Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Title: Employee Affective Well-being in Fractured Times

Speaker: Lawrence Loi (University of Minnesota Duluth)

Time: 11:00 (Wednesday), October 19, 2022

Venue: Online Meeting

Language：English

ABSTRACT:

In an increasingly crisis-ridden and fractured society, politicized news events can trigger very different emotional responses depending on political identity. Integrating psychological theory on identity and emotions with political science research on affective polarization, we theorize proximate workplace consequences of politicized societal-level events. We test hypotheses using an interrupted time series design; 132 employees in the United States were surveyed over fifteen working days surrounding the highly contentious 2020 election. Questions did not reference the election, yet we find significant and dissonant changes in state positive and negative affect on the days when political news dominated the national discourse. Although many organizations discourage discussion of sociopolitical issues due to fear of conflict, our results challenge this conventional understanding by finding apparent affective benefits from social sharing in response to emotionally charged news. A supplemental study shows employees are more likely to discuss current events when perceived deep-level similarity with coworkers is high. This research is the first to show meaningful effects of external events for a broad cross-section of employees in real time and demonstrates the importance of political identity to understanding interpersonal behavior and employee well-being in polarized societies.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Lawrence Loi is an Assistant Professor of Management at University of Minnesota Duluth. He obtained his PhD from Washington State University. Lawrence’s research focuses on behavioral ethics and the dark side of positive organizational behavior. He specializes in quantitative analytical approaches such as multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, and surface response analysis. His research has appeared in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology and Journal of Business Ethics. Lawrence has taught upper-level undergraduate courses in leadership, organizational behavior, human resource management, and general management.