Kahn (1990)_psychological Conditions Of Personal Engagement And Disengagement At Work 2b1lc

Dimensions of Psychological Conditions

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Meaningfulness

Safety

Availability

Definition

Sense of return on investments of self in role performances.

Experiential components

Feel worthwhile, valued, valuable; feel able to give to and receive from work and others in course of work. Work elements that create incentives or disincentives for investments of self.

Sense of being able to show and employ self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career. Feel situations are trustworthy, secure, predictable, and clear in of behavioral consequences.

Sense of possessing the physical, emotional, and psychological resources necessary for investing self in role performances. Feel capable of driving physical, intellectual, and emotional energies into role performance.

Elements of social systems that create situations that are more or less predictable, consistent, and nonthreatening. Interpersonal relationships: Ongoing relationships that offer more or less , trust, openness, flexibility. and lack of threat. Group and intergroup dynamics: Informal, often unconscious roles that leave more or less room to safely express various parts of self; shaped by dynamics within and between groups in organizations. Management style and process: Leader behaviors that show more or less , resilience, consistency, trust, and competence. Organizational norms: Shared system expectations about member behaviors and emotions that leave more or less room for investments of self during role performances.

Individual distractions that are more or less preoccupying in role performance situations.

Dimensions

Types of influence

Influences

Tasks: Jobs involving more or less challenge, variety, creativity, autonomy, and clear delineation of procedures and goals. Roles: Formal positions that offer more or less attractive identities, through fit with a preferred self-image, and status and influence. Work interactions: Interpersonal interactions with more or less promotion of dignity, self-appreciation, sense of value, and the inclusion of personal as well as professional elements.

Physical energies: Existing levels of physical resources available for investment into role performances. Emotional energies: Existing levels of emotional resources available for investment into role performances. Insecurity: Levels of confidence in own abilities and status, self-consciousness, and ambivalence about fit with social systems that leave more or less room for investments of self in role performances. Outside life: Issues in people's outside lives that leave them more or less available for investments of self during role performances.

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Meaningful tasks also allowed for some autonomy and the resulting sense of ownership over the work that previous research has noted (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). Such tasks were neither so tightly linked to nor so controlled by others that people performing them needed to constantly look for direction. Finally, the goals of potentially meaningful tasks were clear, allowing a good chance for success (ef. Locke, 1968). Clear goals were not always present in the architecture firm, where the ambiguity of the creative process was exacerbated by a president who would, in the words of one interviewee, offer "scribbles, bubbles, and waves" in design sketches and walk away, leaving behind more uncertainty than clarity. Role characteristics. The data indicated two components of work roles that influenced the experience of psychological meaningfulness. First, roles carried identities that organization were implicitly required to assume. Organization could like or dislike those identities and the stances toward others they required; they typically did so on the basis of how well the roles fit how they saw or wanted to see their selves (Goffman, 1961a; Hochschild, 1983). At the camp, counselors both taught the campers, which required trust, and policed them, which required distrust. Counselors usually found one or the other identity-teacher or policeman-more meaningful, although at times they were frustrated by the paradox of needing to be both and found neither meaningful. In the architecture firm, there were also various identities that hooked into psychologically to different degrees: designer, decision maker, and with clients, collaborator or competitor. Comments from the firm's receptionist illustrated the unattractiveness of her work role: The role I'm required to perform, sitting up here in front and smiling and typing and being friendly ... it's all bullshit, it's just a role, and there isn't any satisfaction in it for me. I'm more than that, and I want to be seen as a person apart from the work I do. This eight or nine hours is a waste, damaging, I think, to my own growth and what I think about myself.

Roles also carried status, or influence. When people were able to wield influence, occupy valuable positions in their systems, and gain desirable status, they experienced a sense of meaningfulness. The underlying dimension was power and what it bought: influence, and a sense of being valued, valuable, and needed. People search for ways to feel important and special, particularly since they generally feel powerless in the world as a whole (Lasch, 1984). In these organizations, roles that allowed people to have a sense of shaping the external world, whether in the form of kids' experiences or concrete buildings, offered a sense of meaningfulness. As one draftsperson put it, "It's amazing for me to walk through a building and see this front entry vestibule or this stairwell, and like see me, see that I had an impact." A scuba counselor measured his influence differently:

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I have a lot of kids who ask for me as their instructor, who come up and tell me that they don't like the other instructors and want to be with me. They feel open about separating us. It's not great that that happens, but it's very gratifying for me. Role status was important partly as an indicator to people about how central to and needed in their organizations they were. Particular activities at both organizations were less central than others and widely perceived as such, and people performing those tasks were susceptible to feeling unimportant-particularly if others treated them as unimportant. A counselor in charge of an unpopular program remarked, "I don't have my special place; I'm just not special here to the kids." A staff member at the firm noted that although his job was essential if others were to do their work, "It's treated as meaningless." Roles perceived as unimportant in an organizational constellation lacked the power to offer their occupants a sense of meaningfulness. Work interactions. People also experienced psychological meaningfulness when their task performances included rewarding interpersonal interactions with co-workers and clients. In the two studies, meaningful interactions promoted dignity, self-appreciation, and a sense of worthwhileness. They enabled relationships in which people wanted to give to and receive from others. As an architect noted, I would say that my involvement comes from individuals. It's an

