Sticking Out Like a Sore Thumb: Employee Dissimilarity and Deviance at Work*

This study examined demographic‐ and personality‐based employee dissimilarities in relation to organizational and interpersonal deviant behaviors. Perceived organizational support (POS), organizational commitment, perceived coworker support, and coworker satisfaction were proposed as mediators. The results revealed that dissimilarities in ethnicity, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience were significantly related to organizational deviance; dissimilarities in gender, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion were significantly related to interpersonal deviance. In addition, ethnic dissimilarity negatively predicted POS and organizational commitment, age dissimilarity positively predicted perceived coworker support, Extraversion dissimilarity positively predicted coworker satisfaction, Agreeableness dissimilarity negatively predicted POS, and Openness to Experience dissimilarity negatively predicted POS, organizational commitment, perceived coworker support, and coworker satisfaction. Finally, POS partially mediated the relationship between Agreeableness dissimilarity and organizational deviance. Interpretations of results, implications for management, and future research are discussed.     

“近朱者赤”：同事主动行为如何激发员工动机和绩效

以往有关主动性的研究通常聚焦员工本身, 忽略了团队或组织中同事会对员工行为产生影响这一重要管理实践和理论视角。为此, 本研究以社会学习理论为基础, 探讨了同事主动行为对员工自主动机和工作绩效的影响, 以及员工主动性人格的调节作用。通过多时点、上下级匹配问卷(研究1)及情景实验(研究2)两项研究, 本文发现, 同事主动行为可以激发员工的自主动机, 进而提升工作绩效; 并且, 员工主动性人格强化了同事主动行为对员工自主动机的正向作用。本研究不仅从理论上将现有关于主动行为的研究视角迁移到同事, 也为如何更好地激励员工提供了实践指导。     

Surface‐ and deep‐level dissimilarity effects on social integration and individual effectiveness related outcomes in work groups: A meta‐analytic integration

Prior research linking demographic (e.g., age, ethnicity/race, gender, and tenure) and underlying psychological (e.g., personality, attitudes, and values) dissimilarity variables to individual group member's work‐related outcomes produced mixed and contradictory results. To account for these findings, this study develops a contingency framework and tests it using meta‐analytic and structural equation modelling techniques. In line with this framework, results showed different effects of surface‐level (i.e., demographic) dissimilarity and deep‐level (i.e., underlying psychological) dissimilarity on social integration, and ultimately on individual effectiveness related outcomes (i.e., turnover, task, and contextual performance). Specifically, surface‐level dissimilarity had a negative effect on social integration under low but not under high team interdependence. In return, social integration fully mediated the negative relationship between surface‐level dissimilarity and individual effectiveness related outcomes under low interdependence. In contrast, deep‐level dissimilarity had a negative effect on social integration, which was stronger under high and weaker under low team interdependence. Contrary to our predictions, social integration did not mediate the negative relationship between deep‐level dissimilarity and individual effectiveness related outcomes but suppressed positive direct effects of deep‐level dissimilarity on individual effectiveness related outcomes. Possible explanations for these counterintuitive findings are discussed.     

The role of leader relationship quality in the development of employee fit perceptions

Despite being a subject of scholarly inquiry for nearly a century, some components of person–environment fit remain enigmatic. This research seeks to explore the relational factors that are associated with employee identity and how this lens can provide explanatory factors that link leader–employee relationships to employee performance. Across a two‐study, multi‐rater constructive replication design, our results support the tenets of the identity theory that suggests the quality of the leader–employee relationships informs employees of their person–organization (PO) and person–job (PJ) fit, leading to higher performance. Across both the studies, high‐quality leader–employee relations (conceptualized as LMX and trust in leader) were related to higher levels of PO and PJ fit. Our results also indicate that PO and PJ fit uniquely drive higher levels of performance as rated by multiple constituents, helping delineate the impact of PO and PJ fit on work outcomes. Specifically, in Study One (N = 111), PJ fit mediated the relationship between LMX and leader‐rated performance, whereas in Study Two (N = 94), PO fit mediated the relationship between trust in leader and peer‐rated performance. This work provides preliminary support that leaders, through their relationships, can help shape employee fit perceptions and ultimately impact performance. Such knowledge can inform organizations and leaders, and emphasizes the formative role that leaders play in the organizational lives of their employees.     

