It is difficult to fathom how an organization could be successful without its employees engaging in self-reflection. Gone would be its personnel's capacity to problem-solve, learn from past experiences, and engage in countless other introspective activities that are vital to success. Indeed, a large body of research highlights the positive value of reflection. Yet, as both common experience and a wealth

Although traditional views of workplace stress assume that all job demands have deleterious consequences, research indicates that some job demands may benefit employees. Notably, the Challenge–Hindrance Stressor Framework (CHSF) proposes that, although job demands that constrain, hinder, or thwart personal growth and achievement (hindrance stressors) have negative effects on work-related outcomes,

This article describes my journey as an organizational behavior scholar, including reflections on the state of the field of organizational scholarship. I organize the article into two main sections. First, I provide my autobiographical review, beginning with my early years and ending with the five universities where I have been employed in my career. Second, I provide a set of observations about the

Meta-analysis provides a powerful tool for integrating findings from the research literature and building statistical models to explore trends and inconsistencies in the research base. Meta-analysis starts with a process for translating results from each study into an effect size that represents all findings in a common metric. Statistical models are then applied to estimate the mean, variance, and

Some assert that noise (i.e., unwanted variance) is the most neglected yet most important source of error in judgment. We suggest that this problem was discovered nearly 100 years ago in the area of personnel selection and that a century of selection research has shown that noise can be demonstrably reduced by structuring the process (i.e., decomposing the component parts, agreeing on standards, and

Self-awareness—how we see ourselves and the effects we have on our environment—influences our behavior and the type of person we want to become. This article examines recent research and areas of practice that address the meaning of self-awareness and how it develops over time. We build on extant comprehensive reviews of the literature to define self-awareness and its accuracy, measurement, and effects

Burnout refers to a work-related state of exhaustion and a sense of cynicism. In contrast, work engagement is a positive motivational state of vigor, dedication, and absorption. In this article, we discuss the concepts of burnout and work engagement and review their antecedents and consequences. We look back at our inaugural Annual Reviews article ( Bakker et al. 2014 ) and highlight new empirical

Environmental sustainability has become an ethical and strategic imperative for organizations, and more and more employees are interested, encouraged, or instructed to act in environmentally sustainable ways. Consequently, organizational scholars have increasingly studied individual-level antecedents of employee pro-environmental or employee green behavior (EGB). We argue that, to advance this literature

Emerging from distinct perspectives, decent work and meaningful work are fundamental aspects of contemporary work with profound implications for individuals, organizations, and society. Decent work reflects basic workplace conditions to which all employees are entitled, whereas meaningful work is aspirational, reflecting significance at work. Following a conceptual and empirical review of scholarship

There is no situation where leadership is more important than during a crisis, and yet crisis leadership is a relatively underdeveloped field. This article explores what we know and what remains unknown about crisis leadership. We begin with an overview of what crises are, including different types and key dynamics of crises. We then review four leadership theories that offer insights into crisis leadership

Individual and team creativity and innovation are essential for organizational effectiveness and success. The typology we developed in 2014 has stimulated much research in the past decade. We review this body of work and structure our article around the four quadrants described in our typology. We then revisit and update the eight research recommendations we proposed previously, identifying rich opportunities

The use of structural equation modeling (SEM) has grown substantially over the past 40 years within organizational research and beyond. There have been many different developments in SEM that make it increasingly useful for a variety of data types, research designs, research questions, and research contexts in the organizational sciences. To give researchers a better understanding of how and why SEM

Since its renaissance in the 1990s, psychological safety research has flourished—a boom motivated by recognition of the challenge of navigating uncertainty and change. Today, its theoretical and practical significance is amplified by the increasingly complex and interdependent nature of the work in organizations. Conceptual and empirical research on psychological safety—a state of reduced interpersonal

The increasing societal awareness of employee mental health issues, especially within the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a great deal of research examining the occupational predictors and outcomes of mental ill health. The consequences of employee mental illness can be significant to organizations, whereas providing employee mental health resources may offer a competitive advantage. This article

The growth in virtual work is reshaping how leaders interface with their followers: Face-to-face interactions are increasingly being supplanted by virtual exchanges. To advance understanding of the implications of leading in this changing environment, we apply functional leadership theory to synthesize the findings of the virtual leadership research that has been conducted across different leadership

