Doubting the connection: millennials’ perceptions of the link between higher education and workplace readiness

Purpose While Millennials are the most educated generation to date, the unique contributions of higher education as a source of vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) for organizational success remains unknown. Thus, this paper aims to establish a formative understanding from the student perspective of how faculty help ready the youngest of the Millennial generation for industry. This also allows for a comparison to their older counterparts. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via an online mixed-methods survey with nearly 400 Millennials (n = 353). Findings Two prominent themes emerged including the professor as a socialization agent, where Millennials report learning from faculty as they are “managers of the classroom.” Additionally, the data indicate that many Millennials doubt the strength of the connection between higher education and career socialization, though a smaller cohort reported using the university environment, and more specifically, their interactions with faculty to practice and refine future workplace behaviors. In contrast to parents and peers, faculty nearly always ranked as the lowest source of VAS information. Research limitations/implications Some Millennials demonstrate a keen awareness of the importance of relational communication, boding especially well for their relationships with future managers and for their leadership skills as they transition into positions of management. Practical implications Faculty should consider how to address three concerns: a potential lack of perceived relevance, workplace inferences based on college experiences and leveraging interactions to strengthen student practice of professional communication. Managers would be well served to anticipate how to address newcomers’ expectations that stem from interpreting communicative experiences in the college classroom as analogous to workplace interactions. Originality/value The data indicate that traditional ideas about the impact of vocational anticipatory socialization sources and messaging need to be rethought, and instead, it appears some of the most fruitful socialization experiences faculty can provide is in giving students space and opportunity to practice and refine future workplace behaviors.

Will Someone Be Checking My Work? The Effect of Psychological Entitlement and the Expectation of Being Monitored on Task Performance and Misreporting

Psychological entitlement is a sense that one deserves more than others, and is correlated with a host of negative workplace behaviors. Because entitled individuals have a strong desire for the approval of others, we examine whether increasing the expectation of being monitored can limit some of these negative behaviors. We find that when the expectation of being monitored is low, psychological entitlement is associated with lower performance and higher misreporting. In contrast, when the expectation of being monitored is high, not only are these behaviors reduced, but performance increases and misreporting decreases for entitled individuals. Our results suggest that expectations of performance monitoring can be used to improve workplace outcomes for entitled employees.

Adding fuel to the fire: How non-contingent bonuses relate to entitlement and affect pursuit of worker self-interest

Prior research has explored how psychological entitlement (a trait) fuels worker expressions of self-interest and leads to fraudulent and other counterproductive workplace behaviors. However, entitlement can also be conceptualized as a state. As such, managers might unwittingly contribute to workers’ sense of entitlement through administrative decisions that increase workers’ state entitlement. We examine the distinction and hypothesized interaction between trait and state entitlement and their effects on workplace outcomes. We test our hypotheses in two settings where worker expressions of self-interest may manifest – in the context of a hypothetical job offer negotiation and an employment simulation. We find that non-contingent bonuses increase state entitlement. We also find that both employees’ state and trait entitlement influence workplace outcomes. Thus, to limit negative outcomes due to entitlement in the workplace, managers should consider both whom they hire as well as how workplace incentives foster an entitled workforce.

Workplace Deviance in Public Sector Organizations: Evidence from Pakistan

Deviant workplace behaviors have become an important area of research due to the recent revelation of high-profile corporate scandals. Scholars view that deviant workplace behaviors can be controlled when the factors that affect workplace deviance are properly understood. Therefore, this study is having two sections. Section one identifies the level of workplace deviance prevailing in the public sector hospitals of Pakistan, for which data was collected from 219 respondents in the understudy sector. Findings of this study show that workplace deviance exists in the understudy sector at a moderate level. Section two describes the factors that have the ability to influence the emergence of deviant workplace behaviors. Thus, this study searched for workplace deviance related articles available at the academic research databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. The keywords that were used for searching articles were “workplace deviance”, “organizational deviance”, “deviance” and “deviant behaviors”. This study outlines twenty-five factors that affect workplace deviance, thereby highlighting how workplace deviance can be minimized. Lastly, implications and suggestions for further research and practice are highlighted.

Encouraging Employee Engagement With Cybersecurity: How to Tackle Cyber Fatigue

Cybersecurity fatigue is a form of work disengagement specific to cybersecurity. It manifests as a weariness or aversion to cybersecurity-related workplace behaviors or advice and occurs as a result of prior overexposure to cybersecurity-related work demands or training. While some previous theoretical conceptualizations of cybersecurity fatigue are available, this article is the first to capture all dimensions of the phenomenon in a four-component model. The model holds that cybersecurity fatigue can result from overexposure to workplace cybersecurity advice (e.g., training) or cybersecurity actions (e.g., forced password updates). Similarly, we argue that there can be two types of cybersecurity fatigue: attitudinal (e.g., a belief that cybersecurity is not important) and cognitive (e.g., habituated bad behaviors). We present a multidisciplinary review, which draws on research from management, psychology, and information systems. Practitioners can use the four-component model to identify the type of cybersecurity fatigue that may be occurring in employees and adapt workplace processes accordingly to improve behavior. In addition, we present three illustrative case studies, adapted from employee experiences, to demonstrate the application of the four-component model to an organizational context. The review presents a framework for coordinating the existing approaches to cybersecurity fatigue in the current literature.

Moral metaphorical effect of cleanliness on immoral workplace behaviors

Cleanliness connotes cleanness, hygiene, and beauty. Physical cleanliness is also a metaphor for moral purity, as proposed in recent literature. However, cleanliness means not only physical cleanliness but also environmental cleanliness. The article proposes that environmental cleanliness and physical self-cleanliness may metaphorically influence immoral behaviors in the workplace, and their effects may be different. The current study conducted a 2 (environmental cleanliness: clean vs. dirty) × 3 (self-cleanliness: hands-cleansing vs. face-cleansing vs. non-cleansing) between-subjects field experiment with employees as participants in a Chinese enterprise. One-hundred-seventy-seven employees volunteered to participate in the experiment. It was found that a clean workplace, rather than physical self-cleansing, renders harsh moral judgment regarding immoral workplace behaviors. The participants were less willing to accept immoral workplace behaviors in a clean environment than in a dirty environment, while self-cleanliness (hands-cleansing or face-cleansing vs. non-cleansing) had no significant influence on employees’ moral judgments of immoral workplace behaviors. In addition, the significant effects of environmental cleanliness were found in all the ten dimensions of immoral workplace behaviors. The findings reveal the metaphorical association between environmental cleanliness and the concept of higher social moral norms, and confirm that environmental cleanliness is a key factor leading to moral metaphorical effects. This result provides unique insight to the social significance of environmental cleanliness, and has important implications to prevent immoral workplace behaviors. A theoretical framework is proposed to explain why environmental cleanliness is more likely to affect moral judgment involving organizational interests than self-cleanliness. Considering most previous research has been done with samples of college students, this study is especially valuable through a field experiment on actual employees.