How Do Coworkers “Make the Place”? Examining Coworker Conflict and the Value of Harmony in China and the United States

The goal of this study was to test cross‐cultural/cross‐national differences in the association between coworker interpersonal justice and coworker conflict and the implications of such differences for employee effectiveness. Harmony is a central value in China but is less important in the United States, and the individual value of harmony may influence Chinese and US employees differently in their response to low levels of coworker interpersonal justice. We collected data from employees and their coworkers in China (214 dyads) and the US (301 dyads). There were three major findings. First, coworker interpersonal justice was negatively related to coworker conflict. Second, coworker conflict significantly mediated coworker interpersonal justice in relation to the employee effectiveness variables of task performance, organisational citizenship behaviours, and counterproductive work behaviours. Finally, in the Chinese sample, harmony significantly buffered the indirect effect of coworker interpersonal justice on employee effectiveness via coworker conflict, whereas in the US sample, harmony significantly intensified the indirect effect of coworker interpersonal justice on employee effectiveness via coworker conflict.     

Job definition discrepancy between supervisors and subordinates: The antecedent role of LMX and outcomes

This study proposed that leader–member exchange (LMX) might encourage an employee to define job breadth close to or beyond the level of his/her supervisor's expectation (enlargement effect), while simultaneously fostering a reduction in supervisor–subordinate definition discrepancy on job content (congruence effect). Using data from 184 subordinate–supervisor dyads in Taiwan, we examined the relationships among LMX, job definition discrepancy, in‐role/extra‐role behaviour, and performance rating. Results showed that LMX was positively related to employee relative job breadth and the supervisor–subordinate congruence on job content, supporting the existence of enlargement effect and congruence effect. Additionally, employee relative job breadth was positively related to extra‐role behaviour and the congruence on job content was positively related to in‐role behaviour. However, neither in‐role nor extra‐role behaviour was related to performance rating. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: a meta-analytic review

This paper provides meta-analytic support for an integrated model specifying the antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment. Results indicate that contextual antecedent constructs representing perceived high-performance managerial practices, socio-political support, leadership, and work characteristics are each strongly related to psychological empowerment. Positive self-evaluation traits are related to psychological empowerment and are as strongly related as the contextual factors. Psychological empowerment is in turn positively associated with a broad range of employee outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and task and contextual performance, and is negatively associated with employee strain and turnover intentions. Team empowerment is positively related to team performance. Further, the magnitude of parallel antecedent and outcome relationships at the individual and team levels is statistically indistinguishable, demonstrating the generalizability of empowerment theory across these 2 levels of analysis. A series of analyses also demonstrates the validity of psychological empowerment as a unitary second-order construct. Implications and future directions for empowerment research and theory are discussed.     

Extra‐Role Behavior among Mexican Employees: The Impact of LMX,Group Acceptance,and Job Attitudes

The current field study took place within a Mexican work setting, consisting of 100 white‐collar employees representing a variety of professional job categories. The study investigated the direct effect of the supervisor–employee relationship (leader–member exchange) quality and group acceptance on employees' propensity to engage in activities beyond their formal work roles (extra‐role behavior). The mediating influences of the employees' job satisfaction level and organizational commitment were also taken into consideration when accounting for extra‐role behavior. Results suggest that relationships Mexican employees share with their supervisor have a direct impact on their extra‐role behavior. Social exchange, key to both extra‐role behavior and leader–member exchange, is proposed as the operating mechanism associating the two constructs. Results also indicate that organizational commitment plays a partial mediating role between leader–member exchange and extra‐role behavior.     

Individual Goal Orientations,Team Empowerment,and Employee Creative Performance: A Case of Cross‐level Interactions

Intrigued by relationship between team motivational context and individual characteristics in the organizational reality, we developed and tested a cross‐level model to investigate the interactive effects of team empowerment and individual goal orientations on individual creative performance through the mediating mechanism of an individual's creative self‐efficacy. Using multi‐wave multi‐source data from 63 R&D teams in three IT companies, we found that (1) team empowerment, individual learning goal orientation, and individual performance orientation are all positively related to individual creative performance through mediation of creative self‐efficacy; (2) learning orientation and performance approach orientation could both supplement the effects of team empowerment on individual creative self‐efficacy. Our findings point to the importance of individual goal orientation in shaping the effects of team motivation climates and provide insights for both scholars and practitioners. The specific practical implications include but are not limited to (1) individuals with learning and performance approach orientations should be identified during hiring procedures given that they could still thrive in less empowered teams and maintain a relatively high level of creative self‐efficacy and creative outcomes; (2) managers should consider assigning employees who are more learning oriented to more empowering and open‐ended tasks in order to obtain better creative results.     

