The end is the beginning – the role of residual affective commitment in former interns’ intention to return and word-of-mouth

Interns are ubiquitous in organizations, yet relatively rarely studied, particularly after their temporary organizational membership has ended. Adopting an organizational commitment perspective, we conducted two studies to investigate two important outcomes of former interns’ membership: intention to return to their former employer, and word-of-mouth, that is, promoting the organization as an employer. In Study 1 (N = 436; lagged design), we found that residual affective commitment, that is, the remaining commitment after leaving an organization, related to former interns’ subsequent intention to return and word-of-mouth. In Study 2 (N = 236; cross-sectional design), we replicated our findings, and further found that intention to return was related to (lack of) alternative employment, hiring expectation, and attractiveness of the organization’s location. Location attractiveness also interacted with residual affective commitment on both intention to return and word-of-mouth, albeit in different directions. Overall, our findings suggest that the internship experience relates to future behaviours important for recruiting new (and old) employees. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our studies.     

Empathie organisationnelle,soutien organisationnel perçu et efficacité des équipes de travail dans l’industrie nucléaire

This research studies social climate's role in the efficacy of work teams. The referential work frame is based on the concept of organizational empathy (Guédon & Bernaud, 2008), which is specifically operationalized on a tri-dimensional model basis and the perceived organizational support from Eisenberger's model (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). A total of 274 employees, belonging to 3 professional groups, who worked in a nuclear power house participated in this research. Linear regression analysis’ results show a major effect of organizational empathy on the efficacy of work teams, nevertheless predictors’ hierarchy varies upon occupied professional function.     

Psychological ownership in relation to workplace trust and turnover intent

The study investigated the relationship between workplace trust, psychological ownership and turnover intent within a South African professional services organisation. A cross-sectional quantitative survey design was used to collect data from a purposive sample (n = 302) of skilled, highly skilled and professional employees in a professional services industry. The participants completed the Psychological Ownership Questionnaire, Workplace Trust Survey, and Turnover Intentions Scale. The results from structural equation modelling (SEM) suggest psychological ownership to be significantly related to workplace trust (positively) and turnover intent (negatively). In addition, the findings indicate psychological ownership to fully mediate the relationship between workplace trust and turnover intent. By implication, work environments that fostered workplace trust would increase the level of psychological ownership that employees’ experienced, which, in turn, would reduce employees’ intent to leave their workplace.     

Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool: A Novel Method for Assessing the Quality of Ethics Case Consultations Based on Written Records

Although ethics consultation is offered as a clinical service in most hospitals in the United States, few valid and practical tools are available to evaluate, ensure, and improve ethics consultation quality. The quality of ethics consultation is important because poor quality ethics consultation can result in ethically inappropriate outcomes for patients, other stakeholders, or the health care system. To promote accountability for the quality of ethics consultation, we developed the Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool (ECQAT). ECQAT enables raters to assess the quality of ethics consultations based on the written record. Through rigorous development and preliminary testing, we identified key elements of a quality ethics consultation (ethics question, consultation-specific information, ethical analysis, and conclusions and/or recommendations), established scoring criteria, developed training guidelines, and designed a holistic assessment process. This article describes the development of the ECQAT, the resulting product, and recommended future testing and potential uses for the tool.     

面孔对领导者有多重要?——领导者的面孔特征研究述评

近年来,面孔研究已渗透进领导力研究领域,并掀起了一股领导者面孔特征的研究热潮。目前,可操作化的领导者面孔特征主要包括:面孔年龄、面孔宽高比和面孔特质,这些面孔特征不仅会影响下属的态度和行为,还能提供客观的组织绩效信息。认知心理学的内隐领导理论、原型匹配理论和进化心理学的优良基因理论、本能释放理论是上述机制的重要依据。未来研究可探讨华人领导者的娃娃脸效应及权变因素。     

包容性领导与下属揭发意愿的关系:一个被调节的中介效应模型

通过332组在职MBA学员样本数据分析验证了包容性领导对下属揭发意愿的影响机制,结果表明:(1)包容性领导显著正向影响下属的揭发意愿;(2)组织支持感在包容性领导与揭发意愿之间起完全中介作用;(3)上司组织代表性调节包容性领导与下属组织支持感之间的关系,上司的组织代表性越高,二者间的正向关系越强;(4)上司组织代表性调节组织支持感对包容性领导与下属揭发意愿之间关系的中介作用。     

