Affective events theory
Affective events theory is an industrial and organizational psychology model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
Alternatively, some research suggests that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between various antecedent variables such as dispositions, workplace events, job characteristics, job opportunities, and employee behavior exhibited while on the job. To that end, when workers experience uplifts or hassles, their intention to continue or quit depends upon the emotions, moods, and thoughts associated with the satisfaction they derive from their jobs.
Other research has demonstrated that the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover is fully mediated by intention to quit; workers who report low job satisfaction are likely to engage in planned quitting. However, this relationship does not account for employees who report high job satisfaction, but quit unexpectedly. Although extrinsic rewards, such as better job offers outside their current organization, may influence their decisions, employees' personality factors may also impact their decisions to exit early from otherwise ideal jobs under ideal working conditions.
Recipients often refer to specific events in exit interviews when voluntarily leaving their current jobs. Minor events with subtle emotional effects also have a cumulative impact on job satisfaction, particularly when they occur acutely with high frequency. For example, perceived stressful events at work are often positively associated with high job strain on the day that they occur and negatively associated with strain the day after, resulting in an accumulation of perceived job-related stress over time. This is consistent with the general understanding in vocational psychology that job satisfaction is a distal, long-term outcome that is mediated by perceived job stress.
Factors affecting employee experience at work
The relationships between components associated with work and their impact on job outcomes support AET. Tasks that are considered challenging, rewarding, or that provide an opportunity to develop new skills induce positive affect and increase job satisfaction. Alternatively, tasks that are rated as routine, boring, or overwhelming are associated with negative affect and concerns over job evaluations. This may lead workers to engage in planned quitting behaviours.The degree of autonomy workers have in their jobs affects their productivity, satisfaction, and intention to quit. Research shows that the ability to make decisions and influence what happens on the job has the greatest impact on job satisfaction, particularly among young male workers. Job autonomy even trumps income's effect on job satisfaction. Alternatively, work overload significantly reduces job satisfaction among middle-aged women and men but does not significantly impact job satisfaction among young male workers. These differences between the age and gender of workers indicate differences in career phase, where young workers are more likely to put up with or expect work overload, while middle-aged workers tend to be approaching their peak and may expect some concessions.
Likewise, work flexibility affects job satisfaction. In fact, the flexibility to decide when work is performed ranks number one among women and number two or three among men in determining the characteristics of a satisfying job. Similar to job autonomy, job flexibility is more important than income when evaluating job satisfaction. Flexibility to determine one's work schedule is an important contributor to job satisfaction across the spectrum of low- and high-income jobs. Work flexibility empowers employees by reducing the incidence of work-family conflicts and engagement in planned quitting to improve overall quality of life. Positive affect is a fringe benefit of work flexibility that pays rich dividends to both employees and their employers, empowering the former and improving the ability of the latter to retain workers.
Past research has suggested that workplace affect was a state-oriented construct that depended upon the work environment or situations encountered at work. However, more recent research describes affect as a dispositional trait that is dependent upon the individual. Although workplace events have a significant impact on employees, their mood largely determines the intensity of their reaction to events experienced at work. This emotional response intensity tends to affect job performance and satisfaction. Other employment variables, like effort, leaving, deviance, commitment, and citizenship, are also affected by positive and negative perceptions of events experienced at work.
General cognitive ability and personality also influence job performance. Emotion and cognition help to explain Organizational Citizenship Behaviours. For example, emotions about one’s job are strongly associated with OCBs directed at individuals, while one’s thoughts or job cognitions are reportedly more strongly associated with OCBs directed at the organization. The outcome of how satisfied an individual employee is with her/his job within the organization may depend upon how s/he perceives an incident experienced at work. Job satisfaction also depends upon the emotions and thoughts associated with that perception, as well as the social support provided by co-workers and the organization as a whole.
