Feeling and Thinking at Work : Personal and Collective Work-Identity Predictions and Formations

Sammanfattning: The aim of the present thesis was to investigate emotional and cognitive personal and collective work-identity in predicting employees’ work-related motivation, organizational justice perceptions, general mental health and exhaustion; as well as if psychosocial working conditions might explain some of these relationships. Emotion and cognition in formation of personal and collective work-identity were also investigated. The sample consisted of 768 teachers responding to a questionnaire (Study I-IV) during spring 2016. The results showed that personal work-identity positively predicted self-determined work motivation, accounted for by the emotion component, and collective work-identity positively predicted organizational pay justice, accounted for by the cognition component (Study I). Emotional personal and cognitive collective work-identity positively predicted general mental health and negatively predicted exhaustion. Reversed relationships were found for cognitive personal and emotional collective work-identity (Study II). Teachers’ psychological job demands and resources mediated the relations between emotional and cognitive personal and collective work-identity, respectively, and exhaustion and self-determined work motivation, respectively (Study III). Emotional processes positively predicted cognitive processes, and the emotional profile showed effects on cognitive processes regarding personal work-identity formation, while cognitive processes positively predicted emotional processes, and the cognitive profile showed effects on emotional processes regarding collective work-identity formation (Study IV). In conclusion, emotional and cognitive personal and collective work-identity play significant but different roles in predicting work-related motivation, organizational pay justice as well as general mental health and exhaustion. Also, teachers’ psychosocial working conditions may contribute to explaining some of these associations. Finally, emotion and cognition may play different roles in the formation of personal and collective work-identity.