No abstract

Ackerman (2023) proposed incorporating a more comprehensive range of knowledge and skills into the conceptualization and operationalization of intelligence beyond traditional assessments. In agreeing with and extending this proposition, the current commentary focuses on the specific context of workforce development and highlights three critical considerations: (a) the development of knowledge and skills at different life stages of education and work, (b) the role of social contexts in knowledge and skill acquisition, and (c) quantitative and qualitative approaches to understanding and assessing a broader set of knowledge and skills in light of ongoing changes in the workplace. Overall, we encourage greater research investment in understanding critical educational, organizational, and policy issues pertaining to the future of work.

Numerous organizational scandals have implicated leaders in encouraging employees to advance organizational objectives through unethical means. However, leadership research has not examined leaders’ encouragement of unethical behaviors. We define leader immorality encouragement (LIE) as an employee's perception that their leader encourages unethical behaviors on behalf of the organization. Across four studies, we found, as hypothesized, that (1) LIE promotes employees’ unethical behavior carried out with the intention to aid the organization (unethical pro-organizational behavior); (2) this relationship is mediated by employees’ moral disengagement and the expectation of rewards; (3) LIE, via moral disengagement, enhances employees’ self-serving unethical behavior; and (4) the relationship between LIE and unethical behavior is stronger when the leader has a higher quality exchange relationship with the employee and is perceived by the employee as having higher organizational status. Our set of findings contributes to an understanding of leaders’ attempts to further organization objectives by encouraging the unethical behavior of subordinates.

Over the past half-century, Holland’s RIASEC model has dominated vocational interest research. Although the RIASEC categories effectively capture general occupational domains, their breadth obscures meaningful variability across underlying basic interests. In this research, we adapted the Comprehensive Assessment of Basic Interests (CABIN; Su et al., 2019) to be used alongside O*NET for assessing interest fit, resulting in the 60-item CABIN-NET that measures 20 basic interest scales nested within RIASEC domains. To construct the CABIN-NET, we selected basic interest scales central to the broader RIASEC types, then connected each scale to an O*NET knowledge variable. In Study 1, we refined items for the CABIN-NET using a nationally representative adult sample (N = 768). In Studies 2 and 3, we collected extensive reliability and validity evidence using longitudinal samples of graduates from four-year universities (N = 816) and community colleges (N = 560). Across samples, results consistently showed that basic interest fit had stronger predictive power for career outcomes compared to RIASEC interest fit, highlighting the CABIN-NET’s utility in research and applied settings. Overall, the CABIN-NET provides a short, reliable measure of both basic interests and RIASEC interests, offering two ways of objectively assessing person-occupation interest fit. The CABIN-NET also advances interest measurement by providing a standardized, hierarchical structure for grouping basic interests into RIASEC types, balancing bandwidth and fidelity.

Mindfulness has recently gained popularity in applied settings to enhance workplace safety, especially in safety‐critical occupations such as healthcare and construction. In this review, we synthesize existing research across disciplines to establish a theoretical model of mindfulness and safety. Based on 32 empirical studies, we first summarize and critically analyze how mindfulness and safety are conceptualized and operationalized in the literature. We then consolidate empirical findings and conceptual arguments and draw upon the job demands–resources model to propose a theoretical model linking the basic benefits of mindfulness to safety‐related job demands. Specifically, we propose that mindfulness (a) improves detection of and responses to workplace risks and hazards, (b) enhances concentration and self‐monitoring of safety behaviors in cognitively demanding situations, and (c) facilitates more adaptive responses to emotional burdens. We further propose that the mindfulness–safety link can vary across boundary conditions, including personal and contextual characteristics. Our theoretical model serves as a foundation to integrate existing knowledge and guide future research. We conclude by highlighting specific opportunities for researchers and practitioners to advance research and applications of mindfulness and workplace safety.