Gig workers commonly face challenges that differ in nature or intensity from those experienced by traditional organizational workers. To better understand and support gig workers, we sought to develop a measure that reliably and validly assesses these challenges. We first define gig work and specify its core characteristics. We then provide an integrated conceptual framework for a measure of six challenges commonly faced by gig workers—viability, organizational, identity, relational, emotional, and career-path uncertainty. We then present five studies: Item generation in Study 1; item reduction, exploratory assessment of the factor structure of these items, and initial tests of convergent validity in Study 2; and in the remaining three studies, we draw from different gig worker populations to accumulate evidence for the convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity of our gig work challenges inventory, and present initial tests of the universality of the gig challenge inventory across a range of socio-demographic, job type, and regional factors. Our findings establish the reliability and validity of a gig work challenge inventory (GWCI) that can aid researchers seeking to better understand the types and impact of stressors gig workers face, which in turn can help to inform theory, practice, and public policy.
Self-esteem promises to serve as the nexus of social experiences ranging from social acceptance, interpersonal traits, interpersonal behavior, relationship quality, and relationship stability. Yet previous researchers have questioned the utility of self-esteem for understanding relational outcomes. To examine the importance of self-esteem for understanding interpersonal experiences, we conducted systematic meta-analyses on the association between trait self-esteem and five types of interpersonal indicators. To ensure our results were not due to self-esteem biases in perception, we focused our meta-analyses to 196 samples totaling 121,300 participants wherein researchers assessed interpersonal indicators via outsider reports. Results revealed that the association between self-esteem and the majority of objective interpersonal indicators was small to moderate, lowest for specific and distal outcomes, and moderated by social risk. Importantly, a subset of longitudinal studies suggests that self-esteem predicts later interpersonal experience. Our results should encourage researchers to further explore the link between self-esteem and one's interpersonal world.
In this paper, we conceptualize and integrate a measure of political knowledge into the broader literatures on political behaviour, proactivity, and followership. Political knowledge refers to an individual's perceived understanding of the relationships, demands, resources, and preferences of an influential target, such as their leader. We examine political knowledge in the follower–leader context with two studies of employees (Ns = 301 & 492) and two studies of follower–leader pairs (Ns = 187 & 130 dyads). Findings generally support the convergent and discriminant validity of our political knowledge measure. In addition, we find consistent evidence for the mediating role of political knowledge of one's leader in the relationship between follower political skill and political will with self‐reported follower proactive behaviours. Taken together, the results contribute to the political influence framework and offer insight into the importance of ‘knowing your leader’ in enabling followers to engage in politically risky proactivity.
Practitioner points
Political knowledge describes an individual's understanding of specific influential others’ relationships, demands, resources, and preferences.
Followers with political knowledge are more likely to take charge and enact change, which we think is because this knowledge makes enacting change seem less risky.
Leaders seeking to improve their followers’ political knowledge should focus on building high‐quality relationships with followers; these relationships are positively associated with political knowledge.
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