Work Cognitions and Work Intentions: A Two-Wave Cross-Lagged Panel Study

Abstract: In 2009, Zigarmi et al. offered an operational definition of employee work passion that has been field tested a number of times using the Work Cognition Inventory (WCI, Nimon et al., 2011) or its derivative the Work Cognition Inventory Revised (WCI-R, Nimon & Zigarmi, 2015) and the Work Intention Inventory (WII, Zigarmi et al., 2012) or its derivative the Work Intention Inventory-Short (WII-S; Nimon & Zigarmi, 2015). Empirical results from multiple studies (e.g., Peyton & Zigarmi, 2021) suggest that constructive work intentions stem from cognitive appraisals of the appraiser’s workplace experience. However, the published research to date has been based on cross-sectional data and is limited in that regard.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the twelve work environment perceptions assessed by the WCI-R and the five work intensions assessed by the WII-S using a longitudinal dataset and to determine if work cognitions measured at Time 1 contributed a significant amount of unique variance to work intentions measured at Time 2, controlling for work intentions measured at Time 1.
To accomplish our study’s aim, we used data from a larger study where a longitudinal survey was used to obtain employee perceptions on a number of constructs concerned with corporate values, teambuilding, and corporate culture. The organization was a 20-year-old software company that generated approximately 60 million dollar a year designing software programs for the US Defense Department. It employed approximately 325 personnel with corporate headquarters in California. The survey was distributed online via email to a convenience sample of employees at two time points. There were 252 respondents from Time 1 and 230 respondents from Time 2. Data across both time points were available and analyzed for 195 employees. Most employees worked in technical roles, including application support analyst (38), software engineer (38), business analyst (14), and database analyst (10). Employee age ranged from 23 to 73, with an M of 45 and an SD of 10.5. The majority of employees had a college degree (64%), with 20% having a graduate degree.
Consistent with the recommendation of Little (2013), we first verified that each work cognition and work intention was invariant across time. Finding evidence of invariance, we used the resulting factor scores from our measurement invariance models and tested a two-wave cross-lagged panel model for each of the work cognition – work intention relationships. We then used the results to compute partial η^2 to quantify how much change in work intention over time could be attributed to work cognition measured at Time 1.
Across the five work intentions tested, we found that intent to stay exhibited the most change over time followed by intent to use OCBs. For intent to stay, all but two of the work cognitions (i.e., task variety and connectedness with leader) had a practically significant unique effect on employees’ change in intent to stay over time (cf. Ferguson, 2009), with distributive justice and meaningful work being the most predictive. For intent to use OCB, only half of the work cognitions (i.e., autonomy, meaningful work, distributive justice, performance expectations, procedural justice, and collaboration) had a practically significant unique effect on employees’ change in intent to stay over time (cf. Ferguson, 2009), with distributive justice and performance expectations being the most predictive.
This study adds to the body of theoretical and psychometric evidence for the EWPA model and generates potential implications for practice. The results of this study support the proposition that HRD practitioners can accurately identify and perhaps shape the specific relevant work environment factors that predict desirable employee work intentions such as intent to remain in the organization, and intent to use OCBs. If these results generalize to other companies, practitioners may find it helpful to retain talent by focusing on interventions that help employees see how their work fits within the organization mission and examining policies and procedures to ensure that they are fairly administered to all. Such interventions are likely to also yield a positive impact on employees’ intent to use OCBs.