School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Although it has long been recognized that employees in virtually all occupations may occasionally experience indignity at work, only until recently did researchers begin to investigate employees’ experience of work dirtiness outside the typically stigmatized occupations. In the current study, we propose that dirty work experience may elicit identity threat, which results in both maladaptive (i.e., affective rumination) and adaptive (i.e., problem-solving pondering) cognitive responses. Whereas affective rumination leads to deviant behavior, problem-solving pondering encourages job crafting. We also propose that dispositional optimism and pessimism determine the extent to which one exhibits these distinct responses. We tested our model with two independent studies of a mixed research design. Study 1 used an experiment to investigate whether work dirtiness causes identity threat, and Study 2 tested the full model using the experience sampling method among 100 car salespeople. Results supported the theorized process in which identity threat and affective rumination sequentially mediated the positive relationship between work dirtiness and deviant behavior. The serial mediation process through problem-solving pondering and job crafting, however, was observed only among employees high on optimism.
