ABSTRACT

Illegitimate tasks are tasks that violate norms for what the employee should do as part of the job, and have been found to harm employees’ well-being. The current research uses a mixed methods design to examine the role of attributions on the two types of illegitimate tasks: unreasonable and unnecessary tasks. A sample of 432 engineers described a specific illegitimate task that was assigned to them, the attributions they made and their response. They also completed a quantitative questionnaire. Results from both the qualitative (event level) and quantitative (person level) portions of our study portray differences in the attributions made to unreasonable and unnecessary tasks, as well as differential negative effects on employees’ emotions. In addition, hostile attribution bias was found to moderate the relationship between illegitimate tasks and negative emotions, particularly for unreasonable tasks. This supports the theoretical basis for illegitimate tasks because unreasonable tasks pose a potentially greater risk to the employee’s self-worth than unnecessary tasks that are more often assigned at random.

摘要

不合法的任务是违反员工在工作中应该做什么的准则的任务，被发现损害员工的幸福感。当前的研究使用混合方法设计来检查归因于两种非法任务类型的作用：不合理和不必要的任务。432名工程师的样本描述了分配给他们的特定非法任务，他们的归因和响应。他们还完成了定量问卷。我们研究的定性（事件水平）和定量（人员水平）部分的结果都说明了对不合理和不必要的任务的归因差异以及对员工情绪的负面影响。此外，发现敌对归因偏见可缓解非正当任务与负面情绪之间的关系，尤其是对于不合理的任务。这为非法任务的理论基础提供了支持，因为与通常随机分配的不必要任务相比，不合理的任务可能对员工的自我价值构成更大的风险。