Consequences of work group manpower and expertise understaffing: A multilevel approach.

Abstract

Complaints of chronic understaffing in organizations have become common among workers as employers face increasing pressures to do more with less. Unfortunately, despite its prevalence, there is currently limited research in the literature regarding the nature of workplace understaffing and its consequences. Taking a multilevel approach, this study introduces a new multidimensional conceptualization of subjective work group understaffing, comprising of manpower and expertise understaffing, and examines both its performance and well-being consequences for individual workers (Study 1) and work groups (Study 2). Results show that the relationship between work group understaffing and individual and work group emotional exhaustion is mediated through quantitative workload and role ambiguity for both levels of analysis. Work group understaffing was also related to individual job performance, but not group performance, and this relationship was mediated by role ambiguity. Results were generally similar for the 2 dimensions of understaffing. Implications for theory and research and future research directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

What to do and what works? Exploring how work groups cope with understaffing.

“…Recently, Hudson and Shen (2015) advocated that workplace understaffing be re-conceptualized as a multidimensional construct. In support of their arguments, Hudson and Shen (2018) found that workers and work groups differentiated between manpower understaffing, inability of the work unit to complete its primary tasks and functions due mainly to lack of needed workers, which has been the focus of almost all prior research on understaffing, and expertise understaffing, inability of the work unit to complete its primary tasks and functions due to lack of needed knowledge, skills, or other abilities within the unit.…”

“…Work Group Understaffing. We used Hudson and Shen's (2018) three-item measures of manpower understaffing (α = .90; sample item: "There are not enough employees in our work unit to complete all required job tasks") and expertise understaffing (α = .79; sample item: "Our work unit is missing personnel with key knowledge and skills"). Responses were on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).…”

A multilevel review of stressor research in teams

“…Beyond research showing that the provision of information is helpful in avoiding overload and ambiguity in teams experiencing organizational change (Rafferty & Jimmieson, ), only two studies to date have investigated the antecedents of team‐level stressors by examining the role of team composition in particular. Whereas Hudson and Shen () focused on actual staffing within teams and showed that understaffing influences teams' quantitative and qualitative workload, Keller () examined team composition from a team‐diversity perspective. His research revealed that cross‐functional teams are more stressed than their homogeneous counterparts and that this stress taxes their performance by impairing team cohesiveness, thus pointing to an “identity‐based process” by which team stressors affect team performance.…”

“…This is surprising given that (from a practical perspective) proactively avoiding the surfacing of stressors (i.e., primary intervention; Tetrick & Winslow, ), for which possessing knowledge about their antecedents is crucial, is by far the most valuable and sustainable intervention strategy (LaMontagne, Keegel, Louie, Ostry, & Landsbergis, ). As we pointed out in our literature review, research on the team‐level antecedents of stressors has mainly addressed team composition (Hudson & Shen, ; Keller, ). Although it appears reasonable to investigate the evolution of stressors (on both levels) from such a perspective, we believe that drawing upon and more thoroughly integrating knowledge from research on team diversity (for reviews, please refer to Bell, Villado, Lukasik, Belau, & Briggs, ; van Dijk, van Engen, & van Knippenberg, ) and team faultlines (for reviews, please refer to Meyer, Glenz, Antino, Rico, & González‐Romá, ; Thatcher & Patel, ) constitutes a promising avenue for future research.…”

“…However, like other fields of team research, such as research on group job design (van Mierlo, Vermunt, & Rutte, ) and organizational climate (Wallace et al, ), research on team stressors more frequently uses either direct consensus or referent‐shift consensus approaches to construct team stressors from individual‐level data. In our review, 11 of the studies applied a direct consensus approach (e.g., Hudson & Shen, ; van Emmerik & Peeters, ). When collecting data using this approach, the operationalization of the stressor is referred to team members themselves and is then aggregated to the team level, typically by using the construct's arithmetic mean across all team members once sufficient agreement within the team is reached (i.e., values for r WG exceed.…”