immediate, initial thing that happens, a connection that I make each time when I work with someone with whom I find some common ground, some shared ways of thinking about things. If I don't have that connection, it's tough for me to get going working with them. Such connections are an invaluable source of meaning in people's lives because they meet relatedness needs (Alderfer, 1972): they allow people to feel known and appreciated and that they are sharing their existential journeys with others (May et aI., 1958). Meaningful interactions in the two settings often involved both personal and professional elements and a looseness of the boundaries separating the two. For the counselors, this meant interacting with other staff not simply as co-workers but as cohorts. The image that some counselors invoked was of a platoon in which individuals thrown together under extraordinary circumstances develop emotional bonds transcending the relative superficiality of the connections between typical co-workers. At the architecture firm, meaningfulness also came from interpersonal connections that to some degree tapped people's emotional lives. That tapping occurred when people felt as if they fit in some way with those with whom they interacted and when people treated one another not as role occupants but as people who happened to occupy roles (Hochschild, 1983). The distinction was important to how much dignity and self-esteem people felt at work. Interactions with clients, whether campers or builders, were sources of


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both gratification and frustration. Meaningful interactions allowed people to feel valuable and valued. They involved mutual appreciation, respect, and positive . Client interactions reduced the sense of meaningfulness when they blocked the interpersonal connections allowing people to perform and enjoy their jobs. Camp counselors found meaningfulness diminished when the campers communicated a lack of care, respect, or appreciation for the counselors' work. As one counselor noted, "It's a question of whether they tap into me or not; you put the energy where it will be appreciated." Similarly, architectural clients who did not allow firm to do the jobs for which they were trained or did not appreciate their efforts created relationships devoid of respect and meaningfulness. Organization preferred to be psychologically absent in such relationships.

Psychological Safety Psychological safety was experienced as feeling able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career. People felt safe in situations in which they trusted that they would not suffer for their personal engagement. This association reflects a tenet of clinical work stating that therapeutic relationships (Sandler, 1960), families (Minuchin, 1974), groups (Smith & Berg, 1987), and organizations (Schein, 1987) create contexts in which people feel more or less safe in taking the risks of self-expression and engaging the processes of change. In the two studies, situations promoting trust were predictable, consistent, clear, and nonthreatening; people were able to understand the boundaries between what was allowed and disallowed and the potential consequences of their behaviors. When situations were unclear, inconsistent, unpredictable, or threatening, personal engagement was deemed too risky or unsafe. The general link between personal engagement and psychological safety was explored with descriptive statistics derived from the ratings of the group of 186 experiences. The statistics indicated that personal engagement was connected to higher levels of psychological safety (x = 7.7, s.d. = 1.21) than personal disengagement (x = 3.77, s.d. = 1.6; r = .83). These results suggest that people were personally engaging in situations characterized by more psychological safety than those in which they were personally disengaging. The data indicated that four factors most directly influenced psychological safety: interpersonal relationships, group and intergroup dynamics, management style and process, and organizational norms. Interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal relationships promoted psychological safety when they were ive and trusting. Such relationships had a flexibility that allowed people to try and perhaps to fail without fearing the consequences. At the architecture firm, such relations were those in which shared ideas and concepts about designs without feeling that it was dangerous to do so; they felt that any criticism would be constructive rather than destructive. At the camp, safe relationships were those enabling counselors to teach, shepherd, and discipline campers as they


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thought best without needing to attend to other counselors' reactions. One counselor described that process: It's great to teach with John. Either one of us can make a mistake and back each other up and it's not an ego problem. If I make a mistake he'll corne in and without saying you just made a mistake note that it can also be done another way. We playoff one another that way instead of clashing, and it lets me teach my own way.

People felt safer in climates characterized by such openness (Jourard, 1968) and iveness (Gibb, 1961). People did not feel such safety when they felt disconnected from others. A staff member at the architecture firm noted of one designer that "with a glance he became a door; he put up this 'don't bother me' sign around him." Crossing such boundaries was perceived as unsafe. The staff member describing this relationship continued: When he puts up those walls, I know to stay away from him. But the problem is, I have to deal with him at some of those times. So we interact, but I keep it short, don't joke or anything. I did once and he went nuts. So I get monotonic, almost moronic, with him.

In such instances, threat reflects differences in position and power. Participants experienced relations among people representing different hierarchical echelons as potentially more stifling and threatening than relations with peers. Threats could be quite real. In the firm, superiors could deeply change or even end a subordinate's role. As one draftsperson noted, I'm pretty careful around Steve [a vice president]. after he instilled a bit of fear in me. I'm minding my Ps and Qs. There's a testiness in his voice to me at times, and I have the sense that we're not communicating well. Because I'm in a very precarious position, I need to defer until I can figure out some better way of responding to him and working with him.

