Organizational Nostalgia: The Construct, the Scale and its Implications for Organizational Functioning

Organizational nostalgia - a sentimental longing for past events in, and aspects of, one's organizational life - is a commonly experienced but poorly understood emotion. Qualitative research has explored how it helps employees cope with threat. Here, we examine its motivational properties. Building on the job demands-resources model, we hypothesized that organizational nostalgia - assessed with a newly developed and validated scale - predicts (in-role and extra-role) job performance, creativity and support for organizational change. Study 1 showcased the development of the Organizational Nostalgia Scale. We proceeded to hypothesize that work engagement, via need satisfaction, mediates the above-mentioned positive relations, and tested these hypotheses in three additional studies. In Study 2, a multi-source design with leader-follower dyads, leader organizational nostalgia was associated with increased leader organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), as rated by followers. In Study 3, a lagged correlational design with employees, organizational nostalgia positively predicted OCB via work engagement. Finally, in Study 4, a lagged correlational design, organizational nostalgia predicted increased in-role performance, creativity and support for organizational change. These associations were serially mediated by need satisfaction and work engagement. We conclude that organizational nostalgia has motivational implications. Our research affords a theoretical framework for the emotion and the means (i.e. a scale) to study it.