Preview

PDF, English Download (1MB) | Terms of use

Abstract

To date, research on work-related rumination still involves significant gaps. For example, conceptualization and operationalization of work-related rumination is inconsistent among scholars (Weigelt et al., 2023), and researchers have mostly zoomed in on only one aspect of work-related rumination, namely affective rumination. In addition, how the different manifestations of work-related rumination compare against each other in relation to their associations with employee well-being remains obscure. Indeed, and up to our knowledge, there is a lack of research simultaneously examining the different manifestations of work-related rumination, although such practice can help us understand when can work-related rumination be an effective emotion regulation strategy, and when it can turn against one’s well-being. Further, while few studies (e.g., Boren, 2014; Haggard et al., 2018; Marmenout 2011; Knipfer & Kump, 2022) have shown that work-related rumination can take a social form when the distressed employee discusses their problems repeatedly and excessively with others, yet investigation of such work-related interpersonal manifestation of rumination, known as co-rumination, has gained modest attention from organization scholars (Haggard et al., 2018). This is quite surprising, given that co-rumination has been shown to associate with severe work outcomes, such as increased burnout (Boren, 2014) and decreased job satisfaction (Haggard et al., 2011). In addition, with the available research on work-related co-rumination, little is known about the effects of co-rumination on those who listen to the ruminative conversation of their distressed co-worker, despite the recent findings which suggest that co-rumination outcomes vary as a function of whether a person is disclosing or responding in a co-ruminative conversation (Tudder et al., 2023). In response to these shortcomings, this thesis follows an interdisciplinary approach to reviewing the existing literature on rumination in diverse fields (e.g., clinical psychology, developmental psychology and organizational behavior) to come up with a new conceptualization of work-related rumination. In addition, this thesis integrates the different views of rumination to test the differential effects of various forms of work-related rumination on employee well-being.The first project (Chapter 2) represents a conceptual work, in which we aim to bring together two largely separate strands of research on rumination from the organizational behavior and the developmental psychology literatures and to offer a typology for classifying work-related rumination based on the content and context of rumination about work. In the second project (Chapter 3), we investigate four different subtypes of work-related rumination, and we compare how they differentially relate to employee well-being both at work and at home by considering how these subtypes associate with employees’ affect, burnout and work-interference with family. In the third project, we take a novel approach to simultaneously examine the intra- and inter-individual well-being effects that the listener might experience when being exposed to co-rumination conversations.