The performance costs of illegitimate tasks: The role of job identity and flexible role orientation

Ma, Jie; Peng, Yisheng

doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2018.11.012

Cited by 53 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Note that personal does not mean "a-social". Internal, personal standards that are experienced as the individual's private standards are likely to be internalized social standards (Kaplan 2006), which may become somewhat independent of social judgements of others; Leary et al (2009) speak of private self-esteem. In contrast, social self-esteem refers to the degree to which one feels esteemed, acknowledged, and appreciated by significant others; thus, it depends strongly on one's social surrounding.…”

Section: Personal Versus Social Self-esteemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age

et al. 2019

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Stress is related to goals being thwarted. Arguably, protecting one's self, both in terms of personal self-esteem and in terms of social self-esteem, is among the most prominent goals people pursue. Although this line of thought is hardly disputed, it does not play the prominent role in occupational health psychology that we think it deserves. Stress-as-Offense-to-Self theory focuses on threats and boosts to the self as important aspects of stressful, and resourceful, experiences at work. Within this framework we have developed the new concepts of illegitimate tasks and illegitimate stressors; we have investigated appreciation as a construct in its own right, rather than as part of larger constructs such as social support; and we propose that the threshold for noticing implications for the self in one's surroundings typically is low, implying that even subtle negative cues are likely to be appraised as offending, as exemplified by the concept of subtly offending feedback. Updating the first publication of the SOS concept, the current paper presents its theoretical rationale as well as research conducted so far. Research has covered a variety of phenomena, but the emphasis has been (a) on illegitimate tasks, which now can be considered as an established stressor, and (b) on appreciation, showing its importance in general and as a core element of social support. Furthermore, we discuss implications for further research as well as practical implications of an approach that is organized around threats and boosts to the self, thus complementing approaches that are organized around specific conditions or behaviors.

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Section: Personal Versus Social Self-esteemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age

et al. 2019

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“…Unnecessary and unreasonable tasks are work stressors/demands which so far have been little studied, particularly among teachers. The empirical research so far has shown that unnecessary and unreasonable tasks predict strain, irritability, feelings of resentment towards home organization and poorer job performance (Ma & Peng, 2019;Semmer et al, 2015). Thus, more research evidence is needed, particularly from the viewpoint of meaningful work as a buffer against their adverse effects on self-rated health.…”

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confidence: 99%

Meaningful Work Protects Teachers’ Self-Rated Health under Stressors

2020

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A sense of meaningfulness is one of the most sought?after work characteristics which has been associated with employees’ well-being. This study explored whether meaningful work enhances self-rated health in challenging work context, under the stressors of distractions, unnecessary tasks, and unreasonable tasks. Data was collected from Finnish teachers (N = 1,658) and structural equation modelling was employed with the latent interaction terms. Results showed that meaningful work was associated with better self-rated health and the stressors were associated with poorer self-rated health. Protective potential of meaningful work against stressors was also discovered, as meaningful work mitigated the harm of stressors on self-rated health. These findings indicate that meaningful work acts as an important resource for employees’ self-rated health and helps them to better cope with stressful work conditions, enhancing well-being. The protective quality of meaningful work means that even challenging work context may have less harm for employees’ well-being, if they have a strong sense of meaning in work. The practical implications of the findings for teachers and organizations are discussed.

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“…The former group scored high and the latter low on all five MJDs. On the MJDs studied, employees scored particularly high (or conversely low) on illegitimate tasks (unnecessary and unreasonable tasks), which can therefore be regarded as one typical hallmark of today’s MJDs (see Eatough et al, 2016 ; Ma & Peng, 2019 ; Semmer et al, 2015 ). However, our analytical approach also allowed us to identify more diversity in the profiles (see also Spurk et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Examples are when a nurse is required to write a report on a computer instead of caring for the patient, or when a teacher is struggling how to use new software instead of teaching students. Illegitimate tasks threaten employees’ work identity or core work roles and are thus self-threatening and often also include feelings of unfairness as expressed in the feeling that “I should not be doing this or nobody should be doing this”, thereby, constituting a source of stress for employees (Eatough et al, 2016 ; Ma & Peng, 2019 ; Semmer et al, 2015 ). Actually, there are two types of illegitimate task, namely those which are unreasonable and those which are unnecessary.…”

Section: Defining the Mjds Of The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Illegitimate tasks have been found to relate to poorer well-being and job performance (see e.g., Eatough et al, 2016 ; Ma & Peng, 2019 ; Semmer et al, 2015 ), signifying that they are seriously taken job stressors. Moreover, it is possible that an ongoing “technological tsunami” at work may even increase illegitimate tasks as employees’ attention will be increasingly needed in technological aspects of the work, which they may consider illegitimate, especially if core work tasks require other kinds of attention or behavior, e.g.…”

Section: Defining the Mjds Of The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Profiling a Spectrum of Mental Job Demands and their Linkages to Employee Outcomes

Mauno

Minkkinen

2020

jpor

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Substance abuse, conduct disorder (CD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are all known risk factors for developing aggressive behaviors, criminality, other psychiatric comorbidity and substance use disorders (SUD). Since early age of onset is important for aggravating the impact of several of these risk factors, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether young adult violent offenders with different patterns of early onset externalizing problems (here: substance use < age 15, ADHD, CD) had resulted in different criminality profiles, substance use problem profiles and psychiatric comorbidity in young adult age. A mixed-method approach was used, combining a variable-oriented approach (with Kruskal Wallis tests) and a person-oriented approach (with Configural frequency analysis). Overall, this combined approach indicated that persons with combined ADHD+CD and persons with CD + early onset of substance use had a more varied history of violent crimes, a more comprehensive history of aggressive behaviors in general, and more psychiatric comorbidity, as well as more varied SUD and destructive substance abuse in adult age, than persons without ADHD, CD or early SU. Results are in line with previous variable-oriented research, but also indicate that individuals in this group with heavy problem aggregation early in life have a wider spectrum of problems in young adult age. Importantly, among these young violent offenders, problem aggregation was the overwhelming norm, and not the exception, as in studies of the general population. This emphasizes the need for early coordinated interventions, but also that treatment within correctional facilities in adult age needs to be comprehensive and take individual patterns of comorbidity into account.

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The performance costs of illegitimate tasks: The role of job identity and flexible role orientation

Cited by 53 publications

References 52 publications

Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age

Stress as Offense to Self: a Promising Approach Comes of Age

Meaningful Work Protects Teachers’ Self-Rated Health under Stressors

Profiling a Spectrum of Mental Job Demands and their Linkages to Employee Outcomes

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