Date of Award

6-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Kenneth Shultz

Abstract

Previous research on workload has primarily approached work underload as unidimensional focusing on either repetitive monotonous tasks or the employee’s perception of their current workload. Researchers have focused on work related outcomes, such as job engagement and organizational commitment, as consequences of those perceptions. Recently, work related boredom has been measured alongside work underload as precursors to aforementioned outcomes. In the current study we investigated if a recently developed, more complex, multidimensional scale of work underload, including desire for more work and expectation of more work, would better explain the relationship between perceived work underload, and work-related boredom, job engagement, and affective organizational commitment. For the present study, 169 participants were recruited from the MTurk and through snowball sampling and included 49% full time working women and 50% full time working men. The average age of the participants was 34. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to test for significant changes when a desires and an expectations dimension are added to a model with perceived work underload. We found that adding both a desires and an expectation dimension did not further explain the relationship between work underload and job engagement or organizational commitment, however it did better explain the relationship between work underload and work related boredom. Furthermore, in this study we examined the mediating effect of work-related boredom between the multidimensional work underload scale and job engagement and affective organizational commitment. Results indicate that work related boredom mediated the relationship between work underload and the aforementioned outcomes. Implications from this study suggest whether researchers should consider the effects of desires and expectations when investigating perceptions of workload. In practice, these results could emphasize the importance employee’s expectations and desires play in how they perceive their job, and how to avoid work related boredom.

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