Institut für Bildung, Arbeit und Gesellschaft

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hohpublica.uni-hohenheim.de/handle/123456789/28

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Anger: The misunderstood and mismanaged workplace emotion
(2025) Umbra, Robin; Fasbender, Ulrike
Anger is a familiar yet often misunderstood and mismanaged emotion in organizational settings, commonly viewed as a purely negative force to be mitigated. This dissertation challenges such reductive perspectives by proposing a comprehensive reconceptualization of workplace anger as a potentially constructive emotion. It argues that, when properly understood and managed, anger can enhance employee productivity and well-being. Through a systematic examination of the antecedents, characteristics, and outcomes of anger in the workplace, this work introduces new theoretical frameworks and empirically validated strategies for harnessing anger’s positive potential. The dissertation is structured into three main sections that collectively advance the understanding of workplace anger. Chapter 1 establishes a foundational understanding by developing and validating a new State-Trait Anger Scale tailored for organizational research. This scale addresses limitations in existing measures by incorporating advanced psychometric techniques and a cross-cultural lens, revealing that workplace anger is influenced by both individual traits and situational factors, with significant variations across cultural contexts. A meta-analytic review follows, synthesizing the antecedents, concomitants, and consequences of workplace anger. The findings indicate that anger often arises from perceived negative workplace events and blame appraisals, which can primarily lead to destabilizing reactions. Chapter 2 advances the theoretical framework by introducing a novel perspective that links workplace anger to morality and perceived moral discrepancies. Through a series of empirical studies—including experience sampling, vignette experiments, and egocentric network analysis—this research demonstrates that anger frequently emerges from perceived transgressions of moral expectations in workplace interactions. The dissertation presents the Interaction Discrepancy Model, an innovative theoretical framework that integrates cognitive, social, and moral dimensions to better understand the dynamics of anger. This model elucidates how anger, a latent, morally and hedonically non-valanced construct, can motivate change-oriented behaviors aimed at rectifying moral discrepancies. Chapter 3 builds on these theoretical insights by developing practical strategies for constructive anger management in organizations. The research contrasts traditional mitigation-oriented strategies—such as suppression/rumination, avoidance, diffusion, and seeking social support—with constructive, approach-oriented strategies like confrontation and assertion. It shows that when anger is channeled appropriately through these constructive strategies, it can enhance both individual productivity and well-being. The empirical evidence further supports these findings, demonstrating that change-oriented strategies for managing anger are more effective in achieving work-related goals and maintaining well-being than mitigation-oriented approaches. This dissertation makes significant contributions to the fields of organizational psychology and organizational behavior by reconceptualizing workplace anger as a complex construct with both constructive and destructive potential. It introduces an empirically robust anger measurement tool that enhances research precision by addressing gaps in existing scales and incorporating advanced psychometric techniques. It also provides a meta-analytic overview of anger dynamics, offering a comprehensive synthesis of the antecedents, concomitants, and outcomes of anger in workplace settings. Furthermore, the dissertation offers theoretical advancements in the study of anger and emotions more broadly, integrating cognitive, social, and moral dimensions to provide a deeper understanding of emotional dynamics in organizational contexts. Additionally, it presents evidence-based strategies for practitioners to harness anger’s constructive potential, demonstrating how appropriate management of anger can lead to enhanced productivity and well-being. By challenging the conventional view of anger, this research opens new avenues for theory, practice, and future research, suggesting that anger, when understood and managed appropriately, can be a positive force in organizations.
Berufliche Identität kaufmännischer Auszubildender. Ergebnisse einer Interviewstudie
(2020) Kirchknopf, Sebastian; Kögler, Kristina
Die Entwicklung individueller beruflicher Identitätskonstruktionen in der dualen Berufsausbildung ist eng mit dem Erwerb beruflicher Handlungskompetenz verknüpft. Dabei sind insbesondere Fragen nach dem individuellen Berufsverständnis, berufstypischen Tätigkeiten und ihren affektiven Identifikationspotenzialen sowie wahrgenommenen beruflichen Perspektiven von Bedeutung. Vor dem Hintergrund der Theorie der sozialen Identität untersucht der vorliegende Beitrag mittels einer Interviewstudie mit N = 51 kaufmännischen Auszubildenden, ob systematische berufsspezifische Merkmale beruflicher Identität bei kaufmännischen Auszubildenden unterschiedlicher Ausbildungsberufe zu beobachten sind und inwiefern hierbei homogene identitätsstiftende Elemente innerhalb der kaufmännischen Domäne oder aber spezifische Identifikationspotenziale sowie -hindernisse einzelner Ausbildungsberufe überwiegen. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf eine Sonderstellung von Einzelhandelskaufleuten im Sinne eines vergleichsweise wenig facettenreichen Berufsverständnisses und Defiziten bezüglich affektiv identifikationsrelevanter Tätigkeiten sowie beruflicher Perspektiven hin.