Innovation, and the creative thinking that provides the basis for innovation, is of great value for organizations. In this article we describe what is needed for people to think creatively, noting that creative thinking is a complex, albeit voluntary, activity involving performance on certain types of problems. The ways leaders influence peoples’ willingness to engage in, and ability to solve, creative

It is difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the workplace impact of race from the organizational psychology and organizational behavior literature. Topical coverage is spotty and the findings are fragmented, with little existing theory to orient, integrate, and reconcile them. Consequently, it is unsurprising that public opinion is highly divergent about the influence of race at work, and

We review the research on the psychology of entrepreneurship of the last decade. We focus on two key topics in entrepreneurship research: action and process. Combining action and process in a model of the psychology of entrepreneurship, we present the action theory process model of entrepreneurship and use it as a guiding framework for the review. We discuss theories of action, such as effectuation/causation

Technology has changed the way that organizational researchers obtain participants for their research studies. Although technology has facilitated the collection of large quantities of data through online platforms, it has also highlighted potential data quality issues for many of our samples. In this article, we review different sampling techniques, including convenience, purposive, probability-based

Over the past decade, hundreds of studies have been published on employee voice and silence. In this review, I summarize that body of work, with an emphasis on the progress that has been made in our understanding of when and why employees choose to speak up or remain silent, as well as the individual and organizational implications of these choices. I identify underexplored issues, limitations in how

In some fields, research findings are rigorously curated in a common language and made available to enable future use and large-scale, robust insights. Organizational researchers have begun such efforts [e.g., metaBUS (http://metabus.org/)] but are far from the efficient, comprehensive curation seen in areas such as cognitive neuroscience or genetics. This review provides a sample of insights from

Recent research has re-emphasized the importance of vocational interests for understanding workplace attitudes and behavior. As a result, there is a renewed interest in the assessment of vocational interests in organizations. Numerous interest assessments have been developed over the past century, and they are now administered to millions of people throughout the world. Nevertheless, there is still

Most learning in the workplace occurs outside of formal learning environments—it happens informally, “in the field.” In this review, we share what is known about how such informal field-based learning (IFBL) works, offer guidance on how to promote healthy IFBL, and identify future research needs. We first situate IFBL within the broader stream of the learning literature. On the basis of the literature

Behavioral integrity (BI) describes the extent to which an observer believes that an actor's words tend to align with their actions. It considers whether the actor is seen as keeping promises and enacting the same values they espouse. Although the construct of BI was introduced in 1999 and developed more fully in 2002, it builds on the work of earlier scholars that discussed related notions of hypocrisy

Intrinsic motivation (IM) is key for persistence at work. When they are intrinsically motivated, people experience work activities as an end in itself, such that the activity and its goal collide. The result is increased interest and enjoyment of work activities. In this article, we review the current state of knowledge on IM, including studies within organizational, cognitive, and social psychology

Relationships are central to understanding what occurs in the workplace. The leader-member exchange (LMX) approach dominates the literature on relational dynamics of leadership. Research supports LMX as a mediator between leadership and outcomes, and this reflects the centrality of relationships at work. However, LMX is not a leadership theory. We critically review the literature on LMX, with discussion

Over the past quarter century, trust has emerged as a core concept in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. We review the body of research amassed over that period using a field evolutionary lens and identify two “waves” that have shaped and progressed the field in specific and important ways: Wave 1, establishing foundational building blocks; Wave 2, questioning assumptions and examining

This review of social network analysis focuses on identifying recent trends in interpersonal social networks research in organizations, and generating new research directions, with an emphasis on conceptual foundations. It is organized around two broad social network topics: structural holes and brokerage and the nature of ties. New research directions include adding affect, behavior, and cognition

A person's gender is not a reliable predictor of their negotiation behavior or outcomes, because the degree and character of gender dynamics in negotiation vary across situations. Systematic effects of gender on negotiation are best predicted by situational characteristics that cue gendered behavior or increase reliance on gendered standards for agreement. In this review, we illuminate two levers that

Research on compensation and employee benefits has enjoyed a long and rich history. Energized by a new generation of scholars, changes in the broader workplace context, and developments in adjacent areas of inquiry, many classic theoretical tensions and research questions have begun to evolve in novel directions, and exciting new areas of research are developing. In addition, there have been numerous

Listening is associated with and a likely cause of desired organizational outcomes in numerous areas, including job performance, leadership, quality of relationships (e.g., trust), job knowledge, job attitudes, and well-being. To advance understanding of the powerful effects of listening on organizational outcomes, we review the construct of listening, its measurement and experimental manipulations

Stigmas pervade organizational life. A stigma is a discrediting social evaluation that devalues an individual or group. We review research on stigmatized work and stigmatized workers, with a particular emphasis on how people become stigmatized and what they (and others) do about it. To do so, we connect stigma to other concepts in its nomological net and compare multiple models of stigma dynamics.

