RAPID: When Pride Becomes Shame: Organizational Identification and Self-Presentation During Scandal

员工的组织认同感各不相同，他们在多大程度上认为自己与工作组织有个人联系，是工作组织的一部分。当组织做得很好时，这种认同可以有利于自我概念、激励能量和健康，这对一线员工尤其有益，因为他们实际上感受到了他们需要向潜在客户或捐赠者表达的热情和自豪感。矛盾的是，如果组织与丑闻或污名联系在一起，组织认同感可能会成为一种负担，以至于一个人通过联想而感到的骄傲变成了羞耻感和叛逆感。在这种情况下，最有动力的人会成为最受威胁的人；这些员工会如何回应，这会如何影响他们的健康和表现？为了回答这些问题，当前的现实事件--宾夕法尼亚州立大学丑闻--提供了一个独特的时间敏感背景。这项研究整合了社会认同和情绪调节理论，以更全面地理解应对身份威胁的过程和结果。研究人员预计，组织认同可能会通过员工在与公众合作时的情绪反应(即羞愧和背叛)和情绪调节(即重新聚焦、压抑)的强度来影响员工的健康和绩效。我们评估工作中的“真实氛围”(即，强调开放和诚实)是否缓冲或加剧了这些负面情绪对身份认同的健康和表现成本的威胁。这个项目有可能证明传统的基于实验室的身份认同和自我调节模型的普遍性，并提供关于如何在经常存在负面媒体和丑闻的组织环境中保护员工福祉的证据。此外，该项目还提供了关于减少实地环境中人际自我调节对健康和动力的成本的重要信息。

Employees vary in their organizational identification, the extent they view themselves as personally connected to and part of their work organization. When the organization is doing well, such identification can benefit self-concept, motivational energy, and health, which is especially beneficial for front-line employees because they actually feel the enthusiasm and pride they need to express to potential clients or donors. Paradoxically, organizational identification can become a liability if the organization becomes associated with scandal or stigma, such that one's pride-by-association turns to feelings of shame and betrayal. In such cases, those who are the most motivated become those who are most threatened; how do such employees respond, and how does this affect their health and performance?To answer these questions, a current real-life event, the scandal at Pennsylvania State University, provides a unique time-sensitive context. The proposed research integrates social identity and emotion regulation theories to more fully understand the process and outcomes of responding to an identity threat. The researchers expect that organizational identification is likely to influence employees health and performance via the strength of emotional response (i.e., shame and betrayal), and emotional regulation (i.e., refocusing, suppressing) while they work with the public. We assess whether a "climate of authenticity" at work (i.e., emphasizing openness and honesty) buffers or exacerbates the health and performance costs of these negative emotions from identity threat.This project has the potential to demonstrate generalizability of traditionally laboratory-based models of identity and self-regulation, and to provide evidence regarding how to protect employee well-being in organizational settings where, too often, there is negative media and scandal. Furthermore, this project provides important information about a way to reduce the costs of interpersonal self-regulation to health and motivation in field settings.