Dominique Kost currently works as an associate professor at BI Norwegian Business School and previously worked at Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a PhD in organizational psychology from BI Norwegian Business School and worked as a consultant in the human resource management industry before entering academia.
Dr. Kost's research has been published in top-tier academic journals such as Human Resource Management Journal, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, and Computers in Human Behavior.
Her research focuses on telework and home office, interpersonal relationships among employees, communication processes in virtual teams, and digital labour. She regularly presents her ongoing research in international academic conferences such as Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Work Family Researchers Network (WFRN) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).
She is part of the research group International Network on Technology, Work, and Family and a member of the Canada Research Chair for Digital Regulation at Work and in Life.
Please see her Google Scholar or ORCID profile for more information.
Although cross-national work–family research has made great strides in recent decades, knowledge accumulation on the impact of culture on the work–family interface has been hampered by a limited geographical and cultural scope that has excluded countries where cultural expectations regarding work,
family, and support may differ. We advance this literature by investigating work–family relationships in a broad range of cultures, including understudied regions of the world (i.e., Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia). We focus on humane orientation (HO), an overlooked cultural dimension that is however central to the
study of social support and higher in those regions. We explore its moderating effect on relationships between work and family social support, work–family conflict, and work–family positive spillover. Building on the congruence and compensation perspectives of fit theory, we test alternative hypotheses on a sample of 10,307 participants from 30 countries/territories. We find HO has mostly a compensatory role in the relationships between workplace support and work-to-family conflict. Specifically, supervisor and coworker supports were most strongly and negatively related to conflict in cultures in which support is most needed (i.e., lower HO cultures). Regarding positive spillover, HO has mostly an amplifying role. Coworker (but not supervisor) support was most strongly and positively related to work-to-family positive spillover in higher HO cultures, where providing social support at work is consistent with the societal practice of providing support to one another. Likewise, instrumental (but not emotional) family support was most strongly and positively related to family-to-work positive spillover in higher HO cultures.
Psychological job control has typically been negatively related to work-to-family and family-to-work conflict. Based on the job demand-resource model and boundary theory, we argue that psychological job control may indirectly be positively related to family-to-work conflict by both increasing supplemental work, that is, the rate of engagement in work outside of formal working hours without receiving compensation aided by mobile technology, and work-to-family conflict. We hypothesize that this proposed positive indirect relationship will be lower among employees who perceive a high segmentation norm at their workplace. Based on a two-wave study of 4518 employees, we obtained support for a serial moderated mediation model that suggests a dual effect of psychological job control on family-to-work conflict, such that psychological job control was positively associated with family-to-work conflict through supplemental work and work-to-family conflict at low levels of segmentation norms. By examining the dual effects of psychological job control, this study aims to further understand the mechanisms involved in determining whether and when psychological job control, together with supplemental work, encourages employees to uphold or cross boundaries between work and nonwork domains. Our findings imply that psychological job control can both be a resource and a demand depending on the levels of segmentation norms.
Although work is increasingly globalized and mediated by technology, little research has accumulated on the role of culture in shaping individuals' preferences regarding the segmentation or integration of their work and family roles. This study examines the relationships between gender egalitarianism (the extent a culture has a fluid understanding of gender roles and promotes gender equality), gender, and boundary management preferences across 27 countries/territories. Based on a sample of 9362 employees, we found that the pattern of the relationship between gender egalitarianism and boundary management depends on the direction of segmentation preferences. Individuals from more gender egalitarian societies reported lower preferences to segment family-from-work (i.e., protect the work role from the family role); however, gender egalitarianism was not directly associated with preferences to segment work-from-family. Moreover, gender was associated with both boundary management directions such that women preferred to segment family-from-work and work-from-family more so than did men. As theorized, we found gender egalitarianism moderated the relationship between gender and segmentation preferences such that women's desire to protect family from work was stronger in lower (vs. higher) gender egalitarianism cultures. Contrary to expectations, women reported a greater preference to protect work from family than men regardless of gender egalitarianism. Implications for boundary management theory and the cross-national work-family literature are discussed.