People were quicker to withdraw from potential conflict with of higher echelons than they were to withdraw from conflicts with of their own echelon. Group and intergroup dynamics. The various unacknowledged characters, or unconscious roles, that individuals assumed also influenced psychological safety. Group dynamics were defined according to the unconscious plays that characterize the more conscious workings of organizations (Bion, 1961; Hirschhorn, 1988; Slater, 1966). Social systems have a mentality beyond the mentalities of individual , connecting them by processes of unconscious alliance and collusion (Wells, 1980). In the context of a work group, collude to act out plays that allay anxieties, conscious and unconscious. Such plays revolve, for example, around plots dealing with authority, competition, or sexuality and depend on organization to


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play informal, unconscious roles. Once cast into these roles, people vary in how much room they have to safely bring their selves into work role performances (Minuchin, 1974). In the two settings studied, different implicit roles were more or less safe or unsafe havens from which people could personally engage depending on how much respect and authority those roles received. In the architecture firm, for example, a group dynamic cast the firm's president as a father figure. Participating in the play that the image implied, other took ing roles whose status, power, and safety varied according to their proximity to the "father." The data revealed, for example, two firm who occupied "mother" and "favored son" characters in their own and others' eyes, which created spaces in which they could safely personally engage. They referred to those roles in these comments: It's a family situation here, and I have a blind loyalty to him [E.S.B.I. I am a mother. I am the mother, here, which is hard sometimes, but it lets me interact with him and with others pretty much as I want to, within limits. I tend to be seen as the next generation of designers that he lays

out. My designs aren't questioned as much as those of others, and I think it's because I'm seen as following his tradition but in my own way.

The firm's gofer emerged as the "bad son": he wore earrings, cracked jokes, dyed his hair red, and was seldom able to engage. He was frustrated with his inability to escape from the informal role in which he was cast-with his participation-and from which he found other parts of his self, such as the artist, excluded. In the same way, some counselors found themselves relegated to unattractive, ing roles that reduced opportunities to safely engage. The informal characters that people played partly reflected the identity and organizational groups they consciously and unconsciously represented to one another (Alderfer, 1985a). representing less powerful groups are often cast into unattractive, vulnerable roles, particularly in interactions with representing more powerful groups (Miller, 1976; Smith, 1982). In both organizations, women spoke of situations in which it felt unsafe for them to personally engage because of what they experienced as men's undermining their role performances. One female counselor gave an example: There are times when I'm trying to get a girl camper to go to bed, and some male counselor starts flirting with the girl. It makes me look bad and undermines me incredibly. So I have to be 'the bitch.' If I didn't, and just dealt with the kids as I'd like to, they'd just hassle me and not listen to me.

Similar dynamics characterized relations between organizational subgroups. At the architecture firm, for example, people experienced differences along


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the dimension of tenure at the firm. New and old tended to define situations involving of the other category as less safe, as the remarks of one old member illustrated: I feel like there's a handful of us that are the old guard, and the rest are brand new. Those of us that have been here a long time have a different kind of relationship with each other than those that are just right off the street. We know each other so well, so we can be silly with one another. I am less likely to be as loose or candid with the new people as I am with the older ones.

A similar split occurred between counselors associated with the different activities. Counselors who taught different skills were accorded different status by the campers, the management, and even one another, and an informal hierarchy was established. Scuba instructors, for example, occupied the top of the hierarchy due to the perceived glamor and professionalization of their sport, and activities like drama and photography occupied the bottom, reflecting the campers' relative disinterest in them. The hierarchy influenced the psychological safety the counselors felt. A waterskiing counselor, for example, said she was interrupted and publicly corrected at a camp meeting by a scuba instructor as she described the internationally recognized distress signal: I felt like a total jerk out there in front of everyone, and angry at him for doing that. I was still right-but I backed down, assuming that he knew more about it because he was certified and all that. They're intimidating sometimes, so I just don't want to hassle with them.

The lack of psychological safety in such situations and the resulting suppression of individuals' voices reflects the distribution of authority and power among groups in organizations (Alderfer, 1985a). Management style and process. ive, resilient, and clarifying management heightened psychological safety. Leaders translate system demands and reinforce ' behaviors in ways that may create different degrees of iveness and openness (Louis, 1986). Like ive interpersonal relationships, ive managerial environments allowed people to try and to fail without fear of the consequences. In practice, this meant opportunities to experiment with new design techniques in the firm or new teaching methods at the camp. People also felt safer when they had some control over their work. Managerial reluctance to loosen their control sent a message that their employees were not to be trusted and should fear overstepping their boundaries. That fear was compounded when managers were unpredictable, inconsistent, or hypocritical. An architect offered an example of such inconsistency, He [E.S.B.] goes over my head all the time. He'll tell me to do one thing, and I'll take care of it-like with a client or a design-and


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then he'll go and change it himself. It's like he goes over his own head-it's hilarious. Like if he had the time, he'd come over and redesign anything, even while it's being built. Crazy.

At such times, it was difficult for people in both organizations to trust the constancy of their task assignments or the control given them. It was hard to feel safe enough to invest their selves at work in anyone direction. People need to feel that their authority figures are competent enough and secure enough in their own visions to create paths along which subordinates can safely travel (Kahn, 1990). ' perceived lack of safety also reflected their discomfort with the "tones" of management. In the architecture firm, some had difficulty with how management dealt with firm during office meetings: I've come away from those meetings feeling like I can ask a question as long as it's not threatening or it's a simple technical question about how the firm works. Impertinent questions will not be tolerated and are palmed off with a sarcastic responseeven though they say we can ask anything.

