Regulatory focus and work-related outcomes: a review and meta-analysis.

By Klodiana Lanaj, Chu-Hsiang (Daisy) Chang, Russell E. Johnson. Psychological bulletin, 2012

655 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) has received growing attention in organizational psychology, necessitating a quantitative review that synthesizes its effects on important criteria. In addition, there is need for theoretical integration of regulatory focus theory with personality research. Theoretical integration is particularly relevant, since personality traits and dispositions are distal factors that are unlikely to have direct effects on work behaviors, yet they may have indirect effects via regulatory focus. The current meta-analysis introduces an integrative framework in which the effects of personality on work behaviors are best understood when considered in conjunction with more proximal motivational processes such as regulatory focus. Using a distal-proximal approach, we identify personality antecedents and work-related consequences of regulatory foci in a framework that considers both general and work-specific regulatory foci as proximal motivational processes. We present meta-analytic results for relations of regulatory focus with its antecedents (approach and avoid temperaments, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy) and its consequences (work behaviors and attitudes). In addition to estimates of bivariate relationships, we support a meta-analytic path model in which distal personality traits relate to work behaviors via the mediating effects of general and work-specific regulatory focus. Results from tests of incremental and relative validity indicated that regulatory foci predict unique variance in work behaviors after controlling for established personality, motivation, and attitudinal predictors. Consistent with regulatory focus theory and our integrative theoretical framework, regulatory focus has meaningful relations with work outcomes and is not redundant with other individual difference variables.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/026958ec46b55d77cf447ef429e67d048eb0c226

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Citations in the corpus

A Multilevel Model of Employee Innovation (2016, background): “Prior research supports a positive relationship between promotion focus and innovation and a negative relationship between prevention focus and innovation (cf. Lanaj et al., 2012).”
Core Self-Evaluations and Employee Voice Behavior (2017, background): “Furthermore, such individuals may have internalized organizational behavioral expectations and are therefore unlikely to challenge the status quo (Lanaj et al., 2012).”
Does Leader-Follower Regulatory Fit Matter? The Role of Regulatory Fit in Followers’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior (2017, background): “Lanaj et al. (2012) acknowledged the investigation of broadly defined OCB as one of their study limitations and called for future research that examines regulatory focus and different forms of OCB.”
The Influence of Ethical Leadership and Regulatory Focus on Employee Outcomes (2013, background): “Previous research indicated that conscientiousness also is associated with both mindsets (Lanaj et al., 2012; Wallace & Chen, 2006).”
A Review of Multilevel Regulatory Focus in Organizations (2015, background): “A holistic review of regulatory focus is unwieldy because of the breadth of topics that have been researched, so we leave the review of personality and work outcomes to recent meta-analyses (Gorman et al., 2012; Lanaj et al., 2012).”
Regulatory focus as a psychological micro-foundation of leaders' exploration and exploitation activities (2015, background): “The combination of an individual’s chronic regulatory focus and the enduring situational or contextual effects of a workplace is called the ‘work - specific regulatory focus’ of the individual ( e.g., Lanaj et al., 2012; Wallace et al., 2009).”