Wong, Sut I; Kost, Dominique & Fieseler, Christian (2021)
From crafting what you do to building resilience for career commitment in the gig economy
The present study investigates how individual and collaborative job crafting may help digital labourers to build resilience and career commitment in the gig economy. Results based on a time-lagged survey from 334 digital labourers indicate that those who engaged in higher individual job crafting reported subsequently higher resilience at the outset. Moreover, high collaborative job crafting compensated for low individual crafting efforts in reaching higher resilience and subsequently higher career commitment in the gig economy. Theoretical and practical implications for sustainable careers in the gig economy are discussed.
Wong, Sut I; Fieseler, Christian & Kost, Dominique (2020)
Digital labourers’ proactivity and the venture for meaningful work: Fruitful or fruitless?
Digital Labor, taking up flexible but small-scale employment arrangements on online intermediary platforms, with few constraints on how much, when, and where work is performed, are becoming the new work reality for many individuals. Scholars have argued that this type of work is inherently demeaning. We seek to explore the worker’s perspective and how their long-term perspective aligns or misaligns with their actual workarrangement. We draw on career construction theory and hypothesize a job–career congruence model suggesting that when workers’ cognitive presentations of their microwork as jobs or careers are incongruent, they are less likely to experience their work as meaningful. The results from a two-stage field study of 803 workers from two microworking platforms support the negative effect of an incongruent job–career schema on workers’ experience of meaningful work. Additionally, results demonstrate that even workers who are proactive in nature, seem unable to excel in these fluid work settings when their job-career schema are not aligned.
Kost, Dominique; Fieseler, Christian & Wong, Sut I (2019)
Boundaryless careers in the gig economy: An oxymoron?
Advocates of the boundaryless career perspective have relied to a great extent on the assumption that actors take responsibility for their own career development and that they consequently take charge of developing their career competencies. In this provocation piece, we debate the obstructions to and potential ways to promote boundaryless careers in the gig economy, which—despite appearing on the surface to offer suitable conditions for boundaryless careers—suffers from numerous conditions that hinder such careers. Thus, boundaryless careers in the gig economy could be an oxymoron. In particular, we conjecture that intraorganisational and interorganisational career boundaries restrict gig workers' development of relevant career competencies and thus limit their mobility. We then put forward the notion that we have to consider moving away from traditional, employer‐centric human resource management and introduce new forms of network‐based and self‐organised human resource management practices (in the form of collaborative communities of practice) in order to diminish these boundaries.
Kost, Dominique; Fieseler, Christian & Wong, Sut I (2018)
Finding Meaning in a Hopeless Place? The Construction of Meaningfulness in Digital Microwork
New forms of employment centered on the completion of simple and atomized tasks, such as online microwork, raise the question of the possible gratifications that could be derived from such work when compared to more traditional labor arrangements. Our research presented here focuses on how microworkers construct meaningfulness, based on the accounts of workers on the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk. We draw upon a relational job design perspective to explore why microworkers experience meaningfulness in their work. We found four sources of meaningfulness: rewards, self-improvement, moral, and social. These four sources vary in the degree to which they were internal or external in focus, and in their level of rationalization (concrete or abstract). This may explain why such types of employment are appealing despite a lack of organizational-support structures and points to the need to better understand cue provision in virtual, platform-enabled work settings.
Kost, Dominique & Hærem, Thorvald (2016)
Transactive Memory Systems [TMS] in virtual teams: The effect of integration and differentiation on performance.
Valaker, Sigmund; Yanakiev, Yantsislav, Lofquist, Eric & Kost, Dominique (2016)
The Influence of Predeployment Training on Coordination in Multinational Headquarters:The Moderating Role of Organizational Obstacles to Information Sharing.
