Canaries in the coalmine: On the measurement and correlates of organizational threat recognition

Abstract

This research expands the job performance domain by introducing organizational threat recognition as a meaningful criterion construct. Threat recognition is conceptualized as consisting of two separate aspects of behaviour—detecting and expressing workplace or organizational threats. To assess these dimensions, we developed two, six-item measures and had 244 workers respond to these items and to a series of individual difference measures. Psychometric results, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, supported the a priori factor structure of these measures and indicated that these dimensions are distinguishable from each other and from task performance. Furthermore, correlations involving the individual difference variables revealed that several of these variables including positive affectivity, job tenure, and affective commitment were more strongly related to the threat dimensions than to task performance.

Keywords:

• Individual differences
• Job performance
• Threat