November 10, 2015
9:00AM-10:00AM
Please note: This event is for invited researchers only.
Research is the heart of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), and we want to make sure that we support each other in developing high quality research. To that end, we created a forum for sharing and encouraging POS-related research ideas that are at various stages of development.
Questions about POS Research Incubator Sessions can be directed to Julia Lee at jooalee@umich.edu.
Description: Despite ever-increasing time that employees spend on daily commutes to work, how they spend their time during their morning commute has not garnered much attention. Although employees may not have much control over how they commute, they are relatively in control of what thoughts they engage in during the time spent commuting. We propose that commuting time can be viewed as not only a frustrating time to be endured, but also a useful time to engage in goal-directed prospection. We first present evidence from a large technology firm based in London, UK, in which we investigate whether lengthy commutes predict negative job-related outcomes, and show that this relationship is less pronounced for individuals with high trait self-control. We then conducted an online survey to replicate this finding and to demonstrate that individuals who are high on trait self-control are more likely to engage in goal-directed prospection than those who are low on trait self-control. Lastly, we present evidence from an intervention targeted at commuters who received weekly text messages for 6 weeks, in which we directly manipulate goal-directed prospection.