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Self-regulation does not only play a pivotal role in coping with job demands and major life events, but also shapes personality development in a way that builds protective resilience, integrative abilities in holistic processing of negative and positive experiences, and autonomous functioning. Therefore, in facing setbacks and failures, intrapsychic self-regulatory mechanisms determine recovery and learning processes, in order to stabilize well-being and ensure psychological functioning. In the present chapter, the author will focus on such self-regulatory mechanisms, which influence coping processes after experiences of failure and setbacks at work. In doing so, the author draw from the Personality–System–Interaction Theory, which provides in-depth insights into different motivational and volitional processes of self-regulation. Firstly, the author elaborates on inter-individual differences in self-regulation, which can be conceptually distinguished into action and state orientation. Whereas state orientation impedes effective coping with setbacks and failures, action orientation enables building resilience and goal-focused self-regulation, especially when employees are confronted with setback experiences. Secondly, the present chapter involves findings on recovery processes and mindsets, which are relevant for the theoretical understanding about the impact of setbacks and failures on employees’ psychological functioning. Thirdly, the author discusses affect modulation as a specific form of self-regulation, which allows for reducing negative affects and increasing positive affects, in order to facilitate holistic and integrative processing of setback experiences. Finally, proceeding from insights into how employees can overcome setback experiences and learn from failure, The author will provide practical implications for human resource management, training, and leadership.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of political skill in a specific workplace setting – the job negotiation. The authors expected negotiator political skill to be positively related to distributive negotiation outcome, problem-solving as a negotiation strategy to mediate this relationship and political skill to also moderate – that is amplify – the link between problem-solving and negotiation outcome.

In Study 1, a laboratory-based negotiation simulation was conducted with 88 participants; the authors obtained self-reports of political skill prior to the negotiation and – to account for non-independence of negotiating partners’ outcome – used the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model for data analysis. Study 2 was carried out as a real-life negotiation study with 100 managers of a multinational corporation who were given the opportunity to re-negotiate their salary package prior to a longer-term foreign assignment. Here, the authors drew on two objective measures of negotiation success, increase of annual gross salary and additional annual net benefits.

In Study 1, the initial hypothesis – political skill will be positively related to negotiator success – was fully supported. In Study 2, all three hypotheses (see above) were fully supported for additional annual net benefits and partly supported for increase of annual gross salary.

To the authors' best knowledge, this paper presents the first study to examine political skill as a focal predictor variable in the negotiation context. Furthermore, the studies also broaden the emotion-centered approach to social effectiveness that is prevalent in current negotiation research.