Knowledge that Transforms

Although the concept of perfectionism is familiar to most people, its relationships with organizationally relevant variables remain unclear because of the dispersed and multidisciplinary nature of extant research. The state of the literature is particularly concerning given the likely widespread influence perfectionism has on individuals' workplace attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, research in multiple disciplines of psychology has revealed the phenomenon of perfectionism to be multidimensional. In addition, the totality of effects surrounding perfectionism remains unclear as perfectionism carries both benefits as well as consequences for employees and organizations. To cogently synthesize and empirically disentangle the possible differential effects associated with perfectionism at work, the authors conducted a meta-analysis of perfectionism and work-related antecedents and outcomes. The resulting qualitative and quantitative review reveals perfectionism to have sizable and consistent relationships with several organizationally relevant factors but an equivocal overall relationship with job performance. The authors provide a theoretical and empirical overview of the state of the literature and suggest avenues for future research that may facilitate better integration of perfectionism into organizational research. (PsycINFO Database Record

Despite the growing number of meta-analyses published on the subject of workplace mistreatment and the expectation that women and racial minorities are mistreated more frequently than men and Whites, the degree of subgroup differences in perceived workplace mistreatment is unknown. To address this gap in the literature, we meta-analyzed the magnitude of sex and race differences in perceptions of workplace mistreatment (e.g., harassment, discrimination, bullying, incivility). Results indicate that women perceive more sex-based mistreatment (i.e., mistreatment that explicitly targets a person's sex) in the workplace than men (δ = .46; k = 43), whereas women and men report comparable perceptions of all other forms of mistreatment (δ = .02; k = 300). Similarly, although racial minorities perceive more race-based mistreatment (i.e., mistreatment that explicitly targets a person's race) in the workplace than Whites (δ = .71; k = 18), results indicate smaller race differences in all other forms of workplace mistreatment (δ = .10; k = 61). Results also indicate that sex and race differences have mostly decreased over time, although for some forms of mistreatment, subgroup differences have increased over time. We conclude by offering explanations for the observed subgroup differences in workplace mistreatment and outline directions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record