The Associations Between Masculinity Contest Culture And Employees’ Occupational And Psychological Well-Being

Masculinity contest culture(MCC)is a dysfunctional organizational climate in which men and masculinity are honored and rewarded while women and femininity are despised and denigrated.In organizations characterized by MCC,employees are required to avoid vulnerable emotions or uncertainty,to prioritize work over all other domains of life.MCC also equates physical size and strength with status,and encourages fierce zerosum competition among coworkers.MCC was found to be associated with negative workrelated outcomes and lower psychological and physical well-being.Moreover,MCC workplaces have significantly higher rates of sexual harassment and bullying,both of which as dominance behaviors and interpersonal mistreatment,are harmful to victims’ career development and well-being.Although MCC was conceptualized and studied in Western societies,workplaces in contemporary China also tend to emphasize masculinity.Against this background,the primary purpose of these three studies focused on the associations between MCC and work-related attitudes and psychological well-being among Chinese working people,and aimed to investigate its underlying mechanism and potential moderating factors.Study 1 examined the indirect effects of MCC on working women’s psychological well-being via sexual harassment and bullying,and the interaction of MCC with organizational tolerance for sexual harassment(OTSH)and targets’ position in organization when predicting these two forms of mistreatment.Moderated mediation analyses revealed that OTSH and position level moderated the links between MCC and exposure to interpersonal mistreatment.Specifically,the association between MCC and sexual harassment experiences was stronger when women held higher positions in organizations with greater OTSH.While OTSH also strengthened the association between MCC and bullying,position in the organization was not correlated with bullying and did not moderate the link between MCC and bullying.The results also provided evidence for the indirect effects of MCC on psychological well-being via sexual harassment and bullying;these indirect effects were larger via bullying than sexual harassment.Study 2 aimed to investigate gender differences in the association between MCC and work engagement,and also to replicate and extend study 1 to find out how MCC,gender and position in organization interacted to predict experiences of bullying.Zero-order correlations showed that both work-related and personal bullying were negatively correlated to position in the male sample,but they were unrelated to position in the female sample.Furthermore,the results of moderated mediation analyses revealed that gender and position moderated the link between MCC and exposure to bullying.Specifically,MCC positively predicted both work-related and personal bullying in men who held lower positions,but those associations did not exist in men who held higher positions.In contrast,among women,MCC positively predicted both work-related and personal bullying regardless of position,with larger effects found in those who held lower positions.Moreover,among female workers,MCC had positive direct effects on work engagement,but had negative indirect effects on it through work-related bullying.Study 3 investigated individual differences in the association between MCC and turnover intentions by focusing on the roles of work stress and personal coping strategies.MCC was found to be significantly associated with greater work stress and stronger intention to leave.Hierarchical multiple regression analyses further revealed that work stress and emotion-focused coping(EFC)positively predicted intention to leave,whereas problem-focused coping(PFC)negatively predicted it.Furthermore,PFC moderated the association between MCC and turnover intentions.That is,for employees with stronger PFC,the positive link between MCC and turnover intentions weakened.Moreover,when work stress,coping strategy,age,and gender were included,MCC was no longer linked to turnover intentions;work stress and coping styles explained the largest amount of variance in turnover intentions.Our study indicated that PFC is more adaptive to MCC than EFC.In summary,our main findings are as follows:(1)MCC did not have direct effects on female workers’ psychological well-being,but had negative effects on it through experiences of sexual harassment and bullying;(2)OTSH and target’s position in organization moderated the link between MCC and exposure to interpersonal mistreatment;(3)Among working men,the positive association between MCC and exposure to bullying(i.e.,work-related bullying and personal bullying)only existed in those who held lower positions,while among working women,MCC positively predicted exposure to both forms of bullying regardless of position;(4)MCC had positive direct effects on work engagement in women workers,but had negative indirect effects on it via work-related bullying;(5)The association between MCC and turnover intentions was influenced by work stress perceptions and coping styles;(6)PFC was more adaptive to MCC than EFC in that PFC negatively predicted turnover intentions as well as lessened the positive link between MCC and turnover intentions.