examine whether this exacerbating effect would be conditional on the leader’s sex.

Data were collected from 236 white collars nested in 48 teams (Msize = 6.23; SDsize = 2.69) and their respective team leaders (56.7% men) of a large organization providing financial services.

Multilevel model results showed that team members confronted with higher ITC experienced higher ISW levels, especially when the leader’s interpersonal modulation of team members’ emotional responses was high (vs low). This effect was stronger when the interpersonal modulation was enacted by women (vs men) team leaders.

This study moves an important step forward in the conflict and ISW literature, as it is the first to identify a leader’s MER and sex as key boundary conditions under which ITC is related to team members’ ISW. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Psychological Capital (PsyCap), consisting of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, is a positive state associated with attitudes, behaviors and performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a dynamic mediational model posing work engagement as the mediator of the longitudinal relation between PsyCap and job performance.

Data came from all white collar employees who responded to this study’s variables (n=420) from a comprehensive data set drawn from a large communications service company over two consecutive years. Job performance was rated at the end of each year by the direct supervisor as part of the organizational appraisal system.

Structural equation modeling analysis found that both absolute levels and increases in PsyCap predicted subsequent work engagement increases which in turn predicted job performance increases. Moreover, the mediating role of the changes in work engagement between previous PsyCap and performance change was confirmed over time.

There is much to gain in conceptualizing the relations among PsyCap, work engagement and job performance as dynamic, rather than static. The results support the conservation of resources theory, in which employees are motivated to acquire, protect and foster their valued (psychological) resources to attain successful performance outcomes, in order to create a gain cycle of resources (Salanova et al., 2010). Moreover, it provide further empirical validation for the idea that processes, like work engagement, are sustained by personal resources, and that these latter exerts mostly an indirect effect on organizational behavior outcomes (Xanthopoulou et al., 2009b).

These results are important from a practical point of view, because they point to the importance of training interventions aimed at developing and sustaining PsyCap as an important determinant of workers’ motivation and behavior within the organization. Considerable literature offers practical insights and guidelines for developing PsyCap (Luthans et al., 2006, 2015; Luthans and Youssef-Morgan, 2017).

Despite the demonstrated state-like, dynamic nature of PsyCap, its relationship with performance has mainly been statically analyzed and the role of possible mediating mechanisms largely ignored. This study begins to fill this research gap by investigating the dynamic nature of PsyCap in relation to work engagement and job performance and whether over time engagement mediates the relationship between PsyCap and job performance.

Work engagement represents an important aspect of employee well-being and performance and has been related to both job and personal resources. The purpose of this paper, based on Social Cognitive Theory, is to emphasize the proactive role of self-efficacy which is hypothesized to predict work engagement, not only directly, but also indirectly through positive changes in employee’s perceptions of social context (PoSC); namely, perceptions of one’s immediate supervisor, colleagues and top management.

A sample of 741 employees of a communication service company completed two questionnaires, with a time interval of three years. Structural equation modeling was performed in order to test the hypothesized model.

Results revealed that, as expected: first, initial self-efficacy predicts work engagement three years later; and second, positive changes in employee’s perceptions of the social work context across the three year period, mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and work engagement.

Results relied only upon self-report data. Moreover, each variable was only measured at the time in which it was hypothesized by the conceptual model.

The significant role of self-efficacy as a direct and indirect predictor of work engagement suggests the development of training programs centered on the main sources of self-efficacy, specifically focussed on the social work domain.

This research provides evidence of the substantial contribution of self-efficacy to work engagement over time. Moreover, the results also support the beneficial effects of self-efficacy through its influence on the improvements in the individuals’ perceptions of their social context.

Previous literature has recognized the variability of job performance, calling attention to the inter-individual differences in performance change. Building on Murphy’s (1989) theoretical model of performance, the purpose of this paper is to verify the existence of two distinct classes of performance, reflecting stable and increasing trends, and to investigate which personal conditions prompt the inclusion of individuals in one class rather than the other.

Overall job performance was obtained from supervisory ratings for four consecutive years for 410 professionals of a large Italian company going through significant reorganization. Objective data were merged with employees’ organizational tenure and self-efficacy. Growth Mixture Modeling was used.

Two main groups were identified: the first one started at higher levels of performance and showed a stable trajectory over time (stable class); the second group started at lower levels and reported an increasing trajectory (increasing class). Employees’ with stronger efficacy beliefs and lower tenure were more likely to belong to the stable class.

Through a powerful longitudinal database, the nature, the structure and the inter-individual differences in job performance over time are clarified. The study extends Murphy’s (1989) model, showing how transition stages in job performance may occur also as a result of organizational transformation. Moreover, it demonstrates the essential role of self-efficacy in maintaining high performance levels over time.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how disagreement between supervisors and their subordinates on leadership style (transformational and transactional) is related to employees’ outcomes, considering both work team characteristics (social support and conflict), and employees’ well-being (burnout, work engagement and poor health). The role played by the size of the work team is also analysed.

The sample is composed of 24 supervisors and 468 employees working in grocery stores of a large retail chain; 369 employees worked in 14 medium-size work teams and 99 employees worked in small-size work teams. Disagreement on leadership style between supervisors and their subordinates has been computed as the difference between the score reported by the supervisor and the score reported by the worker on the same items. Linear regression analyses, ANOVA and multilevel analyses have been computed.

Multilevel analyses results showed that, considering the disagreement on transformational and transactional leadership style and the work team size, only disagreement on the transformational leadership style is related to employees’ outcomes. Higher clustering effects, meaning that the between-groups variability was bigger than the variability within groups, have been found in conflict between members and burnout. Furthermore, results showed that work team size moderated the relationship between disagreement on transformational leadership style and burnout.

In order to enhance workers’ well-being and produce a better working climate it could be useful to focus on reducing the disagreement on leadership style between leaders and theirs subordinates.

Disagreement between supervisors and their subordinates, in order to understand the role played by leadership on work team characteristics and workers’ well-being, has rarely been studied before.