Psychological effects of job characteristics in gender diverse workplaces: From the perspectives of task interdependence and role ambiguity

Abstract

This research aimed to examine whether workplace gender diversity moderates the psychological effects of job characteristics (i.e., task interdependence and role ambiguity) on employees in Japanese organizations. We conducted two employee surveys, Study 1 in two service industry companies, and Study 2 in a HR service company. As a result, the negative interaction effects of task interdependence and workplace gender diversity on affective commitment were found both in Study 1 and 2. Specifically, task interdependence increased affective commitment of employees only when gender diversity was relatively low. A multilevel analysis performed in Study 2 also revealed that individual level role ambiguity had the same interaction effect. These results indicate that workplace gender diversity needs to be treated as an important contextual factor in job characteristics research. Keywords gender diversity in workplace, affective commitment, task interde-pendency, role ambiguity