Employment Precarity Strengthens the Relationships Between the Dark Triad and Professional Commitment

The Dark Triad traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy have been found to negatively impact work behaviors including information sharing, reporting of unethical conduct, and mistreatment of colleagues and subordinates. However, research has found the Dark Triad can also be related to forms of organizational commitment which underpin positive work behaviors, including engaging in tasks and duties beyond those required (i.e., “going above and beyond”). Professional commitment is a broader form of commitment that has been found to be significantly related to organizational commitment, sharing antecedents, and having similar outcomes. Professional commitment, the affective, normative, and continuance commitment toward one's profession or occupation, has the benefit of applying to individuals employed by organizations as well as those working for themselves or between jobs. In this research, we explore relationships between professional commitment, using previous research on the relationship between the dark triad traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism and organizational commitment, as a basis for predictions. We also explored two forms of precarious employment (career interruptions and part-time or casual work) as possible moderators of the dark triad-professional commitment relationship. Participants were 184 Australian professionals (52.2% men), a slight majority of whom had experienced a career interruption (69.6%) or a year or more of part-time or casual employment (70.7%). The results showed that psychopathy had a negative association with affective commitment, whereas Machiavellianism was positively related to normative commitment, and narcissism was positively related to normative and continuance commitment. Using regression analysis, we found that among individuals who have worked in part-time/casual employment longer, Machiavellianism and psychopathy had significantly stronger negative associations with affective commitment. In contrast, among individuals who have had a significant career interruption, Machiavellianism had significantly stronger positive association with continuance commitment. These findings help expand our understanding of both the dark triad and its contingent impact on workers' attachment to their profession.

Back to work: the effect of a long-term career interruption on subsequent wages in Switzerland

This paper measures the effect of a long-term career interruption on wages after re-employment. Using data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) and a fixed effects estimation method allows us to account for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity. We find a significant wage penalty of about 7% in the first year after re-employment if a worker takes up a job with the same characteristics as the job previously held. This wage penalty finally vanishes after 5 to 6 years. Conducting subsample analyses for men and women, we uncover underlying heterogeneity of the effect. Compared to women, men tend to suffer more from a long-term career interruption, both in terms of a higher wage penalty during the first year of re-employment and a larger subsequent recovery time. Our findings support the assumption that human capital depreciation is not the only reason for wage penalties after re-employment.

Returning to the parental home: Boomerang moves of younger adults and the welfare regime context

Returns to the parental home represent a dramatic housing career interruption that can have significant social and economic implications. Interaction of individual characteristics with turning point shocks, such as unemployment or partnership dissolution, are key triggering events; however, housing disruptions are further embedded within variegated social, cultural and institutional contexts. Fundamental is the nature of the welfare regime, explaining norms surrounding co-residence as well as the amount and type of resources available. Through analyses using the Eurostat Longitudinal Survey on Income and Living Conditions, the research establishes a foundational understanding of how factors at both the individual as well as institutional and socio-cultural level moderate young adults’ housing interruptions across Europe. The results showed a significant welfare regime effect in outcomes of returned co-residence as well as evidence of differentiations across regimes in how individual characteristics and the experience of turning points related to returns. Higher return propensities were found among more familialistic contexts of Southern Europe and New Member States, while lower likelihoods were evident in the face of stronger state support and practices of earlier autonomy in Social Democratic and, to a lesser degree, intermediate Conservative regime contexts.