Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Business Administration

Committee Chair

Matt C. Howard, PhD

Abstract

The COVID pandemic has drastically impacted peoples’ lives and workplaces, especially those who work in healthcare and have been on the forefront battling this global health crisis. There has been great uncertainty regarding how to effectively mitigate health risks due to the pandemic, and many healthcare employees have turned to social media outlets, such as Facebook, to express their thoughts and concerns. However, social media can either play a positive or negative role depending on what type of information is transmitted and how it is perceived. Some employees are more affected by social media than others regarding the pandemic, and people cope differently with this information based on their personality. Two prominent personality traits—extraversion and neuroticism—have been tied to positive and negative affect, respectively. Based on Affective Events Theory (AET), this paper will unpack these crucial relationships to analyze two key personality dimensions of healthcare employees, extraversion and neuroticism, the moderating role of Facebook use, and outcomes at work. This paper’s purpose is to empirically investigate how, in the highly COVID affected healthcare industry, these variables impact employee mental health, counterproductive work behavior, and workplace social courage.

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