Research

Psychological contracts refer to employee's beliefs about their agreement with their employer regarding both their own and their employer obligations. From the very early of research, I was interested in understanding how employees experience their psychological contract through significant organizational events such as employee hire (Nikolaou, Tomprou, & Vakola, 2007), organizational change (Tomprou, Nikolaou, & Vakola, 2012; Tomprou & Hansen, 2018), and socialization (Tomprou & Nikolaou, 2011). In the socialization context (Tomprou & Nikolaou, 2012), we investigated the role of social influence in newcomer promise beliefs and promise-related information by co-workers. During their first month on the job, 85 new recruits completed both a one-shot questionnaire and a diary booklet for 10 consecutive workdays. Using multilevel random coefficient modeling, we demonstrated the importance of line managers and direct communication in promise beliefs. In the organization change context,

However, after finalizing my research on psychological contract creation, my attention was drawn to positive psychology movement and the concept of resilience. For example, organizations may fail to keep their commitments to their employees, at times leading to psychological contract violation but many victims remain with their employer despite such adverse experiences. During that time, little research existed on their responses in the aftermath of violation. Our paper (Tomprou, Rousseau, & Hansen, 2015, Journal of Organizational Behavior) develops a post-violation model to explain systematically how violation victims respond to and cope with violation and the effects this process has on their subsequent psychological contract. This paper was seminal for the research of psychological contracts, as it sparked the attention of researchers in the area. In subsequent work with (Tomprou and Bankins, 2019), we extend our review by introducing the role of calling to understand how employees remain in their employment when organizational inducements are limited and coping is constrained and address the case of vulnerable workers and how this population manages violations while remaining employed, through downward social comparisons and collective coping.

I was fascinated by the book of Carver and Scheier (2001) on Self-Regulation of Behavior. These authors argue that human behavior is a continuous process of moving toward, and away from, various kinds of mental goal representations, and that this movement occurs by a process feedback control. This view treats behavior as the consequence of an internal guidance system inherent in the way living beings are organized (cf. Carver & Scheier, 2001). Their theory guides my research on psychological contracts and other research projects related to employee interactions with their work and their work environment. One way that I investigate self-regulation of human behavior is through daily experiences.

For example, we investigated how daily employee-organizational resource exchanges relate to daily strain and work-related self-efficacy (Tomprou, Xanthopoulou, & Vakola, 2019). We assessed the psychometric properties of the Resource Exchange Scale (RES) that we developed for measuring general and daily employee and organizational resource investments (Study 1 and Study 2). Seventy-six healthcare employees completed a general survey and a 10-day diary survey twice: at mid-shift and at the end of their shift (Study 3). Analyses supported the validity of the RES. Findings revealed that daily, under-reciprocal exchange related to increased physical symptoms. Mutual high daily resource investments related to greater work-related self-efficacy. The relationship between daily employee resource investments and self-efficacy was positive under conditions of both high and low perceived monetary investments. Lagged analyses showed that the previous day’s self-efficacy related positively to employees’ next day resource investments. Our findings suggest that socio-emotional resource exchanges matter for daily employee functioning, over and above between-person effects.

In our work on workspace transitions (Tomprou, Bankins, & Boulamatsi) we utilize self-regulation theory to examine adjustment processes and the behavioral and cognitive responses individuals employ throughout a workspace adjustment. We do so by conducting a mixed-method field study of an organization’s workspace change. Study 1 consisted of a seven-day diary study during the change. Findings showed daily adjustment efforts, such as job crafting, positively related to daily self-efficacy and work engagement via positive affective arousal, while daily identity marking moderated the indirect effects. Study 2 consisted of pre-and post- workspace change employee interviews to identify pre-existing factors such as beliefs and expectancies that contributed to or hindered individuals’ workspace adjustments. Interviews generated a typology of factors that lead some employees to spatially adjust better than others by utilizing job crafting and identity marking.

In another paper (Bankins, Tomprou, & Kim, 2021, Journal of Managerial Psychology -first two authors contributed equally), we looked at how employees interact with their workspace. Although the physical environment provides an important context for employees' work, there remain divergent findings regarding how different spatial settings, such as more open or more closed workspaces, impact employees. Employing research on the functions of the physical work environment, we contributed to a growing body of research on employees' interactions with their workspace by developing and measuring the notion of person–space fit (P-S fit). This construct affords examination of the multi-dimensional nature of employees' interactions with their workspaces, to understand how their perceived fit with the key functions of their workspace impacts their experiences and social network activity at work. We first develop a new P-S fit scale and test its factorial, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity over other person–environment fit concepts (N = 155). Next, in a naturally-occurring, quasi-field experiment of a workspace change intervention moving employees from predominantly closed workspace to more open workspace (N = 47 pre-move; N = 37 post-move), we examined how changes in both workspace layout and P-S fit impact workers' experiences of their workspaces (needs for task privacy and spaciousness) and collaborative behaviors (social network activity). Our P-S fit scale consisted of theoretically and empirically validated dimensions representing fit with four workspace functions: aesthetic fit; identity fit; instrumental fit; and collaboration fit. Instrumental fit is positively associated with experiences of task privacy, whereas aesthetic fit and identity fit positively associated with experiences of spaciousness, but no forms of fit were related to social network activity. However, the findings show that work-related social network ties tended to decrease, and new ones were less likely to form, in open office spaces.