员工真诚对同事关系的双刃剑效应：共事时间的调节作用

目前普遍认为员工在职场中的真诚有助于该员工与同事建立良好的关系。本研究提出员工真诚对同事关系的影响很可能积极和消极并存, 其作用效果取决于员工与同事之间的共事时间。基于社会渗透理论并整合归因的文献, 本研究认为同事怀疑和同事信任是员工真诚影响同事关系的关键中介机制。为检验本研究理论模型假设, 采用轮询问卷法(round-robin survey)和实验法分别开展两个独立调研。结果发现：在共事时间较短的情况下, 员工真诚会引发同事怀疑降低同事信任, 减少人际帮助并增加人际排斥。在共事时间较长的情况下, 员工真诚则有助于打消同事怀疑增加同事信任, 增多人际帮助并减少人际排斥。通过引入共事时间作为调节变量, 本研究发现员工真诚对同事关系的影响由消极转化为积极需要经过足够长时间的共事才能实现。     

Benefits of team participative decision making and its potential to affect individual creativity

How does team participative decision‐making affect individual creative performance? Building on team climate theory (Anderson & West, 1998; West 1990, 2002; West & Sacramento, 2012), this study investigates the indirect effect of team participative decision making on employee creativity through individual perception of cognition team diversity and psychological safety. Results from 256 supervisor–subordinate dyads in 45 teams show that team participative decision making is positively associated with cognitive team diversity and psychological safety. For the mediating effects, team participative decision‐making climate is positively indirectly related to creative performance via psychological safety but not via cognitive team diversity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Taking a deeper look inside autonomous and interdependent teams: why,how, and when does informational dissimilarity elicit dysfunctional versus beneficial effects

ABSTRACT

Organizations increasingly use cross-functional teams, characterized by autonomy and interdependence, to improve innovation and to adapt to a dynamic business environment. Based on this trend, prior research started to investigate informational dissimilarity (employee’s dissimilarity relative to teammates regarding education, job specialization, and expertise) in teams. Two key team outcomes are 1) team members’ satisfaction with the team and 2) the team’s proactivity. Paradoxically, some researchers reported dysfunctional informational dissimilarity effects on employee outcomes, while some reported beneficial effects. To integrate opposing informational dissimilarity effects, we apply the categorization-elaboration model of team diversity. We theorize that perceived informational dissimilarity can elicit simultaneously dysfunctional effects on satisfaction with the team and beneficial effects on the team member’s proactivity. We specify the mechanisms of both effects by investigating the mediating roles of peer unfairness (representing dysfunctional informational dissimilarity effects) and information elaboration (representing beneficial informational dissimilarity effects). To reconcile these contradicting processes, we analyse the role of trust. We conducted a survey study at three different measurement time points with team members from different organizations. The results indicate that trust in teammates dampens dysfunctional informational dissimilarity effects and amplifies beneficial effects.     

Does interview anxiety predict job performance and does it influence the predictive validity of interviews?

Interview anxiety is negatively related to interview performance; however, its relation to job performance is unknown. It could correlate negatively with job performance, and it could moderate the interview performance–job performance relation. In a sample of applicants for Residence Assistant positions, interview anxiety had near‐zero correlations with job performance, rated by supervisors and supervisees. It moderated the relation between interview performance and supervisor‐rated facilitating peer and team performance, such that interview performance did not predict this job performance component for anxious applicants. The moderation was not found for supervisor‐rated task proficiency, or for supervisee ratings of either job performance component, suggesting that the impact of interview anxiety depends on rater source and which job performance component is rated.     

Psychological Ownership,Territorial Behavior,and Being Perceived as a Team Contributor: The Critical Role of Trust in the Work Environment

In this field study, we develop and test a theory regarding the role of trust in the work environment as a critical condition that determines the relationship between psychological ownership, territoriality, and being perceived as a team contributor. We argue that, dependent upon the context of trust in the work environment, psychological ownership may lead to territorial behaviors of claiming and anticipatory defending and that, dependent upon the context of trust, territorial behavior may lead coworkers to negatively judge the territorial employee as less of a team contributor. A sample of working adults reported on their psychological ownership and territorial behavior toward an important object at work, and a coworker of each provided evaluations on the level of trust in the work environment and rated the focal individual's contributions to the team. Findings suggest that a work environment of trust is a “double‐edged sword”: On the one hand, a high trust environment reduces the territorial behavior associated with psychological ownership; on the other hand, when territorial behavior does occur in high trust environments, coworkers rate the territorial employee's contributions to the team significantly lower. We discuss the nature and management of territorial behavior in light of these findings.     