I review the empirical literature on leadership, focusing on papers published since 2010. To do so, I introduce a framework composed of two features: whether theories (a) involve the study of leaders or leading (i.e., the person versus the process) and (b) conceptualize leadership as a cause or a consequence (i.e., an independent versus dependent variable). This framework can enable future research

Unwinding and recovering from everyday work is important for sustaining employees’ well-being, motivation, and job performance. Accordingly, research on work recovery has grown tremendously in the past few decades. This article summarizes research on recovery during work breaks, leisure-time evenings, weekends, and vacations. Focusing on day-level and longitudinal field studies, the article describes

My research journey spans a period of exciting new theories informing innovative practices in businesses and other organizations and a period littered with concerns about the research-practice gap, questionable research practices, and a strong emphasis on the number of publications in top journals for hiring and promotions. These recent developments led to the dilution of both scientific freedom and

How can culture help explain persistent cross-country differences in innovation and entrepreneurship? This overview of cross-cultural innovation/entrepreneurship research draws on the most prominent cultural frameworks (by Hofstede, Schwartz, GLOBE, and Gelfand and colleagues). After outlining similarities and differences between these frameworks, I discuss theoretical perspectives of how culture shapes

Heuristics are fast, frugal, and accurate strategies that enable rather than limit decision making under uncertainty. Uncertainty, as opposed to calculable risk, is characteristic of most organizational contexts. We review existing research and offer a descriptive and prescriptive theoretical framework to integrate the current patchwork of heuristics scattered across various areas of organizational

Item response theory (IRT) is a modeling approach that links responses to test items with underlying latent constructs through formalized statistical models. This article focuses on how IRT can be used to advance science and practice in organizations. We describe established applications of IRT as a scale development tool and new applications of IRT as a research and theory testing tool that enables

Sexual harassment was once conceptualized solely as a sexual problem: coercive sexual advances that spring from natural feelings of sexual desire or romance. Research has since shown that by far the most common manifestation of sexual harassment is gender harassment, which has contempt at its core; this conduct aims to put people down and push them out, not pull them into sexual activity. With findings

Both perceived and objective measures of employee overqualification can impact job attitudes, various workplace behaviors, and work relationships. Utilizing motivation and capability-based theoretical approaches, this review summarizes research regarding the antecedents (demographic influences, personality traits, relational influences, job characteristics) and outcomes (individual health and well-being

Despite the centrality of technology to understanding how humans in organizations think, feel, and behave, researchers in organizational psychology and organizational behavior even now often avoid theorizing about it. In our review, we identify four major paradigmatic approaches in theoretical approaches to technology, which typically occur in sequence: technology-as-context, technology-as-causal,

Extending interactionist principles and targeting situational specificity of trait–performance linkages, trait activation theory (TAT) posits personality traits are expressed as valued work behavior in response to trait-relevant situational cues, subject to constraints and other factors, all operating at the task, social, and organizational levels. Review of 99 key sources citing TAT spanning 2011–2019

We conduct a comprehensive review of the chief executive officer (CEO) succession literature and update a CEO succession typology that incorporated manuscripts published through 2014. Our review illustrates that most of our understanding of succession and related processes stems from research based primarily in macro research traditions. We highlight ways that scholars can develop deeper understandings

Emotion work, the management of feelings and emotional displays in response to emotion work requirements, can have both positive and negative effects on well-being and performance. Adopting a work psychology perspective and drawing on work stress and work design literatures, we outline an expanded model of emotion work, regarding emotion work requirements as job characteristics and as part of broader

Self-report measures are characterized as being susceptible to threats associated with deliberate dissimulation or response distortion (i.e., social desirability responding) and careless responding. Careless responding typically arises in low-stakes settings (e.g., participating in a study for course credit) where some respondents are not motivated to respond in a conscientious manner to the items