In a project supported by the Center for the Future of Work, Heinz College Carnegie Mellon, we investigated the effects of organizational change–related training on the diffusion of change through the employee advice network (Kim, Rousseau, & Tomprou, 2019 Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Best Paper 2019). We also examined the contribution of employee proactivity to the effects of that training. We compare trainees (N = 46) and nontrained peers (N = 47) doing similar work at pre- and post-test to examine how training and individual proactivity contribute to the change process. Results indicated that training is associated with increased change-related knowledge and skills and greater change-related advice-giving (i.e., in-degree centrality). Additionally, proactivity was positively related to change-related advice-giving and seeking (i.e., in- and out-degree centrality). Our findings also showed that the effect of training on change-related advice-giving was stronger for more proactive trainees than less proactive ones.

Further, we offered practice-oriented evidence regarding the implementation of healthcare data analytics and its impact on the use of new data analytics tools and relevant analytical skills improvement (Kim & Tomprou, 2021, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market and Complexity). A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test controlled study was conducted in a large medical system in the eastern United States. Healthcare data analytics training program participants (N = 21) and a comparison group comprising trainee-identified peers completing comparable work (N = 27) were compared at the start of training and one year later. Results showed that both trainees and peers demonstrated improved healthcare data analytics skills over time, related to concomitant increases in their healthcare data analytics-related learning and performance goals. This study suggests that healthcare organizations aiming at successfully implementing a new data analytics infrastructure should provide well-designed training that enables trainees to develop specific learning and performance goals as well as improve relevant skills and ability to use new tools.

I spent four wonderful years in Human-Computer Interaction Institute at the School of Computer Science as a Project Scientist at the Coex Lab of Laura Dabbish. During my stay I was involved in interdisciplinary projects and had the opportunity to develop my own research work in the interest of organizational behavior, careers, and technology.

For example, with my colleagues, we published two papers on Collective Intelligence and Non-verbal synchrony.

Collective intelligence (CI), a group's capacity to perform a wide variety of tasks, is a key factor in successful collaboration. Group composition, particularly diversity and member social perceptiveness, are consistent predictors of CI, but we have limited knowledge about the mechanisms underlying their effects. To address this gap (Chikersal, Tomprou, Kim, Williams -Woolley, Dabbish, In proceedings of CSCW 2017), we examined how physiological synchrony, as an indicator of coordination and rapport, relates to CI in computer-mediated teams, and if synchrony might serve as a mechanism explaining the effect of group composition on CI. We presented results from a laboratory experiment where 60 dyads completed the Test of Collective Intelligence (TCI) together online and rated their group satisfaction, while wearing physiological sensors. We find that synchrony in facial expressions (indicative of shared experience) was associated with CI and synchrony in electrodermal activity (indicative of shared arousal) with group satisfaction. Furthermore, various forms of synchrony mediated the effect of member diversity and social perceptiveness on CI and group satisfaction.

In subsequent experiments (Tomprou, Kim, Chikersal, Woolley, & Dabbish, 2021 in PlosOne), given how much collaboration takes place via the internet, we asked the question: does nonverbal synchrony still matter and can it be achieved when collaborators are physically separated? Here, we hypothesized and tested the effect of nonverbal synchrony on collective intelligence that develops through visual and audio cues in physically-separated teammates. We showed that, contrary to popular belief, the presence of visual cues surprisingly has no effect on CI; furthermore, teams without visual cues are more successful in synchronizing their vocal cues and speaking turns, and when they do so, they have higher CI. Our findings show that nonverbal synchrony is important in distributed collaboration and call into question the necessity of video support. Our paper has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post etc

Although people frequently seek mentoring or advice for their careers, most mentoring is performed in person. Little research has examined the nature and quality of career mentoring online. To address this gap, we studied how people use online Q&A forums for career advice (Tomprou, Dabbish, Kraut, & Liu, In proceedings of CHI 2019). We develop a taxonomy of career advice requests based on a qualitative analysis of posts in a career-related online forum, identifying three key types: best practices, career threats, and time-sensitive requests. Our quantitative analysis of responses showed that both requesters and external viewers value general information, encouragement, and guidance, but not role modeling. We found no relation between the type of requests and features of responses, nor differences in responses valued by requesters versus external viewers.