Systems around a person: work, family and school

Transcript

RyanMeet Priya, a hospital lab technician. Good evaluations, regular raises, likes her team. Then she learns that a new hire, doing exactly her job with less experience, is paid more than she is.

SoheeNothing about Priya's job changed. Same pay, same work, same boss. And yet her satisfaction just evaporated.

RyanAnd that evening, she's short-tempered at home. Her nine-year-old has never set foot in that lab, but he feels it.

SoheeWelcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Sohee.

RyanI'm Ryan. Today we look at the systems around a person: work, family and school. And Priya's story touches every one of them.

SoheeStart with job satisfaction. The OpenStax psychology textbook describes it as the degree to which people enjoy their job. Edwin Locke, in 1976, described it as the state of feeling that results from appraising one's job experiences.

RyanIt involves both how we think about work and how we feel about it, but it's described in terms of affect. And it's usually measured with questionnaires, either globally, how satisfied are you overall, or by specific factors.

SoheeHere's the finding worth remembering. The work-content factor, meaning variety, difficulty level and role clarity, is the most strongly predictive factor of overall job satisfaction.

RyanAnd pay? Only a weak correlation between pay level and job satisfaction. Judge and colleagues suggest people adapt to higher pay, so the satisfaction of a raise fades.

SoheeWhy should employers care? Job satisfaction is somewhat correlated with job performance, especially organizational citizenship, the discretionary behaviors that further the organization's goals.

RyanIt's also related to life satisfaction, and one carefully controlled study suggested the relationship runs both ways. And low job satisfaction is related to withdrawal behaviors like absenteeism or leaving, though the relationship with turnover itself is weak.

SoheeNow back to Priya. Pay level may not matter much, but fairness does. That's equity theory, described in the OpenStax organizational behavior textbook.

RyanEquity theory says motivation is affected by the outcomes we receive for our inputs, compared with the outcomes and inputs of other people. Inputs are things like time, effort, performance, education and skills. Outcomes are things like pay.

SoheeWe compare our ratio of outcomes to inputs with the ratio of a referent other. Equal ratios mean equity. If ours is greater, that's overreward inequity. If ours is less, underreward inequity.

RyanAnd people react very differently to those two. Feelings of overreward are rare and transient. Very few of us complain to our employer that we're overpaid.

SoheeBut with underreward, we're likely to be dissatisfied, angered, and motivated to change or escape the situation. That's Priya.

RyanSo what can she do? Adams identified several options. Change her own outcomes or inputs. Change those of the referent other. Distort her perceptions of either. Pick a different referent other. Or leave the situation.

SoheePause and think. Priya stops volunteering for extra weekend shifts. In equity terms, what has she done?

RyanShe's reduced her inputs, to bring her ratio back in line with the new hire's.

SoheeAnd here's where the knowledge statement's phrase, organizational justice, comes in. The organizational behavior textbook says recent applications extend equity theory into organizational justice.

RyanWhen employees evaluate the fairness of the rewards or punishments they receive, that's distributive justice. When they assess the fairness of the processes used to distribute them, that's procedural justice.

SoheeThe textbook's example is layoffs. People ask whether losing the job is fair, which is distributive. And whether the process for deciding who's laid off is fair, which is procedural. Layoffs based on seniority may be seen as fairer than layoffs based on supervisors' opinions.

RyanSo an exam tip: if the stem is about the outcome, think distributive. If it's about how the decision was made, think procedural.

SoheePause and think. Two employees get the same small bonus. One is upset because the amount is too low. The other is upset because it was decided in a closed meeting with no clear criteria. Which kind of justice is each one questioning?

RyanThe first is distributive, the fairness of the reward itself. The second is procedural, the fairness of how it was decided.

SoheeLeadership shapes all this too. Douglas McGregor described Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X managers assume most people dislike work, aren't self-directed, and need close watching, with goals achieved through rules and punishment.

RyanTheory Y managers assume people seek inner satisfaction from work and do better when they help set their own goals. McGregor argued Theory Y was needed to improve both output and well-being.

SoheeAnd Bass popularized transactional versus transformational leadership. Transactional leaders focus on supervision and goals achieved through rewards and punishments. Transformational leaders are charismatic, inspirational, intellectually stimulating and considerate.

RyanThe textbook notes research showing transformational approaches are more effective than transactional ones, although individual leaders usually show elements of both.

SoheeNow the bridge between work and home. Work-family conflict. Greenhaus and Beutell identified three sources. Time devoted to one role makes it hard to meet the other's demands. Strain from one spills into the other. And behaviors required by one role clash with the other.

RyanAnd it runs both directions, work into family and family into work. What helps? In a study by Lapierre and Allen, practical support at home, like help with chores, mattered more than emotional support.

SoheeAnd support from an immediate supervisor significantly reduced work-family conflict. But flextime didn't help with coping, and telecommuting actually made things worse, perhaps because being home makes family demands more visible.

RyanWhich brings us to Priya's son. To see how a workplace reaches a child, we need Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model, described in the OpenStax lifespan development textbook.

SoheePicture nested circles with the person at the center. The microsystem is the settings the person directly experiences: family, school, peers, health care, faith community.

RyanThe mesosystem is the interaction between microsystems. A parent-teacher conference is the textbook's example. The child isn't there, but home and school are connecting, and the child feels the effects.

SoheeThe exosystem is settings that affect the person indirectly and are even further removed, like a caregiver's workplace, the school board, or mass media. The textbook's example is a new work-from-home policy that changes how a parent balances work and home.

RyanSo Priya's lab, for her son, is the exosystem. He never goes there, but it reaches him.

SoheeThe macrosystem holds the broad culture: beliefs, ideologies, national laws, economic systems and cultural values. And the chronosystem is time, all of these moving together through history. The textbook uses the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of both a macrosystem and a chronosystem change.

RyanPause and think. A child's school board votes to cut the art program. Which system is that for the child?

SoheeThe exosystem. The school board affects the child indirectly. The art class itself, which the child attends, would be part of the microsystem.

RyanFinally, the family as a system. The psychology textbook says one of the most predominant orientations in family therapy is the systems approach. The family is viewed as an organized system, and each member creates and maintains processes that shape behavior, citing Minuchin.

SoheeEach member influences and is influenced by the others. So one person's depression, or eating disorder, or alcohol dependence can affect everyone, and the therapist works with the whole family.

RyanIn structural family therapy, the therapist examines the family's boundaries and structure. Who makes the rules, how decisions are made, whether parents work together or one undermines the other.

SoheeAnd in strategic family therapy, the goal is to address specific problems that can be dealt with in a relatively short time, with the therapist guiding the session and designing a detailed approach.

RyanLet's recap. Job satisfaction is best predicted by the work itself, and only weakly by pay.

SoheeEquity theory: we compare our outcome-to-input ratio with a referent. Underreward stings more than overreward. Organizational justice: distributive is about the outcome, procedural about the process.

RyanTheory X distrusts workers, Theory Y trusts them. Transformational leaders inspire and tend to be more effective than transactional ones.

SoheeWork-family conflict comes from time, strain and behavior, in both directions, and supervisor support helps. Bronfenbrenner: micro, meso, exo, macro, chrono. And family systems therapy treats the family as one interacting system.

RyanIf your studying is squeezed between work and family right now, that conflict is real, and it's not a personal failing. Practical support helps. Ask for some, and protect a little time to rest.

SoheeThanks for listening to EPPP Prep. We'll see you next time.

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