This research tested the idea that the perception of the state of the macroeconomic environment impacts the psychology underlying an essential organizational function: The evaluation of employees’ work and the associated promotion and demotion decisions. We predicted that when the macroeconomic environment is perceived to be more (less) prosperous, people’s generalized sense of the extent to which individuals have control over outcomes increases (decreases), leading them to attribute more (less) responsibility for work outcomes to individuals rather than contextual influences. In Study 1, we tested this theory using data from 124,400 respondents surveyed across 57 countries and 19 years and data about objective indicators of their macroeconomic environments. We found that in more prosperous times, people reported a higher generalized sense of control and were less likely to believe that contextual influences, such as luck, matter for work success. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated the perception of the macroeconomic environment among employees working in organizations, and we found that those who perceived their economic environment to be more prosperous had a higher generalized sense of control and in turn attributed more responsibility for a work outcome to the individual performing the work, resulting in more extreme promotion and demotion decisions. The consideration of the macroeconomic context of organizational decision making bridges the macro–micro divide in organizational sciences to provide a novel explanation for individual psychology and behavior underlying fundamental organizational processes.

Objectives

The objective of this study is to determine to what degree sleep disturbances predict academic success, relative to other known risk factors for decreased academic performance.

Methods

We performed regression analyses on data from the Spring 2009 American College Health Association National College Health Assessment II dataset (n=55,322 students) to isolate the relative contribution of the frequency of sleep problems in the previous week to GPA and the likelihood of withdrawing from a course. In our estimations, we also controlled for other factors that influence academic success such as demographic and academic variables, drug and alcohol use, perceived stress, and employment hours.

Results

Sleep disturbances were found to be a significant independent predictor of academic problems; on average, each additional day per week that a student experienced sleep problems raised the probability of dropping a course by 10% and lowered the cumulative GPA by 0.02. Factors such as stress, binge drinking, marijuana and other illicit drug use, which typically receive more attention by university administrators, had similar or relatively smaller negative associations with academic success as compared to disturbed sleep. Approximately three quarters of students surveyed reported never receiving information about sleep from their university.

Conclusions

Sleep education represents an underutilized opportunity for universities to maximize retention rates and academic success.