The ambivalence with which the firm's management simultaneously welcomed and avoided openness sent mixed and thus distrusted messages to firm . At the camp, the tone the director set was at times similarly undermining. He occasionally took a cruel tone with the campers, and counselors observing such behavior could not help but learn the lesson taught the campers: that at times the camp was not a safe, ive, caring system in which to be a member. One counselor directly expressed this when she said, "After seeing how Kurt rips into some of these kids, I'm pretty careful about not saying much when he's around. I just don't trust the guy." People's discomfort with the security of a managerial environment at times set limits on how safe they felt in employing and expressing their selves. Organizational norms. Finally, psychological safety corresponded to role performances that were clearly within the boundaries of organizational norms. Norms are shared expectations about the general behaviors of system (Hackman, 1986). People that stayed within generally appropriate ways of working and behaving felt safer than those who strayed outside those protective boundaries. In this regard, safety meant not calling into question habitual patterns of thought and behavior that ensured predictability; questioning such patterns meant being treated as a deviant (Shorris, 1981). At the camp, safety was a matter of counselors' exerting appropriate amounts of energy in different activities and being appropriately trusting or mistrusting of campers. In the architecture firm, the important norms revolved around how much time and energy to give to certain projects, how candid or withholding to be in giving and criticism, and how confrontational or reticent to be with clients.


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Deviating from norms and the possibility of doing so were sources of anxiety and frustration, particularly for people with low status and leverage, as deviance is in most social systems. In the architecture firm, such norms were encoded into the design parameters the president set, which were known and reinforced throughout the firm. People reined themselves in or were reined in to conform with established parameters. A draftsperson described that process: How bold you're being creates a certain amount of anxiety. If you're doing something that is somewhat removed from the parameters that you think or suspect you're supposed to be working from, you get a little nervous. When that happens, I hunt around for someone to tell me what he lE.S.B.) would like. Or someone will come around and say no, he would never go for that. That's the bottom line.

In such moments, people focus almost exclusively on the external rules or cues governing the situation that will lead them through potentially dangerous thickets (Goffman, 1959). The analogous situation at the camp involved the extent to which counselors were encouraged to trust campers. A number of counselors described situations in which they were trying to, as one noted, "give the kids a break," but were countermanded by other staff . Recalling such an incident, a counselor remarked that he "just stopped trying to trust the kids because it was more hassle than it was worth-it's easier to be the hardass, like the camp wants me to be." Norms regulate emotional as well as physical labor (Hochschild, 1983). In the architecture firm, the physical office space starkly symbolized the ways that overstepping the boundaries of expected behavior felt unsafe. Wide open and without walls except for four-foot partitions, the office resembled an open-air maze of public work spaces. There was also a loft that looked like a balcony. The space suggested that people were at once actors and audience. Its openness symbolically placed them on a stage in which they were constantly exposed to the scrutiny of others. There was no backstage, no place in which they could doff all vestiges of role and use their own voices (Goffman, 1961b). The camp counselors similarly occupied a stage, playing to the camper audience. Openness came from the intimacy of a small, enclosed system in which there were no secrets. The implications for the use of personal voice were the same as in the architecture firm. As a counselor noted, "So many times you'd love to share something with another counselor, something you saw going on, but for whatever reason, you just can't say it because you know it'll get around." In contexts defined by a lack of protective boundaries, people chose to guard their selves by withdrawing when they felt unsafe. In the absence of external boundaries between self and others, people withdrew as a way of creating internal boundaries (Hirschhorn, 1988).


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Psychological Availability Psychological availability is the sense of having the physical, emotional, or psychological resources to personally engage at a particular moment. It measures how ready people are to engage, given the distractions they experience as of social systems. In this study, people were more or less available to place their selves fully into role performances depending on how they coped with the various demands of both work and nonwork aspects of their lives. Research on stress (e.g., Pearlin, 1983) has often included a measure of self-assessment of ability to engage in coping strategies. Such components implicitly measure psychological availability. The general link between personal engagement and psychological availability was explored with descriptive statistics performed on the ratings of the group of 186 experiences. The statistics indicated that personal engagement was connected to higher levels of psychological availability (x = 7.48, s.d. = 1.04) than personal disengagement (x = 3.27, s.d. = 1.56; r = .81). These results suggest that people were personally engaging in situations for which they were more psychologically available and disengaging in situations for which they were less available. 5 The data from the two studies indicated that four types of distractions influenced psychological availability: depletion of physical energy, depletion of emotional energy, individual insecurity, and outside lives. Physical energy. Personal engagement demanded levels of physical energy, strength, and readiness that personal disengagement did not, as Goffman (1961a) suggested in his studies of nonverbal role performances. This requirement was clear in moments of personal disengagement in which people were simply depleted. The camp counselor role was physically demanding, given the strength of the sun on the island and the campers' unbounded energy. As one counselor said, ''I'm not used to being out in the sun. For the first two weeks I took a nap every afternoon, but I was still physically blown away. I just couldn't be up with the kids the way I wanted because I was just too zonked." Physical incapacity was less common in the architecture firm, but it did occur after long hours at a drafting table. A draftsperson described such incapacity: Doing any of these tasks here means sitting down for eight hours. You're sitting down doing these very precise drawings. Your back is bent over, you're staring. Your back, your neck, your

5 The similarity of the patterns of rating scale results for the three psychological conditions raised questions about the extent to which they were conceptually distinguishable. I therefore examined the correlations among the three conditions using the ratings of the 186 examples of personal engagement and disengagement experiences. The correlations were: meaningfulness and safety, .32; meaningfulness and availability, .42; and safety and availability, .57.