Coordination is critical to the success of multinational military operations and may be fostered by predeployment training. We argue that whether such training is related to a high degree of perceived coordination at the individual level is likely to depend on whether individuals experience a low degree of organizational obstacles to information sharing. We examined this using data from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Kosovo Force headquarters (survey: n = 131). We controlled for whether it was the participants’ first deployment, the participants’ background (military or civilian), the amount of time spent in the headquarters by participants, whether differences pertaining to culture and opinions were valued by the organization, the quality of supervisor/subordinate relationships, and the degree of national cultural obstacles to information sharing. The results showed no significant direct effects on coordination from 3 different training configurations: national training, multinational training, and a combination of national and multinational training. However, we found a negative direct effect from organizational obstacles to information sharing on coordination, and support for organizational obstacles to information sharing as negatively moderating the multinational predeployment training and coordination relationship. Qualitative interviews (n = 14) indicated that informal information sharing, and the problems exchanging information from tactical to operational levels could hinder coordination. Interventions to foster coordination could benefit from a focus on multinational training and lowering organizational obstacles to information sharing. Our findings contribute to more precisely pinpointing the types of training that are useful in multinational operations, as well as the factors upon which training transfer is contingent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Kopperud, Karoline; Kost, Dominique & Buch, Robert (2020)
Appendix G: Cognitive and organizational challenges in a navigation team. In: Report on the collision between the Frigate HMNS Helge Ingstad and the oil tanker TS Sola outside the Sture Terminal in the Heltefjord in Hordaland county.
[Report Research].
Wong, Sut I; Kost, Dominique & Fieseler, Christian (2019)
From Crafting What You Do to Building Resilience for a Crowdwork Career
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Wong, Sut I; Kost, Dominique & Fieseler, Christian (2018)
Meaningful Work and Subjective Well-Being: The Role of Job-Career (In) congruence in the Gig Economy
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Flexible employment arrangements on multiple online intermediary platforms with few constraints as to how much, when and where work is performed is becoming the new work reality for many individuals. Arguments have been advanced that this type of work is inherently demeaning. In this article, we seek to explore the worker perspective regarding whether these types of gig labor arrangements are regarded as limited jobs or more as long-term careers. We draw on career construction theory and hypothesize a job-career congruence model that suggests that when workers’ cognitive presentation of their gig work as jobs or careers are incongruent, they are less likely to experience their work as meaningful and subsequently experience lower subjective well-being. The results from a two-stage field study of 803 workers from two different crowdsourcing platforms support these incongruent relationships and provides clarity regarding how gig work factors in to an individual’s life. In addition, we demonstrate that workers who are proactive in nature seem to excel more in these fluid work settings, which points to the necessity of self-leadership in such work arrangements to ensure prosperity.
Kost, Dominique; Fieseler, Christian & Wong, Sut I (2017)
Now that we are all here – The effect of task- and relationship-focused leadership behaviors on co-presence and performance in virtual teams
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Wong, Sut I; Kost, Dominique & Fieseler, Christian (2017)
Collaborative Crafting in Pursuit of a Career. The Case of Crowdworkers in the Gig Economy
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Kost, Dominique; Fieseler, Christian & Wong, Sut I (2017)
Micro-Entrepreneurs and the Art of Life-Crafting
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Kost, Dominique; Wong, Sut I & Fieseler, Christian (2016)
Finding meaning in a hopeless place: The construction of meaning in digital Microwork.
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Kost, Dominique; Wong, Sut I & Fieseler, Christian (2016)
Finding meaning in a hopeless place: The construction of meaning in digital microwork
[Lecture]. Event
Kost, Dominique; Hærem, Thorvald, Arnulf, Jan Ketil, Andersen, Svein S & Valaker, Sigmund (2015)
Emerging Transactive Memory System Structure in Virtual Teams: A Qualitative Analysis
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Kost, Dominique; Hærem, Thorvald & Pentland, Brian T. (2015)
Leveraging TMS for performance in virtual teams: TMS and coordination routines.
