Journal of Applied Psychology最新文献

The predominant view in the employee proactivity literature highlights the importance of personality as well as a trio of agentic forces-namely, "can do," "reason to," and "energized to" motivation-that drive employee proactive behavior. Complementing existing theoretical frameworks, we introduce the concept of proactivity permission, defined as an employee's tacit perception of the extent to which they are "allowed to" perform proactive behaviors at work. In this article, we investigate the psychological experience of proactivity permission. Directly drawn from the dominance theory of deontic reasoning, we model a set of individual (employee status, psychological entitlement), relational (leader-member exchange), and group-level predictors (organizational rule consistency, normative tightness) of proactivity permission and demonstrate the construct's value in predicting proactive behavior over and above many well-established antecedents from the literature. In a field study of 388 employees and 110 supervisors in 35 organizations, we found support for our predictions. We discuss implications of our work for the literature on employee behavior and proactive work behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

To date, little is known about what interventions can help individuals attain leadership roles in organizations. To address this knowledge gap, we integrate insights from the communication and leadership literatures to test debate training as a novel intervention for leadership emergence. We propose that debate training can increase individuals' leadership emergence by fostering assertiveness-"an adaptive style of communication in which individuals express their feelings and needs directly, while maintaining respect for others" (American Psychological Association, n.d.)-a valued leadership characteristic in U.S. organizations. Experiment 1 was a three-wave longitudinal field experiment at a Fortune 100 U.S. company. Individuals (N = 471) were randomly assigned to either receive a 9-week debate training or not. Eighteen months later, the treatment-group participants were more likely to have advanced in leadership level than the control-group participants, an effect mediated by assertiveness increase. In a sample twice as large (N = 975), Experiment 2 found that individuals who were randomly assigned to receive debate training (vs. nondebate training or no training) acted more assertively and had higher leadership emergence in a subsequent group activity. Results were consistent across self-rated, group-member-rated, and coder-rated assertiveness. Moderation analyses suggest that the effects of debate training were not significantly different for (a) U.S.- and foreign-born individuals, (b) men and women, or (c) different ethnic groups. Overall, our experiments suggest that debate training can help individuals attain leadership roles by developing their assertiveness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Promoting internal employees to managerial positions (internal sourcing) is a popular employee retention tactic. Although some research indicates that internal sourcing reduces voluntary turnover, conflicting evidence suggests that internal sourcing strategies make employees more difficult to retain in strong job markets (i.e., when job opportunities are plentiful relative to job seekers) because promotions increase an employee's external marketability. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic-a global exogenous shock that triggered an event chain characterized by a weak job market followed by a historically strong one-provided a unique opportunity to test these competing perspectives. Drawing upon event system theory and the unfolding model of turnover, we argue that internal sourcing creates positive perceptions among employees about their employer, making them less inclined to seek external opportunities during periods of heightened employee mobility. Specifically, we predict that internally sourced employees perceive lower levels of employment threat and higher levels of organizational support than those hired externally, which mitigates their turnover risk in strong job markets. We tested these predictions in two studies: a longitudinal field study involving 11,072 restaurant managers who were newly promoted or hired into their roles in the years surrounding the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the strong job market that followed and an experiment designed to mirror the field study conditions, in which we examined the psychological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Collectively, the results of our studies support our predictions, offering valuable insights into the effects of internal versus external sourcing on employee retention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Employees, especially in the service sector, often work long hours exposed to background music that they have little control over because it is usually selected to enhance customer experience. How does this affect employees' daily work experience? This research focuses on how a misfit between the type of music employees need and the background music played in their workplace impacts their psychological states and behaviors. Integrating stimulus-organism-response theory with the research on self-regulation of attention in the workplace, we theorize that workplace music misfit can lower employees' positive affect and increase cognitive depletion, further impacting their organizationally directed citizenship and counterproductive work behaviors. We also theorize that these adverse effects of workplace music misfit are stronger for employees who have lower stimulus screening ability. The test of our hypotheses across two studies-an online experimental study and a 3-week experience sampling methodology field study-broadly supported our theory. Our research offers a novel and dynamic account of workplace background music and its effects on employees' psychological states and workplace behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The literature on psychological contracts has focused on employees' perceptions of their employers' obligations, but not on employees' perceptions of their own obligations. Hence, perceived general obligation has seldom been theorized. This study argues that workplace support (i.e., from the organization, supervisors, and coworkers) and morally relevant traits (i.e., moral identity, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) predict perceived general obligation, that perceived general obligation predicts performance outcomes, and that the effects vary across cultures. Meta-analytic data collected from 148 samples (N = 45,671) provide preliminary support for the proposed relationships. I also examine the incremental validity of perceived general obligation in predicting performance outcomes beyond other correlates (e.g., normative commitment, positive and negative affect), the mediating role of perceived general obligation in its nomological network, and alternative models for linking the study variables. This study therefore illustrates the value of perceived general obligation in psychological contract research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).