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eyes-you feel physically awful and mentally exhausted, and all you think about is going home.

At such times, people were simply worn out and unavailable to engage. Emotional energy. Emotional ability to personally engage also influenced psychological availability. The premise is that employing and expressing the self in tasks requiring emotional labor takes a certain level of emotionality that personally disengaging does not (Hochschild, 1983). In the firm, the frustrations of trying to translate abstract design concepts into working drawings and building specifications were emotionally draining. An architect described such a situation: It's a combination of not knowing what the answer is and trying different solutions and being totally frustrated and exhausted, so you just pull out of it. [ spent a few days working out one design problem and was never satisfied with what [ was coming up with. I just got worn down, got more and more distracted. I walked away from it, my mind was a mess. I just couldn't do it anymore.

At the camp, the unceasing demands of the campers for attention were emotionally draining. A counselor noted, The kids just take it out of you after a while, and you've given them everything you have emotionally. Sometimes [just need to get away and have no demands on me to watch, to care, to give. I take walks then, down by the beach, and try to think and feel nothing.

At some point, people simply had nothing left to give and withdrew. People needed emotional resources to meet the demands of personal engagement. Insecurity. Psychological availability also corresponded to how secure people felt about their work and their status. For individuals to express their selves in social systems, they must feel relatively secure about those selves (Gustafson & Cooper, 1985). Insecurity distracted from bringing their selves into their work; it generated anxiety that occupied energies that would have otherwise been translated into personal engagements. One dimension of insecurity was lack of self-confidence, a particular issue for new, low-status of both organizations. A new draftsperson voiced that insecurity: I was somewhat anxious about how the speed and quality of my work was comparing to other people at my level in the office. Was I doing it fast enough, was I doing it right enough? I think about that, being here only three months. Are they going to keep me, or throw me back because I'm too small? So at times I tend to worry more about how my work is going to be received than about the work itself.

Counselors withdrew from performing their roles as they would have liked


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when they did not "want to step out of place," as one counselor said, or, as another said, they were "not sure about how much to put into the camp all the time." Being available was partly a matter of security in abilities and status and maintaining a focus on tasks rather than anxieties. A second dimension of insecurity was heightened self-consciousness. When organization focused on how others perceived and judged them-whether or not such judgment actually occurred-they were too distracted to personally engage. They would focus on external rather than internal cues (Goffman, 1959). This happened when people perceived themselves, consciously or not, as actors on stages, surrounded by audiences and critics, rather than as people simply doing their jobs. The self-consciousness preoccupied people, engaging them in the work of managing impressions rather than in the work itself. A designer offered an example of such preoccupation: I have to appear concerned and eager to work. I am a lot of times, but if you're not concentrating on showing that, people can get the wrong impression. Communicating with people means figuring out the best way to respond to certain situations. Just thinking: What are my communications like with this person now, who can I joke with and to what extent, and who shouldn't I joke with?

The stage-like quality of the two organizations exacerbated such selfconsciousness. In the architecture firm, the physical space markedly resembled an open stage, complete with balcony; in the camp, the counselors were always performing for the camper audience. A third dimension of insecurity was people's ambivalence about their fit with their organization and its purposes. This ambivalence could preoccupy people, leaving them little space, energy, or desire to employ or express themselves in moments of task performances. Their lack of commitment to the rather wealthy campers distracted some counselors at times. Firm sometimes struggled with their commitment to the overall tenor of the design parameters and style set by the president, which one designer characterized as "blatant post-modernism." People struggling with their desires to contribute to the end goals of their systems became less able or willingless available-to do so. It is difficult for people to engage personally in fulfilling work processes when organizational ends do not fit their own values, as research on organizational commitment has suggested (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). In dealing with such issues, people were already engaged in inner debates that spared little room for external engagements. Outside life. People's outside lives, which had the potential to take them psychologically away from their role performances, also influenced psychological availability. of both organizations were at times too preoccupied by events in their nonwork lives to invest energies in role performances; research on work-family boundaries has attested to such distraction (Hall & Richter, 1989). Counselors involved with other counselors were dis-


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tracted by those relationships; a counselor who taught sailing and was in an intimate relationship with another counselor noted, "I've been coasting a lot with the kids-my energy is just in other places right now." A variety of personal distractions similarly incapacitated of the architecture firm. A draftsperson applying to architecture schools noted, "I just don't concentrate as well because I'm thinking about that whole process." People's outside lives could increase their availability. At times, events in their nonwork lives "charged" organization . A camp counselor referred to how his "emotional high" from meeting a woman at an island casino gave him "amazing amounts of energy to spend with the kids." A draftsperson talked about feeling confident about making a presentation because of recent successes as a graphic artist. In such cases, the looseness of the boundaries separating work and nonwork let people draw on energies generated outside their formal roles. DISCUSSION

