Organizers: Fabian Gander (University of Zurich, Switzerland), Claudia Harzer (University of Greifswald, Germany)
Symposium Summary:
Research on the role of character strengths in work settings has flourished in recent years and studies confirmed that strengths go along with desirable outcomes at work, such as performance or satisfaction, and negatively relate to undesirable outcomes, such as stress or counterproductive work behavior (e.g., Harzer & Ruch, 2014, 2015; Heintz & Ruch, 2019; Littman-Ovadia & Lavy, 2016). Nonetheless, there are still numerous open questions on the contributions of character strengths at work.
This symposium aims at providing an overview on the most recent research covering contributions from two international research groups from Germany and Switzerland. Four presentations will discuss the role of character strengths at work from different perspectives. The first contribution examines whether character strengths are predictive of job performance, over and above the influence of important predictors, such as cognitive ability and personality. The second contribution focuses on flexibility as an important personal characteristic in increasingly challenging work environments and explores its relationships to character strengths and wellbeing at work. The third contribution examines the relevance of managers’ character strengths use and organizational support for strengths use on employees and organizational outcomes. The fourth contribution studies character strengths on the level of work teams and examines how configurations of character strengths relate to wellbeing and performance of individuals and teams.
Symposium Presentation 1 Proposal:
Title:
Incremental validity of character strengths as predictors of job performance beyond general mental ability and the Big Five
Presenter:
Claudia Harzer (Co-Authors: Natalia Bezuglova, Marco Weber)
Abstract:
Over the last decades, various predictors have proven relevant for job performance (e.g., general mental ability [GMA], broad personality traits like the Big Five). However, prediction of job performance is far from perfect, and further potentially relevant predictors need to be investigated. Narrower personality traits like individuals’ character strengths have emerged as meaningfully related to different aspects of job performance. However, it is still unclear whether character strengths can explain additional variance in job performance over and above already known powerful predictors. Consequently, the present study aimed at examining both (1) the relations between character strengths and job performance and (2) the incremental validity of character strengths as predictors of job performance beyond GMA and/or the Big Five traits. Job performance was operationalized with multidimensional models of both productive and counterproductive work behavior. A sample of 169 employees from different occupations completed web-based self-assessments on character strengths, GMA, and the Big Five. Additionally, the employees’ supervisors provided web-based ratings of their productive and counterproductive job performance. The results showed meaningful relations between specific character strengths and different dimensions of productive and counterproductive job performance. Moreover, character strengths showed incremental validity as predictors of job performance beyond GMA, the Big Five, or GMA plus the Big Five. For each of the dimensions of job performance, at least one character strength explained a numerically higher amount of variance than GMA and the Big Five, except for individual task proactivity, where GMA exhibited the numerically highest amount of explained variance. The present study shows that character strengths are relevant predictors of job performance in addition to GMA and other conceptualizations of personality (i.e., Big Five).
Symposium Presentation 2 Proposal:
Title:
Positive traits in the modern world: Why character strengths and flexibility matter for work- and health-related outcomes, and the balance between life domains.
Presenter:
Valentina Vylobkova (Co-Authors: Sonja Heintz, Willibald Ruch)
Abstract:
In the modern world, which is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (Mack & Khare, 2016), people deal with changes at work and in private life and need to combine competing demands in different life domains. Positive psychology, and specifically character strengths as positive traits, can deliver important insights to human thriving in demanding environments. At the same time, (psychological) flexibility is a key component of psychological health and wellbeing in a rapidly changing modern world (Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010). Several concepts of flexibility exist, but little is known about flexibility as a personality trait and its relationships with desirable outcomes, like job satisfaction or health-related behaviors.
The present study investigates the relationships between character strengths and flexibility and the role that these positive traits play for work- and health-related outcomes, and life-domain-balance.
283 German-speaking employees from different occupational fields completed the VIA-Inventory of Strengths, a Big 5 personality traits measure, and several measures of flexibility, work- and health-related outcomes, and life-domain-balance.
Results showed that the character strengths of bravery and hope were most strongly related to flexibility. Regression analyses showed that both flexibility and character strengths contributed to the prediction of some work-related outcomes and life-domain-balance beyond the Big 5 personality traits.
Thus, the results underline the importance of positive personality traits in the modern world and their relevance for work-related outcomes and life-domain balance.
Symposium Presentation 3 Proposal:
Title:
Role of signature strengths use and organizational support for strengths use for employees and organizational outcomes in the banking sector.
Presenter:
Tahira Mubashar (Co-Author: Claudia Harzer)
Abstract:
To date, substantial amount of research has focused on relations of character strengths use with employee work behaviors (e.g., Task performance and job satisfaction). However, their relations with organization level outcomes have rarely been studied. Moreover, there is dire need for an overarching theoretical framework that explains how strengths use is linked to various outcomes at work. Hence, the present study aimed to test the motivational path of job demands-resources theory through which signature strengths use (personal resource) and organizational support for strengths use (job resource) contribute to the organizational outcomes. It was hypothesized that personal and job resources will be related to organizational performance as well as turnover through mediating paths of top manager’s work engagement, job performance and turnover intentions. Sample consisted of 202 top managers from different branches of a bank in Pakistan. All the information was collected from participants except objective organizational performance. The findings divulged the mediational role of serial and parallel mediators between both kind of resources and organizational outcomes. The effect of signature strengths use on turnover was fully mediated by top manager’s work engagement, job performance and turnover intentions whereas partially mediated for objective and perceived organizational performance by same mediating variables. Furthermore, the effect of organizational support for strengths use on objective and perceived organizational performance was fully mediated by top manager’s work engagement, job performance and turnover intentions. The present study has important scientific contribution: 1) by being the first ever to investigate role of signature strengths use from micro (employee) to macro (organizational) level, 2) expansion of JD-R theory from employee outcomes to organizational outcomes, 3) by explaining theoretical mechanism through which signature strengths use directly and indirectly contributes to the organizational outcomes, and 4) provided empirical evidence from banking sector in specific cultural context of Pakistan. The findings also hold practical implications for employees and employers.
Symposium Presentation 4 Proposal:
Title:
Configurations of character strengths in teams: Their role for wellbeing and performance at work
Presenter:
Fabian Gander
Abstract:
Character strengths have often been suggested to play an important role for work-related wellbeing and performance. However, work is rarely conducted in isolation, and work outcomes are also affected by the inter-individual interplay of individual differences. So far, little is known about the role of character strengths on the level of teams.
In the present study, we examine how character strengths relate to work satisfaction, teamwork quality, and performance, on both the individual and the team-level. Further, we examine whether the configuration of teams with regard to character strengths relates to the outcomes. We studied whether teams in which more of the 24 character strengths are represented report better outcomes, or whether an overrepresentation of a specific character strength in the team has detrimental effects.
We studied a sample of 42 teams (N = 284 individuals) who completed measures of character strengths, teamwork quality, job satisfaction, and performance. Further, 42 team-supervisors rated the performance of individuals and teams.
Results confirmed earlier findings on the associations of character strengths with outcomes on the individual level. Further, teams with higher average levels of the character strengths of teamwork and fairness, and teams with more members scoring high in fairness and prudence report higher teamwork quality. At the same time, there is no evidence that having too many members with high scores in a particular character strength goes along with negative effects on the outcomes. We conclude that studying character on the level of teams bears important information for composing work teams.