Trust in organization as a moderator of the relationship between self‐efficacy and workplace outcomes: A social cognitive theory‐based examination

Drawing on a social cognitive theory perspective, we contend that an employee's trust in oneself, or self‐efficacy, will interact with the individual's trust in the system, or trust in organization, to predict job attitudes and behaviours. Specifically, we expected that self‐efficacy would have stronger effects on job attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intentions) and behaviours (task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours) to the degree to which employees perceive high levels of trust in organization. Using data collected from 300 employees and their respective supervisors at a manufacturing organization in Turkey across three waves, we found that self‐efficacy had more positive effects on job satisfaction, task performance, and citizenship behaviours when trust in organization was high. Interestingly, self‐efficacy had a positive effect on turnover intentions when trust in organization was low, indicating that high trust in organization buffered the effects of self‐efficacy on intentions to leave. The results suggest that the motivational value of trust in oneself is stronger to the degree to which employees also have high trust in the system, whereas low trust in system neutralizes the motivational benefits of self‐efficacy.

Practitioner points

• Practicing managers should not only invest in increasing self‐efficacy of their employees, but also invest in building trust to improve employees’ attitudes, behaviours, and performance. This is because when employee trust in organization is high, employee self‐efficacy has greater potential to have a positive influence over job satisfaction, task performance, and organizational citizenship behaviours.
• Self‐efficacy may actually increase an employee's desire to leave the organization when organizational conditions are unfavourable, such as in the case of low trust in the organization. Practicing managers should be aware that employees who have high levels of confidence may be at higher risk of turnover when they are unhappy with the organization.

     

Prototypical supervisors shape lay‐off victims’ experiences of top management justice and organizational support

Job loss is a pervasive experience affecting millions of workers around the globe annually. To investigate lay‐offs from the perspective of those who are affected, we conducted a lagged study examining lay‐off victims’ experiences of supervisory justice, top management justice, and organizational support. We test the hypotheses that the relationships between supervisory justice and lay‐off victims’ subsequent experiences of top management justice as well as organizational support are moderated by supervisors’ prototypicality of their team. Results from our study conducted during lay‐off process indicated that supervisory justice had a positive lagged impact on lay‐off victims’ unfolding experiences of both (1) top management justice and (2) organizational support for supervisors who were viewed as highly (but not lowly) prototypical of the team that both supervisors and subordinates were part of. Our study identifies a theoretically grounded moderator that may account for the presence (or absence) of cross‐foci effects found in previous multifoci justice studies. Moreover, our results shed light on the development of justice perceptions by demonstrating the impact of lower‐level supervisors in translating subordinates’ perceptions of justice of the supervisor to that of the top management. Findings suggest that supervisors have an important role to play in managing (for better or worse) the potentially harmful consequences associated with organizational redundancies.

Practitioner points

• Prototypical supervisors are ‘gatekeepers’ who are able to influence their subordinates’ relationship with the organization and its management.
• Involving supervisors in critical events such as lay‐offs may be important to effectively manage employees’ concerns.
• It may not be well advised to overly centralize responsibility for communicating information regarding lay‐offs under human resource departments.

     

Children's use of semantic organizational strategies is mediated by working memory capacity

In adults, the ability to apply semantic grouping strategies has been found to depend on working memory. To investigate this relation in children, two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping instruction) were administered to 6–12-year-olds. The role of working memory was examined by means of mediation analyses and by assessing whether children who successfully used the semantic grouping strategy had higher working memory capacity than did children who did not show such strategy use. Only children aged 8–12 were able to successfully use semantic grouping strategies (and 8–9-year-olds only after instruction), while strategy use was absent in 6–7-year-olds. Both types of analysis involving working memory suggested that, also in children, working memory (and not short-term memory) mediates the development of successful use of the semantic grouping strategy during both encoding and retrieval.     

组织信任修复的有效性：兼顾违背类型与修复策略的影响

已有关于信任修复的研究主要集中在正直和／或能力违背方面,关注特定信任修复策略的修复效果。本研究以修复机制划分修复策略,考察不信任的约束策略及信任的展示策略对于正直违背和善心违背的修复效果差异。以408名企业员工为被试,通过情景模拟法操作违背类型和修复策略,结果显示：组织信任的正直违背比善心违背破坏性更大,更难修复;约束策略对善心违背的修复效果显著高于对正直违背的修复效果;对正直违背来说,展示策略相对更有效。