The grounded theory described here cuts across a number of different existing conceptual frameworks to articulate the complex of influences on people's personal engagements and disengagements in particular moments of role performances. Besides its concern with specific moments of role performances, the resulting framework has a core focus different from others currently used to explain person-role relationships. This core has a number of key dimensions: a simultaneous concern with people's emotional reactions to conscious and unconscious phenomena and the objective properties of jobs, roles, and work contexts; the primacy of people's experiences of themselves and their contexts as the mediator of the depths to which they employ and express or withdraw and defend themselves during role performances; and the self-in-role as the unit of analysis, a focus on how both person and role are enlivened or deadened during role performances. The research described here articulated and defined these dimensions in the service of moving toward a theory of people's psychological presence and absence at work. Directions for Future Research

The grounded theory described here carries with it implications for future research that will extend its conceptual dimensions and usefulness for practice. An immediate research agenda involves three arenas: the interplay of the three psychological conditions; individual differences; and the connections of personal engagement and disengagement to concepts currently used to explore person-role relationships. Interplay of psychological conditions. A primary aim of future research might be to develop a dynamic process model explaining how the variables documented above combine to produce moments of personal engagement


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and disengagement. This exploratory research suggests that people tacitly deal with multiple levels of influences-individual, interpersonal, group, intergroup, and organizational-by examining them, at varying degrees of awareness, for what they imply about the meaningfulness, safety, and availability that characterize role performance situations. The question remains, How do the three conditions combine in particular situations to promote personal engagement or disengagement? It seems likely that there are thresholds separating the levels of the three conditions that, taken together, promote personal engagement rather than disengagement. But how do those conditions coact to let people reach those thresholds? The coaction may be additive and compensatory: with the three conditions summed together, the strength of one may compensate for the weakness of others. Or it may involve a specific hierarchy: a person's experiencing a situation as extremely meaningful may compensate for a lack of personal availability, but the reverse may not be true. The coaction may also involve thresholds for each condition. People may have to feel minimal levels of meaningfulness, safety, and availability before their additive interplay can lead them across the threshold separating personal engagement from disengagement. Such questions, answered both qualitatively and quantitatively in future research, will offer a richer portrait of the processes by which personal engagements and disengagements are created. Individual differences. The focus of this research was identifying psychological conditions general enough to explain moments of personal engagement and disengagement across individuals. Yet presumably, individual differences shape people's dispositions toward personally engaging or disengaging in all or some types of role performances, just as they shape people's abilities and willingness to be involved or committed at work. Presumably, too, individual differences influence how people personally engage or disengage, given their experiences of psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability in specific situations. Consider, for example, people who experience particular situations as unsafe. Although certain dispositional factors may lead someone to perceive a situation as unsafe, it is intriguing to think about the individual differences that shape what people do when they feel unsafe. Future research will focus on the courage that enables people to take the risk of employing and expressing their personal selves when it feels threatening to do so. Charting the role of courage is another dimension of developing a process model of personal engagement and disengagement. Conceptual connections. Another direction for future research involves connecting personal engagement and disengagement to existing concepts focusing on person-role relationships. Initially, this article suggested that although concepts such as involvement and commitment reflect average orientations over time as if in a still photograph, personal engagement and disengagement reveal the variance typically hidden in those averages. Regardless of levels of involvement and commitment, people still experience


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leaps (engagement) and falls (disengagement). Future research will focus on examining both quantitatively and qualitatively the connections between the relatively static levels of people's involvement and commitment and the constant fluctuations of self-in-role. The variance that these new concepts reveal derives from the different depths of people's selves that they bring to or leave out of their role performances. In this article, I have emphasized people's expressions, employments, withdrawals, and defenses of their personal selves as the mechanisms by which they connect their depths to role performances. Future research might focus more closely on those depths and how they are plumbed in the course of role performances. Here, I have drawn little distinction between the physical, cognitive, and emotional paths along which people personally engage and disengage. It is likely, however, that a hierarchy relates increasing depths of engagement to the investment of self along physical, then cognitive, and finally emotional dimensions. Kelman (1958) postulated a similar hierarchy of dimensions regarding people's compliance with, identification with, and internalization of attitudes. Exploring that proposition further will help articulate distinguishable levels of personal engagement and disengagement and offer a way to understand the complexities of possible mixtures of personal engagement and disengagement. An individual might, for example, express and defend, or employ and withdraw simultaneously. Conclusions The conceptual model developed in this research has a number of components, some better developed than others. I deliberately included a wide range of factors in the model, taking seriously the multiple levels of influences-individual, interpersonal, group, intergroup, and organizationalthat shape people's personal engagements and disengagements. It is at the swirling intersection of those influences that individuals make choices, at different levels of awareness, to employ and express or withdraw and defend themselves during role performances. The research approach taken here was to focus on the discrete moments of role performances that represent microcosms of the larger complexity; those moments are windows into the multiplicity of factors that are constantly relevant to person-role dynamics. Focusing on specific moments of work role performance is like using the zoom lens of a camera: a distant stationary image is brought close and revealed as a series of innumerable leaps of engagement and falls of disengagement. REFERENCES Alderfer, C. P. 1972. Human needs in organizational settings. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Alderfer, C. P. 1985a. An intergroup perspective on group dynamics. In J. Lorsch (Ed.), Handbook of organizational behavior. 190-222. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Alderfer, C. P. 1985b. Taking our selves seriously as researchers. In D. N. Berg & K. K. Smith


