Decision Making at Work

The personality traits moderating the relationship between turnover intentions and turnover behavior are for one self-monitoring or self-intention, which strengthen turnover intentions and -behavior when they are higher in individuals. Secondly, an internal locus of control seems to strengthen turnover intentions, but findings were a bit inconsistent on this point. Finally, risk-averse individuals have a stronger relationship between turnover intentions and turnover behavior. 

The "exit route" described by Rubenstein's findings starts with antecedents triggering withdrawal cognitions which in turn lead to the actual turnover or retirement. 

The most important predictors for voluntary turnover are age, marital status, tenure and pay. 

1. Job satisfaction, organizational commitment = most robust negative relationship with turnovers
2. Job search, job embeddedness and absenteeism = stronger predictors
3. Emotional stability, organizational support, rewards offered by organization, fit (all negative relationships)
4. Socialization, climate, work-life conflict, citizenship behaviors
5. Withdrawal cognitions and behaviors significant positive relationship

Each country has an individual pension system, cultural norms and social system. Therefore, generalizability of the retirement construct is almost impossible across cultures. 
(Problems with studies on such subjects can be that personality traits are not considered sufficiently for the turnover decision. Additionally, studies should seperate voluntary and involuntary turnovers for better accuracy. Furthermore, retirement as a construct is different in every country.)

1. Economic models of retirement
   people don’t want to work, but need to, to earn money survive
   when they have enough money to survive for the rest of the life, person will retire
   > focuses on the benefits of earning money
2. Continuity theory
   if people work for pay after they retire (bridge employment): they are more likely to work in a job like their former one if they liked that job
   > retired employees have the same interest as they had, when they were still working
   people
3. Identity theory
   focuses on psychology (feelings about oneself in the workcontext)
   an older worker identifying himself as a productive worker, so he/she continues to work at older ages
4. Role theory
   > people’s roles in their lives are defined by the expectation that other people related to that role have for them (people may expect person to retire at a certain age, which could affect the person’s retirement decision)

Bridge employment is described as the phenomenon of an older person working for pay after retiring. Those individuals usually consider themselves as being partially retired, for instance continue working their job, but part-time. 
However, the definition is necessarily ambiguous, since older workers can change careers and not be retired. Also,  some people do not have a typical career job, for example they have worked many different part-time jobs in their lifetime. it can be unclear at what point a new part‐time job would be considered a bridge employment job—unless the person self‐defines as being retired. 

Kempen: Employment of any sort (part-time, temporary, full-time, or selfemployment) after retirement from a career job - the ‘‘bridge’’ from pre-retirement employment to full retirement via an extension of one’s work-life 

1. Types:
   1. Career vs. noncareer jobs
   2. Immediate vs. delayed
   3. Steady vs. intermitted
   4. Self-employed vs. other-employed
2. Problems:
   1. the types have not been fully developed and accepted (just the career vs. noncareer jobs have been studied so far)
   2. ambiguous definition:
      - older worker can change the work and are not fully retired
      - some workers have no typical career job (e.g. many part-time jobs, which opens the question, when a job counts as a bridge job)

Retirement decision can be roughly divided into three phases. The first phase consists of imagining the possibility of one' future life during retirement. In the second phase, the individual assesses their past to help to decide when to retire. The third and final stage is the actual transition into retirement and acting on the previously thought of retirement plans. 

1. Phase 1: Imaging the possibility of one’s future life during retirement
   no concrete plans about future retirement
   employees’ gender affect the way that they imagine their future retired life
2. Phase 2: assessing the past to help decide when to retire
   start of planning, when they want to retire
   during the work circle: the characteristics of an employee’s career job might change so that it no longer fits him as well as it once did
3. Phase 3: the transition to retirement or acting on one’s retirement plans
   announcement of the retirement, finances are important etc.
   if retirement is affordable, there are other actors that influence the decision to retire
   • Social needs: Friends and relatives
   • Activities to fill the time
   • Being identified with the status of retiree
   • Achieving the desired growth

The theory of planned behavior states, that an individual's intention influences their behavior. In this case, attitudes towards retirement, subjective retirement norms and the perceived control over the retirement influence the individual's retirement intention, which in turn leads to a retirement decision or beavior, either in the form of full retirement or bridge employment, also called partial retirement.