配偶情绪智力对员工工作投入的影响：员工生活幸福感的中介作用和性别的调节作用

本文关注配偶情绪智力对员工工作投入的跨领域的人际间影响。基于努力-恢复模型视角和情绪智力文献, 本文提出高情绪智力的配偶能够通过提升员工生活幸福感, 从而促进员工工作投入。此外, 通过整合社会性别角色理论, 本文进一步讨论了员工性别的调节作用。通过两个子研究, 本文发现：配偶情绪智力与员工生活幸福感之间呈现正相关关系; 员工生活幸福感与员工工作投入之间呈现正相关关系; 员工生活幸福感中介了配偶情绪智力对员工工作投入的影响; 并且, 员工性别调节了配偶情绪智力和员工生活幸福感之间的关系, 即当员工为男性时, 配偶情绪智力对该员工生活幸福感的正向影响更强; 此外, 员工性别还调节了员工生活幸福感在配偶情绪智力和员工工作投入之间起到的中介作用。本研究首次提出和检验了配偶情绪智力对员工工作投入的跨领域的人际间积极影响, 具有理论和实践上的重要意义。     

Perceptions As Reality: The Influence of Actual and Perceived Demographic Dissimilarity

Two studies were conducted to examine the effects of demographic dissimilarity from others in the workgroup. Results from Study 1 (n = 87 coaches) indicate that actual demographic differences were reliably related to perceptions of such differences. Study 2 investigated the effects of perceived demographic dissimilarity. Data were gathered from an additional 175 coaches. Structural equation modeling indicated that perceived demographic differences were associated with perceived deep-level dissimilarity (i.e., differences in personality, values, and attitudes). In turn, perceived deep-level dissimilarity was negatively related to coworker satisfaction and held a positive association with organizational turnover intentions. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical contributions to the relational demography perspective.     

Supervisors' upward exchange relationships and subordinate outcomes: testing the multilevel mediation role of empowerment

This study empirically examined the proposition that supervisors' exchange relationships with their own supervisors (i.e., leader-leader exchange, or LLX) are related to their subordinates' work-related outcomes through 3 mechanisms: (a) leaders modeling their LLX to develop and maintain their exchange relationships with their subordinates (i.e., leader-member exchange, or LMX), (b) motivating the team and its members, captured by team and individual empowerment, and (c) facilitating the relationships between LMX and individual outcomes. Analyses of multisource and lagged data from 104 team supervisors and 577 subordinates showed that LMX mediated the positive relationship of LLX on subordinates' individual empowerment. Furthermore, team empowerment and individual empowerment sequentially mediated the positive relationships between LLX and subordinates' job satisfaction and job performance. The authors also found that the indirect relationships of LMX with job satisfaction and job performance via individual empowerment were stronger when LLX was higher. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The relative importance of task,citizenship and counterproductive performance to job performance ratings: Do rater source and team‐based culture matter?

This study contributes to our understanding of which factors predict raters' policies for combining performance components into an overall job performance rating. We used a work‐roles framework to examine the effects of rater source and team‐based culture. The sample consisted of 612 individuals in three job categories (317 nurses, 168 personnel recruiters and 127 sales representatives). Respondents rated employee performance profiles that were described on task, citizenship and counterproductive performance. Raters' weights differed by (a) organizational culture (low‐ vs. high‐team‐based); (b) rating source (supervisor vs. peer) and (c) job. In a team‐based culture, more weight was given to citizenship performance and less to task performance. Peers attached more importance to citizenship performance and less to task performance. Implications of these findings for performance management are discussed.     

悖论型领导对员工工作投入的影响：有调节的中介模型

通过构建有调节的中介模型,本研究揭示了悖论型领导“如何”影响员工工作投入以及影响“何时”更弱或更强。在3个时点收集了320份员工数据,结果表明：（1）悖论型领导正向影响员工的工作投入;（2）心理授权部分中介了悖论型领导对工作投入的影响;（3）工作复杂性调节了悖论型领导对员工心理授权的影响;（4）工作复杂性调节了心理授权在悖论型领导与工作投入之间的中介作用。以上结论能为管理者促进员工的工作投入提供指导。     

A multilevel study of leadership, empowerment, and performance in teams

A multilevel model of leadership, empowerment, and performance was tested using a sample of 62 teams, 445 individual members, 62 team leaders, and 31 external managers from 31 stores of a Fortune 500 company. Leader-member exchange and leadership climate related differently to individual and team empowerment and interacted to influence individual empowerment. Also, several relationships were supported in more but not in less interdependent teams. Specifically, leader-member exchange related to individual performance partially through individual empowerment; leadership climate related to team performance partially through team empowerment; team empowerment moderated the relationship between individual empowerment and performance; and individual performance was positively related to team performance. Contributions to team leadership theory, research, and practices are discussed.