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(Eds.), Exploring clinical methods for social research: 35-70. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. Argyris, C. 1982. Reasoning, learning, and action: Individual and organizational. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Baxter, B. 1982. Alienation and authenticity. London: Tavistock Publications. Bennis, W., Schein, E. H., Berlew, D. E., & Steele, F.1. 1964. Interpersonal dynamics: Essays and readings on human interaction. Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press. Berg, D. N. 1980. Developing clinical field skills: An apprenticeship model. In C. P. Alderfer & C.1. Cooper (Eds.). Advances in experiential social processes, vol. 2: 143-163. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Berg, D. N., & Smith, K. K. 1985. Exploring clinical methods for social research. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. Bion, W. R. 1961. Experiences in groups. New York: Basic Books. Blau, G. J., & Boal, K. B. 1987. Conceptualizing how job involvement and organizational commitment affect turnover and absenteeism. Academy of Management Review, 12: 288-300. Blauner, R. 1964. Alienation and freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1982. Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Deci, E. 1. 1975. Intrinsic motivation. New York: Plenum Press. de Rivera, J. 1981. Conceptual encoanter: A method for the exploration of human experience. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America. Diamond, M. A., & Allcorn, S. 1985. Psychological dimensions of role use in bureaucratic organizations. Organizational Dynamics, 14(1): 35-59. Dubin, R. 1956. Industrial workers' worlds: A study of the "central life interests" of industrial workers. Social Problems, 3: 131-142. Freud, S. 1922. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. London: International Psychoanalytic Press. Gibb, J. R. 1961. Defensive communication. Journal of Communication, 11: 141-148. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. 1. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine. Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Goffman, E. 1961a. Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Goffman, E. 1961b. Asylums. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Graen, G. 1976. Role-making processes within complex interactions. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology: 1201-1245. Chicago: RandMcNally. Gustafson, J. P., & Cooper, 1. 1985. Collaboration in small groups. Theory and technique for the study of small-group processes. In A. D. Colman & M. H. Geller (Eds.), Group relations reader, vol. 2: 139-150. Washington, D.C.: A. K. Rice Institute Series. Hackett, R. D., Bycio, P., & Guion, R. M. 1989. Absenteeism among hospital nurses: An idiographic-longitudinal analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 32: 424-453. Hackman, J. R. 1986. The psychology of self-management in organizations. In M. S. Pallak & R. O. Perloff (Eds.), Psychology and work: Productivity, change, and employment: 89136. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. 1980. Work redesign. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.


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Hall, D. T., & Richter, j. 1989. Balancing work life and home life: What can organizations do to help? Academy of Management Executive, 2: 212-223. Hays, W. 1. 1981. Statistics (3d ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Hirschhorn, 1. 1988. The workplace within: Psychodynamics of organizational life. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hirschman, A. O. 1970. Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hochschild, A. R. 1983. The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. jones, A. P., james, 1. R., & Bruni, J. R. 1975. Perceived leadership and employee confidence in the leader as moderated by job involvement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60: 146-149. Jourard, S. M. 1968. Disclosing man to himself. Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co. Kahn, W. A. 1984. The structure of exaltation. American Behavioral Scientist, 27: 705-722. Kahn, W. A. 1989. University athletic teams. In J. R Hackman (Ed.), Groups that work (and those that don't): 250-264. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kahn, W. A. 1990. An exercise of authority. Organizational Behavior Teaching Review, 14(2): 28-42. Katz, D., & Kahn, R. 1. 1978. The social psychology of organizations (2d ed.). New York: Wiley. Kelman, H. C. 1958. Compliance, identification and internalization: Three processes of attitude change. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2: 51-60. Langer, E. J. 1989. Mindfulness. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Lasch, C. 1984. The minimal self. New York: Norton. Lawler, E. E., & Hall, D. T. 1970. Relationships of job characteristics to job involvement, satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 54: 305-312. Locke, E. A. 1968. Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 3: 157-189. Lodahl, T. M. 1964. Patterns of job attitudes in two assembly technologies. istrative Science Quarterly, 8: 482-519. Lodahl, T., & Kejner, M. 1965. The definition and measurement of job involvement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 49: 24-33. Louis, M. R. 1986. Putting executive action in context: An alternative view of power. In S. Srivastva & Associates (Eds.), Executive power: 111-131. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Maehr, M. 1., & Braskamp, 1. A. 1986. The motivation factor: A theory of personal investment. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath Co. Maslach, C. 1982. Burnout: The cost of caring. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Maslow, A. 1954. Motivation and personality. New York: Harper & Row. May, R, Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (Eds.). 1958. Existence. New York: Touchstone. Merton, R. K. 1957. Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Miller, J. B. 1976. Toward a new psychology of women. Boston: Beacon Press. Miner, A. S. 1987. Idiosyncratic jobs in formalized organizations. istrative Science Quarterly, 32: 327 -351. Minuchin, S. 1974. Families and family therapy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Mowday, R T., Porter, 1. W., & Steers, R M. 1982. Employee-organization linkages: The psychology of commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. New York: Academic Press.