The specific job crafting dimensions are increasing challenging job demands, decreasing hindering job demands, increasing structural job ressources and increasing social job ressources. 

No, it is not job crafting, because the idea to adapt the workplace to ones needs comes from the employer and not from the person itself. Therefore, it is not initiated by the employer him- or herself and conclusively not a bottom-up, but rather a top-down approach.

Personal antecedents can be a proactive personality, general self-efficacy of a person, but also their work engagement and regulatory focus, if it is a promotion focus.

Situational antecedents are job autonomy and the workload.

Individual differences have a higher impact on the initiation of job crafting behavior. 

An explanation for negative relationships of age and tenure (with increasing social job resources) may be that older workers already have established work routines and networks which they can rely on for social support and, thus, they may not need to further increase their social or structural resources.

Employers can stimulate crafting behavior of employees by providing structural and social job ressources, such as time to craft on the job, but also job autonomy and the freedom to be able to perform crafting behavior. A reduction of the workload can also be helpful. Additionally, personality traits important for job crafting (such as proactive personality) could be considered for the personnel selection process. 
As to the work engagement, it is linked to job and personal ressources and can therefore enhance crafting behavior and performance and should consequently be enlarged.

Job crafting are the physical and cognitive changes individuals make in the task or relational boundaries of their work. The goals are to increase fit (person-job fit) and motivation at work based on own values, goals, abilities. An example would be asking for new or additional tasks to broaden one's capabilities. Or: Hospital cleaners actively caring for patients and families, so cleaners become „helpers of the sick“
Leisure crafting is focused on the proactive pursuit of leisure activities targeted at goal setting, human connection, learning and personal developmetn outside the job. An example would be asking a colleague to go for a run before work. 

Leisure crafting is a strategy that compensates for insufficient job crafting opportunities rather than a strategy that is simply enacted parallel to job crafting. In this sense, it relates to occupational outcomes because it positively relates to meaning making.
Although both life domains, job and leisure crafting, are able to stimulate meaning-making, their success and ability to do so is dependent on whether employees regard work important and whether they have opportunities to craft their jobs.
Work engagement can also be regarded as occupational outcome.

Yes, leisure crafting can compensate for low opportunities to craft, since there is a positive relationship between leisure crafting and meaning making, when job crafting possibilities are low.

Job crafting can increase a person-job/ person-organization fit via work engagement and meaning-making (= ability to integrate challenging situations into a framework of personal meaning) on one hand, on the other hand the person-job/ person-organization fit enables or strengthens job crafting behaviour. Meaning making therefore mediates the relationship between job-crafting and P-J/P-O Fit. 
By offering employees the possibility to job crafting behavior, the person-job/person-organization fit can be increased. 

Job crafting behavior and work engagement can change weekly, since determining factors change weekly and leisure activities don’t happen daily most of the time. Therefore, it is important to study these behaviors on a daily or weekly level. 

Holland seperates the following interests: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional (RIASEC).
The hexagonal structure implies the relationships between those interests. Interests that are on the opposite of each other are least related. Interests next to each other are the most related. Interests that have one other interest between them, meaning they are alternated, are intermediately relate. 

Interests are a person’s preferences for behaviors, situations, contexts in which activities occur, and/or the outcomes associated with the preferred activities. The interest congruence, on the other hand, describes how well the individual's and the ennvironment's, for example the organization's, interests fit. Interest congruence is a better predictor for performance and tenure due to the similarieties of the individual interest profile and the occupational profile. It is a form of P-E fit. It is necessary to see the interest profil of the individual in comparison to the interest profile of the environment. This gets realized by building a score, weighing the strongest three letters (RIASEC). 
There are three different types of congruence according to the hexagonal model of Holland. Either they are adjacent, so quite similar, or alternate, a little less similar, or completely opposite, in which case the congruence is lowest. 

A higher interest congruency is related to higher performance and persistence (in work and academic setting). This might be explained by motivational mechanisms. Motivation is described as a set of internal processes that directs, energizes, and sustains behavior over time and across changing circumstances. Interests can contribute to motivational processes, such as vigor, direction and persistence, which in turn enhance work performance. 

Vocational interest tests might be good for occupational and academic recruiting to determine the P-E-fit, as well as an addition to already existing employee selection processes.

