Peace of Mind: How Implicit Self Theories Help Employees Make Peace With Self, Job, and Organization Across 26 Nations

Authors:

Abstract: We introduce a three-pronged approach to investigate how a growth mindset enables 5,553 professionals across 26 countries to better make sense of themselves, their jobs, and their organizations. Importantly, we contextualize growth mindset outcomes to the international workplace, answering a growing call for cross-cultural examination of mindset in organizations (Han & Steiha, 2020). Our findings suggest that a malleable self-perception and identity help professionals develop a healthier orientation toward self, job, and organization; growth mindset significantly predicted wellbeing and organizational identification while negatively relating to workplace burnout, job insecurity, role ambiguity, and depression. No relationship was found between perceptions of cultural tightness and mindset, framing growth mindset as a more ubiquitous phenomenon, present across cultural tightness gaps and existing independent of one’s adherence to social norms. This study represents one of the largest cross-cultural examinations of implicit self-theories in the workplace to date.

Track: ORG

Keywords: implicit self theories, growth mindset, burnout, tight/loose cultures, cultural tightness, organizational identification