Between trust and ambivalence: how does trainee teachers’ perception of the relationship with their mentors explain how trainee teachers experience their work?
(2024) Maué, Elisabeth; Goller, Michael; Bonnes, Caroline; Kärner, Tobias
The study aims to identify profiles of trainee teachers in terms of their stress and work experiences and to uncover profile differences in regard to dropout intentions and perceived relationships between trainee teachers and their mentors. Based on data from 1,756 German trainee teachers, three distinct stress and work experience profiles could be identified. Trainee teachers with high levels of stress and negative work experiences exhibit higher dropout intentions and experience their relationship with their mentors as less transparent, fair and trusting, and more ambivalent compared to trainee teachers with low levels of stress and positive work experiences. The results underline the importance of the relationship between mentors and trainee teachers for the professional development of future teachers.
Career adaptability and vocational identity of commercial apprentices in the German dual system
(2020) Kirchknopf, Sebastian
The construct of career adaptability has recently gained importance in research on vocational development and has led to a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches. Alongside with vocational identity it has been theorised as the crucial meta-competency of modern career construction. Due to its roots in adolescent career development, career adaptability is not limited to the vocational adjustments of working adults, but is also highly relevant for the pre-occupational orientation processes of adolescents initially developing a vocational identity. Despite the recent increase in empirical research on career adaptability, the field of vocational education has been largely neglected so far. Therefore, a quantitative survey among nearly N = 400 commercial apprentices within the German dual system of VET has been conducted. This study focuses on the replication of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) among commercial apprentices within the German dual system, and its discrimination against alternative operationalisations of career adaptability. Furthermore, the relationship between career adaptability and vocational identity (operationalised as occupational and organisational identification) was explored. Results showed that the four-dimensional structure of career adaptability covered by the CAAS could be largely replicated in the dual system. In addition, it was found that the CAAS can in part be separated from alternative operationalisations. Finally, the results confirmed career adaptability positively predicts both foci of identification in a cognitive and affective manner. This indicates that career adaptability can be seen as a beneficial factor for vocational education and training as it fosters the vocational ties of apprentices in terms of their identity.
The double-edged dynamics of social comparisons: micro-level drivers of employees’ knowledge behaviors
(2025) Rinker, Laura; Fasbender, Ulrike
Amidst worldwide developments such as globalization, workforce aging, and the accelerating pace of advancements, organizations depend on effective knowledge flows to maintain competitive and enable innovation. Because interpersonal knowledge exchange is central to organizational knowledge management, organizations must gain an understanding of what drives individual knowledge behaviors. This cumulative dissertation offers a timely investigation of social comparisons as critical socio-cognitive underpinnings of such knowledge behaviors. The underlying research seeks to deepen the understanding of the micro-level drivers of knowledge behaviors by tracing them back to employees’ social comparison experiences. The first manuscript combines the identification-contrast model of social comparisons with informal workplace learning theorizing to examine the social-cognitive roots of workplace learning. Specifically, it considers how employees’ emotionally charged (un)favorability perceptions of their social comparisons guide their daily engagement in narrow and broad informal learning behaviors through reflection processes focusing on successes or failures. The hypothesized model is tested using a ten-day experience sampling study (NLevel 2 = 175 employees, NLevel 1 = 1,256 employee-day observations). Results demonstrate that the different types of reflection translate both favorable and unfavorable social comparison experiences into learning-oriented knowledge behaviors. The findings additionally stress the moderating influence of organizational support. The second manuscript joins social comparison and stress appraisal theories to investigate the ambivalent potential of upward comparisons as work stressors. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance stress framework, it probes a dual pathway model connecting upward social comparisons with different knowledge behaviors through an approach pathway (via challenge appraisal) and an avoidance pathway (via hindrance appraisal). The hypotheses are tested based on two experimental studies with employees (NStudy 1 = 206, NStudy 2 = 414). Finding no support for the approach pathway, the research identifies hindrance appraisals as a cognitive mechanism to explain how upward comparisons harm knowledge flows. However, these adverse effects are mitigated by an between the focal employee and the comparison target. The third manuscript integrates social comparison frameworks and affective events theory to examines the daily emotional complexities of social comparisons. It seeks to clarify how the multiple facets of daily social comparisons can lead to both facilitative and harmful behavioral reactions, probing the mediating effect of discrete social comparison-induced emotions. The findings from a ten-day experience sampling study (NLevel 2 = 155 employees, NLevel 1 = 960 employee-day observations) demonstrate that daily social comparisons are linked to knowledge behaviors via inspiration, envy, and sympathy. In addition, the results reveal the complementary effects of the two cardinal social comparison axes (i.e., horizontal and vertical). In conclusion, this dissertation establishes social comparisons as a multi-faceted socio-cognitive antecedent of employees’ knowledge behaviors, providing novel insights into cognitive and emotional underpinnings and multi-level boundary conditions. Offering a more holistic perspective of social comparisons and their impact on knowledge behaviors, this work opens avenues for scholars to develop a deeper understanding of the socio-cognitive roots of organizational behavior. Moreover, the findings equip practitioners with actionable insights to utilize social comparisons as micro-level drivers, instead of barriers, of knowledge flows.