Potential problems with such tests might be the effect of social desirability, which means that applicants do not present their real interests but the desired ones for the job. Furthermore, interests derive from external influences, such as expectations and norms, so the motivation could be rather external than internal.
Lastly, interests do not necessarily predict talent or qualification, so a high interest congruence in a test does not automatically mean good performance and should therefore only be an addition.

The person-job fit describes the relationship between a person's characteristics and capabilities and the job and task characteristics. It includes a fit between the demand of the job and the abilities of the person, as well as a fit between the needs of the person and the supplies of the job. 
One example for P-J-fit would be a person being very good with numbers and analytical thinking applying for a job in finances, where those skills are needed. 

A person-organization fit describes the compatibility between a person and the organization, which is given if at least one of the entities provides what the other needs, they share similar fundamental characteristics, such as values and goals, or both. 
An example would be an environmentally aware person applying for an organization which advertises their ecological and fair-trade production of clothes.

The most important predictors for job and organization attraction are the work environment, organization image and justice perceptions, for example for the selection process. 
Important predictors for acceptance intentions are job and organization characteristics, as well as the perceptions of the recruiter. 

According to the theory of reasoned action and planned behavior, attitudes, subjectiv norms and the perceived behavioral control influence the formation of behavioral intentions which in turn predict behavior. Transfering this to an organizational context, applicant attraction to an organization (attitude, subjective norms and perceived control) predict acceptance intentions (intention), which in turn predict the applicant's job choice. 

Advantages of laboratory studies are a high internal validity, since the variables can be controlled and specifically manipulated, as well as the possibility for testing new theories and models.

Disadvantages of laboratory studies are a lack of generalizability and therefore a low external validity and a lack of authenticity, since participants do not perceive the process in the exact same way as in reality. 

One advice would be to emphasise positive aspects of the work environment and the organization image, since those are important predictors for an organization's attraction, as well as increasing the fairness of the recruiting process by making it more transparent. Additionally, the recruiters could give applicants perspectives for future job offers in the organization, so the intention of the applicant to accept a job offer is heightened. 

The three essential conditions for a collaborative counselling relationship according to Rogers are genuineness, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding. Those three can be extended by flexibility, meaning a person can be adaptable and willing to accept changes, and openness to follow one's natural curiosity. 

He describes metaphors, storytelling and paradoxical questioning as dynamic counselling methods. 
Metaphors are used to understand and experience situations in terms of their connections to other events. They are especially helpful for people who are visual thinkers. 
Storytelling helps a client to bring important life events in a chronological, or other, order and get a better look on their momentary standpoint in life. 
Paradoxical questioning is supposed to move the client away from "either-or" thinking and help them be more flexible and open. 

The different stages are: building the relationship, enabling the client's understanding, exploring new perspectives and forming strategies and a plan. 

Metaphors, for one, could be confused with the event itself, depsite only being its representation and offer only one particular perspective, therefore they could narrow the client's perspective instead of broadening it. 
With Storytelling, clients are sometimes overwhelmed by problems and might only focus on negative stories. 
One issue with paradoxical questioning could be that it might make it difficult for the client to be hopeful. 

The value function within the prospect theory is defined by perceived gains and losses relative to a natural reference point. The value function is concave for gains and convex for losses. The loss function is also steeper than the gain function. 

Outcomes should be segregated, when outcomes are multiple gains, since the gain function is concave and the gains therefore receive more value. Outcomes should also be segregated when outcomes are mixed losses ("silver lining effect"), since the gain function is steepest at the origin, the utility of a small gain can exceed the utility of slightly reducing a large loss. Therefore, segregation should be done when there is an increase in gains or a small reduction in the absolute value of a loss. 

The transaction utility is a way to evaluate transactions during a judgement process or the perceived value of getting a good deal.The utility depends on the perceived benefits and worthiness of the deal as well as the price the individual pays compared to a reference price (=reference outcome). 

An integrating coding strategy would be to make additional offers after the person has already booked a costly flight, since the smaller offer has a less negative impact than the big loss of the flight. Another integrative coding strategy would be to include an expensive drink into a menu instead of its own, so the losses of the drink are integrated in the bigger loss of the menu. 

An example for a segregating coding strategy would be products with the imprint of "10% more content", since the two gains "normal product content" and "10% more" are segregated, it seems like a bigger gain than it actually is.