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Pearlin, L. 1. 1983. Role strains and personal stress. In H. B. Kaplan (Ed.). Psychological stress: Trends in theory and research: 3-32. New York: Academic Press. Perkins, D. N. 1981. The mind's best work. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Porter, L., Steers, R., Mowday, R., & Boulian, P. 1974. Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59: 603-609. Rafaeli, A., & Sutton, R. 1. 1987. The expression of emotion as part of the work role. Academy of Management Review, 12: 23-37. Rogers, C. R. 1958. The characteristics of a helping relationship. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 37: 6-16. Sandler, J. 1960. The background of safety. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41: 352356. Schein, E. H. 1970. Organizational psychology (2d ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Schein, E. H. 1987. Process consultation, vol. 2. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Seeman, M. 1972. Alienation and engagement. In A. Campbell & P. E. Converce (Eds.). The human meaning of social change: 467-527. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Shorris, E. 1981. Scenes from corporate life: The politics of middle management. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Slater, P. E. 1966. Microcosms. New York: Wiley. Smith, K. K. 1982. Groups in conflict: Prisons in disguise. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall-Hunt. Smith, K. K., & Berg, D. N. 1987. Paradoxes of group life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Toffler, B. L. 1986. Tough choices: Managers talk ethics. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Van Maanen, J. 1976. Breaking in: Socialization to work. In R. Dubin (Ed.). Handbook of work, organization, and society: 67-130. Chicago: Rand McNally & Co. Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E. H. 1979. Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In B. M. Staw (Ed.). Research in organizational behavior, vol. 1: 209-264. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press. Wells, L., Jr. 1980. The group-as-a-whole: A systemic socio-analytic perspective on interpersonal and group relations. In C. P. Alderfer & c. L. Cooper (Eds.), Advances in experiential social processes, vol. 2: 165-199. New York: Wiley.

APPENDIX

Interview Schedules Camp Carrib

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Why did you choose to become a counselor? Are you comfortable here on the island itself, and with the people? Do you like being a member of a camp system as a counselor? Do you enjoy being with kids generally and these kids in particular? What do you like most about being a counselor here, and why? What aspects of being a counselor here are personally and emotionally involving for you? What really grabs you, involves more of you than other roles you've held? 7. How would an observer like me be able to see your personal involvement? What does it look like? 8. What do you dislike most about being a counselor here, and why? 9. What aspects of being a counselor here are personally and emotionally uninvolving, that is, just turn you off so you're working automatically?


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10. How would an observer like me be able to see that uninvolvement? What does it look like? 11. How do you find the demands of the counselor role? 12. How much control and autonomy do you have here? 13. How challenging do you find your role and its demands? 14. When can you coast through the work? When do you have to really stretch? 15. How do you like the way that your role is designed? 16. For what behaviors are you rewarded here, and what are those rewards? 17. How free are you to perform the role as you wish, at your own pace and style? 18. Where are you in the hierarchy? Do you feel in the center here? 19. How do you find working within your particular activity? 20. What is your relationship to the camp management, personally and professionally? 21. What emotional systems do you have here at camp? 22. How much do you want to be personally and emotionally engaged here? 23. How is that involvement influenced by your physical and emotional energy? 24. How does the staff group influence your role performances? E.S.B. and Associates

Warm-up 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What is your job here? How long have you worked here? What did you do before this job? Who supervises you, and whom do you supervise? What do you like most about working here? What do you like least about your working here?

Situation 1 I'd like you to think about a time when you've been attentive and interested in what you're doing, felt absorbed and involved. A time when you didn't think about how you'd rather be doing something else, and you didn't feel bored. One example of this, outside of the workplace, is when we go to movies and get involved with them to the extent that we almost forget that we're just watching a movie: we don't think about ourselves, and the other things that we could be doing. This also happens when we're working, that we get so wrapped up in what we're doing that we forget about other things. This can be when we're doing something by ourselves, like writing or drafting, or when we're working with other people. Can you describe a particular time when you've felt like that here at work? Situation 2 Now I'd like you to think about a time when you've felt uninvolved in what you were doing, a time when you were, say, bored, distracted, or feeling detached. We can use the movie example again, where we go to movies that just don't engage us and we are aware that it's just a movie or that we would rather be elsewhere. This too happens when we're at work, when we're doing something or working with someone, and we're not particularly involved in it for some reason or another. Can you describe a situation where this fits you? Situation 3 Now I'd like you to think about a time when you did experience a difference between your response at work and the way in which you would have responded had you not been at work. This would be a time when you had to leave out more of who you are because you were at work. It's a time when you felt the difference between how you think you would have acted



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or reacted, based on your own personal experiences and feelings, and how you actually did act or react within the work situation. Can you describe a particular time when you've felt this? Situation 4 Now I'd like you to think about a time when you felt like there wasn't much difference between your response at work and the way in which you would have responded had you not been at work. This would be a time at work when you left out less of who you are outside of work. It's a time when you didn't feel much difference between how you think you would have acted or reacted on the basis of your own personal experiences and feelings, and how you actually did act or react at work. Can you describe a particular time when you've felt this? Closing Is there anything that you want to add or stress that might help me understand the influences on when you do and don't feel involved or uninvolved here? William Kahn earned his Ph.D. degree at Yale University. He is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Boston University's School of Management. His research interests are personal engagement and disengagement at work, care-taking in organizations, and organizational diagnosis and change.


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