Guidelines for using financial incentives in software-engineering experimentation
(2024) Krüger, Jacob; Çalıklı, Gül; Bershadskyy, Dmitri; Otto, Siegmar; Zabel, Sarah; Heyer, Robert
Context: Empirical studies with human participants (e.g., controlled experiments) are established methods in Software Engineering (SE) research to understand developers’ activities or the pros and cons of a technique, tool, or practice. Various guidelines and recommendations on designing and conducting different types of empirical studies in SE exist. However, the use of financial incentives (i.e., paying participants to compensate for their effort and improve the validity of a study) is rarely mentioned Objective: In this article, we analyze and discuss the use of financial incentives for human-oriented SE experimentation to derive corresponding guidelines and recommendations for researchers. Specifically, we propose how to extend the current state-of-the-art and provide a better understanding of when and how to incentivize. Method: We captured the state-of-the-art in SE by performing a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) involving 105 publications from six conferences and five journals published in 2020 and 2021. Then, we conducted an interdisciplinary analysis based on guidelines from experimental economics and behavioral psychology, two disciplines that research and use financial incentives. Results: Our results show that financial incentives are sparsely used in SE experimentation, mostly as completion fees. Especially performance-based and task-related financial incentives (i.e., payoff functions) are not used, even though we identified studies for which the validity may benefit from tailored payoff functions. To tackle this issue, we contribute an overview of how experiments in SE may benefit from financial incentivisation, a guideline for deciding on their use, and 11 recommendations on how to design them. Conclusions: We hope that our contributions get incorporated into standards (e.g., the ACM SIGSOFT Empirical Standards), helping researchers understand whether the use of financial incentives is useful for their experiments and how to define a suitable incentivisation strategy.
Zusammenhänge zwischen verhaltensbezogenen und somatischen Facetten von Resilienz bei Arbeitnehmern/-innen der Automobilzuliefererindustrie
(2021) Friederichs, Edgar; Kärner, Tobias; Schellinger, Bianca; Sembill, Detlef
Hintergrund und Zielstellung: Ausgehend von einem mittels Selbstauskunft erfassten Resilienzkonstrukt, welches die Verhaltensweisen beschreibt, (1) dynamisch Veränderungen gestalten zu können, (2) flexibel auf Erfordernisse reagieren zu können sowie (3) sich angemessen von den Erwartungen anderer abgrenzen zu können, setzt sich der Beitrag das Ziel, Zusammenhänge mit kardialen Indikatoren des autonomen Nervensystems (ANS) zu ermitteln. Methodik: Wir greifen auf Daten von insgesamt 150 Mitarbeiter/-innen (MA) eines deutschen Industrieunternehmens zurück, von welchen sowohl entsprechende Selbstauskunftsdaten als auch Messdaten der Aktivität des ANS erfasst wurden. Ergebnisse: In den Ergebnissen zeigen sich signifikante Korrelationen der Resilienzfacette „Dynamik“ mit parasympathischen Messparametern des ANS. Weiterhin zeigt sich, dass die Facette „Dynamik“ in signifikant negativem Zusammenhang mit verschiedenen Skalen des „Trierer Inventars zum chronischen Stress“ steht. Ältere MA weisen bei der Facette „Dynamik“ verglichen mit jüngeren MA tendenziell geringere Werte auf. MA, welche eine Führungsaufgabe mit disziplinarischer und/oder fachlicher Funktion innehaben, zeigen höhere Werte in dieser Facette, verglichen mit MA ohne entsprechende Führungsverantwortung. Diskussion: Messbare Daten für eine wissenschaftlich gestützte Prävention und Resilienzunterstützung sind ein innovativer und vielversprechender Ansatz. Die Anwendung geprüfter Messverfahren kann auch für Leistungsfähigkeit, Erfolg und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit eines Unternehmens wichtig sein. Aus den Strukturähnlichkeiten der verhaltensbezogenen und somatischen Resilienzfacetten ergeben sich gezielte Implikationen für die Resilienzerfassung in Arbeitskontexten. Entsprechende Anschlussfragen hinsichtlich personen- und organisationsspezifischer Trainings zur Resilienzförderung müssen in Folgestudien geklärt werden.

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