Work-life balance is a topic eliciting much attention and scholarship. Yet what scholars mean by work-life balance is wide-ranging. This review focuses on work-life balance scholarship published primarily between 2000 and 2020. To understand what constitutes balance, we integrate this research with work on enrichment and depletion, two constructs that contribute to work-life balance. We identify four

Learning is the engagement in mental processes resulting in the acquisition and retention of knowledge, skills, and/or affect over time and applied when needed. Building on this definition, we integrate the science of training and the science of learning to propose a new science of workplace instruction, linking the design of instructional events to instructional outcomes such as transfer and job performance

In the past 20 years, there has been a growing interest in the phenomenon of workplace envy. This article provides an overarching review and analysis of the workplace envy literature. We first consider conceptual and measurement challenges facing envy researchers. We then review the current knowledge base in the research with a focus on synthesizing what we have learned regarding workplace envy's transmutations

I am quite gratified to be asked to provide this personal account of a career focusing on the role of individual differences in the workplace. I open with an account of my career journey and then offer a highly idiosyncratic perspective on substantive developments in the field over the past four decades, sneaking in observations about my own contributions. After surveying substantive developments,

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) have become quite compelling—and relevant, ideally—to organizations and the consulting services that help manage them. Researchers and practitioners in industrial-organizational psychology (IOP) and human resource management (HRM) can add significant value to big data and AI by offering their substantive expertise in how workforce-relevant data are measured

In this review, we examine the burgeoning body of research on multiteam systems (MTSs) since the introduction of the concept in 2001. MTSs refer to networks of interdependent teams that coordinate at some level to achieve proximal and distal goals. We summarize MTS findings around three core processes and states: within- and between-team coordination processes/structures, leadership structures/processes

Positive organizational scholarship has led to a growing interest in the critical role of positive emotions for the lives of both workers and organizations. We review and integrate the different perspectives on positive emotions (i.e., positive valence, positive emotion regulation strategies, and positive adaptive function) and the four main mechanisms (i.e., cognition, affect, behavior, and physiology)

We begin by charting the evolution of the dominant perspective on job performance from one that viewed performance as static to one that viewed it as dynamic over long timeframes (e.g., months, years, decades) to one that views it as dynamic over not just long but also short timeframes (e.g., minutes, hours, days, weeks)—and that accordingly emphasizes the within-person level of analysis. The remainder

The phenomenon of posttraumatic growth—the transformative positive change that can occur as a result of a struggle with great adversity—has been a focus of interest for psychologists for more than two decades. Research on work-related posttraumatic growth has concentrated primarily on contexts that are inherently traumatic, either through direct exposure to trauma, such as in the military, or through

The emerging field of behavioral ethics has attracted much attention from scholars across a range of different disciplines, including social psychology, management, behavioral economics, and law. However, how behavioral ethics is situated in relation to more traditional work on business ethics within organizational behavior (OB) has not really been discussed yet. Our primary objective is to bridge

This review provides a comprehensive picture of the range of control influences in organizations. We begin by describing and labeling the various types of control mechanisms and control systems examined in the literature. We then identify several issues in the control literature that are currently compromising scholars’ capacities to develop a full, complete, and comprehensive knowledge base about

This review distills available empirical research about the process and experience of looking for a job. Job search varies according to several dimensions, including intensity, content, and temporality/persistence. Our review examines how these dimensions relate to job search success, which involves job finding as well as job quality. Because social networking and interviewing behavior have attracted

In this review, we conceptualize teamwork as the linchpin driving safety performance throughout an organization. Safety is promoted by teams through various mechanisms that interact in a complex and dynamic process. We press pause on this dynamic process to organize a discussion highlighting the critical role played by teamwork factors in the engagement of safe and unsafe behavior, identifying five

This review describes the history, current state, and future of modern discrimination in organizations. First, we review development of discrimination from the early 1900s to the present day, specifically discussing various stigmatized identities, including gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, weight, and age. Next, we describe both individual-level (e.g., identity management, allyship)

By investigating broadly a contingency approach and implicit leadership theoretical perspectives with a multilevel lens as a starting point, this review highlights the potential for Asian conceptualizations of leadership. More specifically, by highlighting the important contingent role national culture plays in influencing leadership effectiveness, we review Asian conceptualizations of leadership that