Date of Award

12-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Diaz, Ismael

Abstract

We examined organizational factors (e.g., leadership styles, operating with a bottom-line mentality, and management based on inclusion) and their relationship with workplace injuries and malingering in this thesis. One of the goals for this study was to examine the extent to which these organizational factors influence justice perceptions, which in turn affected the outcomes of interest. It was hypothesized that the relationship between the organizational factors and malingering/injuries occurred through the formation of psychological contract breach or through the development of a safety climate. It was hypothesized that the pathways from Transformational Leadership and management based on inclusion will result in fewer injuries and fewer malingering cases; and that Transactional Leadership, Authoritarian Leadership, and operating with a bottom-line mentality will result in greater injuries and malingering. The study included 479 participants who were mostly comprised of full-time and part-time workers, over the age of 18, recruited from Mechanical Turk (Mturk) and social media outlets. The results did not provide support for the hypothesized pathways relationships, indicating that the organizational factors did not predict injuries and malingering through psychological contract breach or safety climate perceptions. Although we did not find support for our hypothetical relationships, we did find support that safety climate was directly related to the reporting of injuries; and that inclusion is important for psychological safety. For future researchers interested in studying malingering and work-related injuries, we recommend for them to work on developing better methods for assessing these two outcomes of interests, as the measures used in this study are new. We also recommend researchers to study the effects of negative affectivity, as that may influence whether employees may choose to malinger or work more carelessly.

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