Five factor model of personality
Personality research on the five factor model supports AET. The FFM is a parsimonious model that distinguishes between differences among individuals’ dispositions. This is done on the basis of five factors, each of which contains six underlying facets. Self-reported measures of conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion consistently predict affect and outcome from events experienced at work. There is some evidence that other personality factors predict, explain, and describe how employees may react to affective events experienced at work. For instance, maladaptive traits derived from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual correlate with work-related affect, but the incremental validity that these traits explain is minimal beyond the FFM.Conscientiousness
In general, conscientiousness concerns delayed gratification. As a personality trait, conscientiousness involves regulating impulsiveness by following methodically determined plans to achieve nonimmediate goals. Of the five factors, conscientiousness is considered the best predictor of training and job performance and occupational attainment. Conscientiousness is demonstrated through employee industriousness, self-initiative, self-discipline, orderliness, and time management. It positively predicts intrinsic and extrinsic career success. Accomplishment of complex tasks is correlated with high conscientiousness and general cognitive ability. Intention to leave an organization is less influenced by extrinsic reward than perceived procedural fairness, which is highly important to conscientious workersPerceptions of the conscientiousness of others may also influence intention to provide assistance at work. Investigations examining the impact of the interaction between low performing members' g and conscientiousness on team-level prosocial behavior demonstrates that other team members are likely to exhibit high prosocial behavior when the poor performer is perceived to have low g and high conscientiousness or high g and high conscientiousness. Team members exhibit moderate levels of prosocial behavior when the poor performer exhibits low g and low conscientiousness. When the poor performer is perceived to have high g and low conscientiousness, other team members exhibit the least amount of prosocial behavior.
Conscientiousness and emotional stability predict low employee turnover and high job performance, indicating that these personality traits are robust and should be assessed during personnel selection in subsequent validation and utility analysis. Conscientiousness is considered to account for possible moral, ethical, and contractual obligations that may lead to employee turnover. In this mental state, employees high in conscientiousness may decide to demonstrate high organizational commitment due to transactional fairness in accordance with the norms of reciprocity, as long as a perceived debt exists. Highly religious and conscientious workers may believe that quitting goes against their work-oriented beliefs, with any volition to carry through with quitting, a sign of poor character.
Agreeableness
Individuals who are high in agreeableness exhibit prosocial behaviors, are cooperative, compassionate, and polite, and show sincere concern for the welfare and rights of others. Research links agreeableness with empathy and theory of mind to explain the emotions, intentions, and mental states of others. Agreeable workers are valued employees; their agreeableness is a key factor in maintaining their social relationships. Their tendency to strive toward integration, inclusion, and solidarity with others supports group cohesion. They tend to be helpful and concerned for the welfare of others. Agreeable workers also tend to experience high job satisfaction compared to less agreeable workers. Workers high in agreeableness tend to rate themselves as high in intrinsic motivation, particularly when work performed on behalf of others or an organization is considered. Heterogeneity of personality is important in team productivity, particularly where agreeableness is involved; having complete agreeableness among all members of a team is negatively related to performance as it tends to lead to groupthink.The relationship between agreeableness and job satisfaction is most apparent in exchange-oriented or transactional work environments. When workers who are low in agreeableness are satisfied with their work environment and those they are required to interact with, they are likely to engage in prosocial organizational citizenship behaviors. Low-agreeable workers are likely to disengage in such behaviors when they find the work environment less favourable. Highly agreeable workers, on the other hand, are likely to engage in prosocial organizational citizenship behaviors regardless of the work climate, environment, or disposition of others they are required to work with, since they tend to focus more on the needs of others and the organization as opposed to keeping track of transactions. Further, deviant behavior is higher among workers low in agreeableness, particularly when organizational support is low.
Agreeableness and Conscientiousness are often linked to organizational citizenship behavior, however, such relationship is weak. Recent research suggests that agreeableness acts as a moderator that affects workers' experienced states of citizenship behavior. These two personality traits are also negatively correlated with employee turnover. Workers who self-report as low on agreeableness are likely to engage in unplanned quitting, leading to a condition known as the "Hobo Syndrome".