On the morning of September 23, 2022, the essay workshop for young scholars on "Employee and Organizational Behavior in Complex Environments" was held in the form of an online Tencent meeting hosted by the Department of Business Administration of ECUST School of Business. The workshop invited several outstanding young scholars in the field of organizational behavior from home and abroad to share cutting-edge research results and insights. Wang Qiang and Lei Xue, faculty members of ECUST School of Business, presided over the meeting. Four young scholars from George Mason University and Rice University in the United States, as well as Xi'an Jiaotong University and ECUST in China, shared their latest research progress.

The session began with an online presentation by Dr. Liang Yijue, Assistant Professor at George Mason University School of Psychology, entitled Understanding workplace gossip via its rumination effects: A within-person lens.  In this study, a research perspective of rumination was used to investigate how individuals who receive gossip can influence subsequent gossip transmission behavior through information seeking as a mediator, using a daily questionnaire at the within-person level, with a view to addressing the prevalence of gossip transmission in the workplace. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications for the field of workplace gossip.

Afterwards, Dr. Liu Zihan from Rice University School of Psychology gave a presentation entitled Integrative career assessments: assessing fit using interests, personality, values, knowledge, and skills. In this study, an integrated career assessment tool was developed based on the deficiencies of previous single-dimensional career assessments, including five dimensions: career interests, personality, work value, knowledge, and skills. Three sub-studies were also used to examine the different effects of the five dimensions on career outcomes such as career satisfaction and person-job fit in conjunction with data from O*Net (DOL), providing insights for future practical applications in the field of career assessment.

After the first part of the session, Dr. Zhong Meng, an assistant professor from the School of Management of Xi'an Jiaotong University, gave a talk entitled How do employees respond to psychological contract breach during a crisis? the effect of corporate social responsibility. In view of the possible psychological contract breach of employees brought about by internal and external corporate crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this study, based on the crisis management theory of corporate social responsibility, found that employees' perceived corporate social responsibility can increase external attribution of psychological contract breach under crises and thus reducing behaviors such as retaliation by combining questionnaire and experiment. The findings have positive implications for the way companies respond to crises and control the possible adverse effects.

At the end, Dr. Lei Xue from ECUST School of Business gave a presentation titled A qualitative study about online labor platform workers' fairness perception toward algorithmic management. Featuring qualitative interviews, the study provided insight into how online labor platforms under algorithmic management affect the formation of casual workers' fairness perceptions, suggested the adverse effect of factors such as algorithmic technical attributes and lack of benevolence of the platform and the positive effect of factors such as workers' perceived work community support and algorithmic competency, and extended the application of organizational fairness theory to casual worker contexts.

The workshop lasted nearly three hours, and the participating students and faculty members conducted in-depth exchanges and discussions on the studies of the four scholars, and made detailed suggestions on the theoretical development and improvement of the essays, the direction of revision of the contributions, and the practical application of the findings.

The workshop was also attended by more than 30 faculty members from ECUST School of Business, including Hao Bin, Long Liqun, Zhang Kaili, He Xiaoming, Zhang Yanhui, Zhu Lina, Ye Sheng and Shen Zhengyu, as well as some master's and doctoral students from the School and other universities.

Written by: Lei Xue  Reviewed by: Hao Bin