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For decades, organizational research has primarily considered instrumental technology perceptions (ITP) – emphasizing how technology impacts the personal interests of end users themselves – to understand technology acceptance. The authors offer a complementary paradigm by introducing deontic technology perceptions (DTP), defined as the degree to which individuals believe that the technology they use is beneficial to other individuals beyond themselves (e.g. beneficial to customers).

The authors collected quantitative survey-based data from three different hospitals located in the United States. On the basis of conservation of resources theory, the authors investigated whether both DTP and ITP were associated with improved work-related well-being.

Two pilot studies (n = 161 and n = 311 nurses) substantiated our DTP conceptualization. Our primary study (n = 346 nurses) found support for the association between DTP and improved work-related well-being. Evidence for the relationship between ITP and work-related well-being was mixed and the authors did not find a statistically significant interaction between DTP and ITP.

The authors build on decades of research on technology acceptance by complementing it with our deontic perspective. Our work demonstrates that technology users pay attention and react meaningfully to how their use of technology impacts not only themselves but also external parties like patients, customers and members of the general public.

An individual engages in a façade of conformity by attempting to appear to embrace their organization's values when, in truth, they do not. While numerous studies investigate the negative outcomes associated with facades of conformity, fewer studies consider its antecedents. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the association between diversity-related influences – including individuals' beliefs, other unit members' beliefs, unit gender diversity and unit racial diversity – and individuals' propensities to engage in a façade of conformity.

This paper administered an online survey to 2,122 employees nested within 151 units located at a hospital site located in the southeastern United States. Hierarchical linear modeling and relative weights analyses were used to test the study hypotheses which aimed to determine how objective diversity and perceptions associated with diversity increase or diminish facades of conformity.

In this paper individuals' and other unit members' beliefs that their organization values diversity were negatively associated with facades of conformity; however, there was a positive association between unit gender diversity and facades of conformity. There were no statistically significant associations involving unit racial diversity or interactive effects. Overall, the results indicate that it is less likely that employees will engage in façades of conformity when diversity is valued within organizations.

By further expanding understanding of the concept of façades of conformity within the humanities and social sciences literature, this study highlight the importance of allowing and encouraging employees to “be themselves.”

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

Despite the proliferation of work–family research, a thorough understanding of family role status changes (e.g. the gaining of elder or child caregiving responsibilities) remain under-theorized and under-examined. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize various forms of family role status changes and examine the ways in which these changes influence various employee outcomes.

Data were collected as part of the work–family health study. Using a longitudinal, three-wave study with two-time lags of 6 months (n = 151 family role status changes; n = 392 individuals with family role stability), this study uses one-way analysis of variance to compare mean differences across groups and multilevel modeling to examine the predictive effects of family role status changes.

Overall, experiences of employees undergoing a family role status change did not differ significantly from employees whose family role status remained stable over the same 12-month period. Separation/divorce predicted higher levels of family-to-work conflict.

The work raises important considerations for organizational science and human resource policy research to better understand the substantive effects of family role status changes on employee well-being.

Open source software (OSS) communities devoted to the development of electronic medical records (EMRs) have grown in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the challenge the leaders of these communities face in terms of building perceptions of psychological ownership among community members.

Surveys (n = 50) and brief interviews (n = 56) with individual members of an open source EMR community (most of whom are based in African nations) were used.

Among community members, normative commitment (in comparison to extrinsic motivation and affective commitment) was the strongest predictor of psychological ownership. Interviews revealed that community members tended to feel a greater sense of ownership toward the end user (i.e. hospitals and clinics) than toward the community itself.

To foster engagement and retention – and enhance the worldwide impact of their community on healthcare practices – leaders of open source EMR communities can offer incentives related to certifications and status-based rewards, hold annual meetings to allow members to develop a better understanding of the community and encourage members to “pay it forward” by involving end users (i.e. hospital and clinic employees) within the community, thus furthering public health initiatives.

OSS communities experience unique challenges compared to traditional organizations. This necessitates a reconsideration of the applicability of commonly accepted principles, tenets and recommendations from the management literature.

The increasing diversity among workforces – as well as the increasing diversity among patient populations served – offers a variety of opportunities and potential pitfalls for healthcare organizations and leaders. To unravel this complexity, the authors aim to holistically understand how to maximize provider and patient experiences regardless of (1) the degree to which diversity is present or lacking, and (2) the type(s) of diversity under consideration.

This conceptual paper develops a framework that combines three organizational behavior theories – emotional labor theory, similarity-attraction theory and climate theory – with evidence from the broader healthcare literature.

Authentic interactions yield positive outcomes for providers (i.e. improved job attitudes and work-related well-being) and patients (i.e. patient satisfaction) and acts as a mediator between demographic diversity and positive outcomes. Demographic similarity facilitates authentic interactions, whereas demographic diversity creates an initial barrier to engaging authentically with others. However, the presence of a positive diversity climate eliminates this barrier.

The authors offer a conceptual model to unlock positive outcomes – including reduced absenteeism, better morale and improved patient satisfaction – regardless of the level and types of diversity present within the workforce. In addition to deriving an agenda for future research, the authors offer practical applications regarding how diversity can be more effectively managed and promoted within healthcare organizations.

Workarounds represent informal modifications to rules and procedures that individuals will engage into navigate around a process block in order to make their job easier. Although workarounds have been primarily studied from an individual-level perspective, this chapter argues that workarounds are a socially constructed, multilevel phenomenon, meaning that they are influenced by others (e.g., group norms and coworkers) and can result in the emergence of workaround climates. We find empirical support for the view that workarounds are shaped by a variety of social influences. Moreover, based on an inductive exploratory study, we suggest that workarounds are related to informal training and troubleshooting behaviors. We conclude by outlining several theory-based directions for understanding how workarounds spread throughout all levels of an organization as an incubator for future research.

In this chapter, the authors present a conceptual perspective on resilience that is grounded in self-regulation theory, to help address theoretical, empirical, and practical concerns in this domain. Despite the growing popularity of resilience research (see Linnenluecke, 2017), scholars have noted ongoing concerns about conceptual confusion and resulting, paradoxical, stigmatization associated with the label “resilience” (e.g., Adler, 2013; Britt, Shen, Sinclair, Grossman, & Klieger, 2016; Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000). The authors seek to advance this domain via presenting a clarified, theoretically grounded conceptualization that can facilitate unified theoretical advancements, aligned operationalization, research model development, and intervention improvements. Resilience is defined here as continued, self-regulated goal striving (e.g., behavioral and/or psychological) despite adversity (i.e., after goal frustration). This self-regulatory conceptualization of resilience offers theoretically based definitions for the necessary conditions (i.e., adversity and overcoming) and outlines specific characteristics (i.e., unit-centered and dynamic) of resilience, distinguishes resilience from other persistence-related concepts (e.g., grit and hardiness), and provides a framework for understanding the connections (and distinctions) between resilience, performance, and well-being. After presenting this self-regulatory resilience perspective, the authors outline additional paths forward for the domain.