Development And Validation Of The Workplace Dignity Scale, Benjamin Thomas, Kristen Lucas
Dec 2018
Development And Validation Of The Workplace Dignity Scale, Benjamin Thomas, Kristen Lucas
Kristen Lucas
As organizational scholars have become critically attuned to human flourishing in the workplace, interest in workplace dignity has grown rapidly. Yet, a valid scale to measure employees’ perceptions of dignity in the workplace has yet to be developed, thereby limiting potential empirical insights. To fill this need, we conducted a systematic, multi‐study scale development project. Using data generated from focus groups (N = 62), an expert panel (N = 11), and two surveys (N = 401 and N = 542), we developed and validated an 18‐item Workplace Dignity Scale (WDS). Our studies reveal evidence in support of the WDS’s psychometric …
Blue-Collar Discourses Of Workplace Dignity: Using Outgroup Comparisons To Construct Positive Identities, Kristen Lucas
Feb 2018
Blue-Collar Discourses Of Workplace Dignity: Using Outgroup Comparisons To Construct Positive Identities, Kristen Lucas
Kristen Lucas
People generally possess a strong desire to construct positive, dignified work identities. However, this goal may be more challenging for some people, such as blue-collar workers, whose occupations may not offer qualities typically associated with workplace dignity. Interviews with 37 people from a blue-collar mining community reveal three central identity discourses about workplace dignity: All jobs are important and valuable; dignity is located in the quality of the job performed; and dignity emerges from the way people treat and are treated by others. Participants communicated these themes by backgrounding their own occupations and drawing comparisons between two outgroups, low-status, low-paid …
Workplace Dignity, Kristen Lucas
Dec 2016
Workplace Dignity, Kristen Lucas
Kristen Lucas
Workplace dignity is the self-recognized and other-recognized worth acquired from engaging in work activity. Grounded in philosophy and sociology, workplace dignity is a multifaceted phenomenon that reflects multiple and overlapping meanings: dignity as recognition of inherent human value, respect, autonomy, contribution, and status. These different meanings are called upon in current research that addresses problematic workplaces, responses to dignity threats, and vulnerable populations. Organizational communication researchers are uniquely poised to contribute to this growing body of knowledge because of the central role micro-, meso-, and macrolevel messages play in affirming and denying workplace dignity.
Workplace Dignity: Communicating Inherent, Earned, And Remediated Dignity, Kristen Lucas
Jun 2015
Workplace Dignity: Communicating Inherent, Earned, And Remediated Dignity, Kristen Lucas
Kristen Lucas
Extant research on dignity at work has revealed conditions that contribute to indignity, employees’ responses to dignity threats, and ways in which employees’ inherent dignity is undermined. But while dignity – and specifically indignity – is theorized as a phenomenon subjectively experienced and judged by individuals, little research has privileged workers’ own perspectives. In this study, working adults reveal how they personally experience and understand meanings of dignity at work. I describe three core components of workplace dignity and the communicative exchanges through which dignity desires commonly are affirmed or denied: inherent dignity as recognized by respectful interaction, earned dignity …
