Clash of the climates: Examining the paradoxical effects of climates for promotion and prevention |
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Authors: | Jeremy M. Beus Lorenzo Lucianetti Winfred Arthur Jr. |
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Affiliation: | 1. Rucks Department of Management, Louisiana State University, 2713 Business Education Complex, Baton Rouge, Louisiana;2. Department of Management and Business Administration, University of Chieti and Pescara, Viale Pindaro 42, Pescara, Italy;3. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, 4235 TAMU, College Station, Texas |
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Abstract: | Organizations often communicate seemingly paradoxical strategic imperatives to their employees that reflect a focus on promotion (take risks) and prevention (be prudent), as outlined by regulatory focus theory. When consistently emphasized and reinforced in an organization, these strategic inclinations can emerge as divergent climates for promotion and prevention that cloud the organization's perceived identity and reduce collective organizational commitment among employees. With a coherent organizational identity acting as both a sensemaking tool and a means of potential self-enhancement for employees, we use social identity theory to hypothesize that similarly emphasized promotion and prevention climates are negatively related to employees’ collective organizational commitment and indirectly, negatively related to organizational productivity. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 107 manufacturing organizations, using polynomial regression with response surface analysis to examine how similarly emphasized promotion and prevention climates relate to collective commitment and organizational productivity. Our analyses reveal that as organization-level promotion and prevention climate scores became more similar, collective organizational commitment decreases. Furthermore, we find that similarly emphasized promotion and prevention climates are negatively related to organizational productivity via collective commitment. We reconcile these findings with the organizational paradox and ambidexterity literatures and implicate promising avenues for future research. |
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Keywords: | collective commitment collective regulatory focus organizational climate organizational identity response surface analysis |
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