Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology最新文献

Leader behaviour shifts across days, and empowering acts may shape leaders' subsequent self-regulation. Using a leader-centric, within-person lens, we test whether daily empowering leadership is associated with self-regulatory demands and when such demands arise. Drawing on control theory, we argue that power sharing requires continual calibration to keep autonomy and accountability aligned and may coincide with higher day-level regulatory strain indexed by leaders' self-reported ego depletion. We further propose that this strain is more likely when subordinates are low in proactive personality, and that strain is associated with greater directive leadership the next day as a structured response. We tested these expectations in a 10-day experience-sampling study of 129 supervisor–subordinate dyads (719 observations) in a military setting. Multilevel lagged analyses showed a conditional pattern consistent with next-day strain and the subsequent shift towards directive behaviour. These findings clarify when empowerment becomes harder to sustain and how leaders adapt by increasing structure.

Job autonomy is regarded as a resource that enhances motivation and performance. Yet, scholars have begun to question its uniformly positive portrayal, suggesting that job autonomy may have downsides. Addressing this debate, we examine how job autonomy can simultaneously foster desirable and undesirable outcomes for employees. Drawing from boundary theory, we propose that job autonomy increases problem-solving pondering, which enhances task performance but impairs psychological detachment. Our findings from a three-wave, time-lagged, multi-source study (N = 331) were consistent with our predictions. For long-term well-being, it may be especially important to support high job autonomy employees in managing work–home boundaries that enable them to disconnect and leave work problems at work.

Distrust is an inevitable yet often overlooked feature of relationships in professional service firms (PSFs), where simultaneous demands to collaborate and compete produce a coopetitive paradox shaping everyday organizational life. Drawing on 50 in-depth qualitative interviews using the critical incident technique, we examine how professionals attribute meaning to the development of distrust in their working relationships. The analysis identifies three recurring loci—readings of character and conduct (internal), signals from structures, processes, and cultures (external), and interactional cues in day-to-day exchanges (relational)—which often braid together into compound explanations for distrust that travel and endure. In high pressure, identity-sensitive PSFs, coopetition heightens this braiding, making small ambiguities easier to read as self-interest and harder to reverse. The study clarifies how distrust functions as an active, socially embedded process of meaning-making and why it proves so durable in coopetitive settings.

Planning is thought to benefit goal progress and goal achievement, thus fostering well-being and performance at work. In contrast to this positive view, the present study illustrates that planning might have undesirable effects when goals are not met. Specifically, planning may increase perceived stress in terms of lower control appraisals resulting from goal failure. In a diary study, we asked 192 employees to set daily work goals over the course of five workdays. We assessed planning every morning and perceived goal progress as well as goal failure and perceived stress every evening. As expected, planning was associated with increased perceived goal progress and, in turn, with reduced perceived stress (mediation effect). However, the direct relationship between planning and perceived stress was moderated by goal failure. When goals were achieved, planning was associated with decreased perceived stress; when goals were not achieved, planning was associated with increased perceived stress. The results show that planning positively relates to the perception of goal progress, but if goals are not met, planning may reinforce the resulting perceived stress. To counteract this potential side effect of planning, daily plans should anticipate potential setbacks and incorporate strategies for dealing with failure.

When the onus is on employees to request flexible work arrangements, they need to individually broker flexibility idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) with their supervisors. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated three factors: the types of appeals employees make when proposing flexibility i-deals, the gender of the requester and the number of remote workdays requested. In Study 1, 93 participants evaluated four flexible work requests (based on caring, business case, work–life integration for well-being or task fulfilment). Care-and business-based framings were more likely to be approved than the other request types. In the second study (N = 208), we manipulated requester gender and surprisingly found no effect; that is, men and women's flexibility i-deals were similarly approved for both the care and business case conditions. Managers were more likely to approve requests to work remotely for a shorter period, with 2 days preferred over four. Attitudes towards flexible work positively predicted approvals for any kind of appeal, highlighting the importance of managers' attitudes towards flexibility. Employees from diverse socio-economic groups, and those working in industries with varied flexible work access, need evidence-based research of this kind to inform their negotiations and to ensure that future flexibility requests become less idiosyncratic and more equitable.

Organizational support theory suggests that human resource practices are important antecedents of perceived organizational support which, in turn, influences employees' orientation towards their organization and their work behaviour, including further engagement with human resource practices. Based on organizational support theory and social exchange theory, we hypothesized positive and reciprocal within-person relations between work flexibilization and perceived organizational support. We tested these hypotheses using 30 waves of longitudinal data collected between July 2020 and December 2022 from n = 1000 full-time employees in Germany. Using an autoregressive latent trajectory model with structured residuals (ALT-SR), results suggest that higher levels of work flexibilization are associated with subsequently higher levels of perceived organizational support, and vice versa. These results suggest a dynamic and reciprocal within-person process wherein positive deviations from one's average trajectory of work flexibilization (perceived organizational support) are subsequently related to higher levels of perceived organizational support (work flexibilization). These findings imply a virtuous cycle where work flexibilization leads to more favourable perceptions of organizational support which, in turn, leads to an increase in employees' use of work flexibilization. However, such positive effects may be short-lived (i.e., lasting between approximately 15 and 20 months), likely diminishing in strength over time.

This review focuses on overviewing research applying Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) theory. Previous reviews of research fields applying it have focused on its evolution, theoretical advancements and empirical validations over time. However, they have largely overlooked the broader bibliometric landscape, including the complex interconnections and theoretical influences among the extensive studies inspired by this theory. Our study contributes by presenting a comprehensive review of the development and current state of the field. We implemented three bibliometric techniques—co-citation, co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling—to map the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of JD-R research. Additionally, we interpreted the results using the invisible colleges framework, focusing on five distinct time frames (2001–2004, 2005–2009, 2010–2014, 2015–2020 and 2021–2024). This produced an in-depth map of the evolution of the field and its emerging research frontiers. By uncovering the complex connections between studies, our analysis highlights how JD-R theory has integrated diverse theoretical perspectives and shaped the broader discourse on work-related outcomes across contexts and levels of analysis. These findings offer a foundation for future research to build on the theory's strengths and address its unexplored avenues, underpinning its continued relevance and impact.

Research on meaningful work (MW) has largely presumed that its effects are determined by absolute levels: when MW is high, outcomes are favourable, and when it is low, outcomes are less so. Yet, this assumption overlooks the fact that employees interpret current experiences against the backdrop of the past. In this study, we apply a temporal lens to MW by examining how directional changes (gains vs. losses) and inconsistency (deviations from prior experiences) shape organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). Across two experience-sampling studies (daily: 252 participants, 2200 observations; weekly: 387 participants, 2600 observations), we find that relative evaluations of MW explain OCB beyond absolute levels. Increases in MW generally enhance OCB more than decreases, but at the weekly level, inconsistency and even increases can undermine OCB. These findings underscore that MW is inherently dynamic and relative, advancing theory on how temporal comparisons shape work experiences and highlighting practical risks for sustaining employees' discretionary effort.

While leader–member exchange (LMX) research has traditionally viewed the quality of relationships between leaders and followers – known for their beneficial implications – as stable over time, this perspective is increasingly challenged. Understanding how LMX relationships evolve is especially important in an era where hybrid work disrupts the foundations of high-quality LMX relationships. Accordingly, this study aims to (1) examine changes in LMX relationships over 6 months to identify profiles of trajectories; and (2) assess the impact of the current hybrid work context on these LMX trajectories by focusing on telework intensity and monitoring practices (observational or interactional). Using three-wave longitudinal data from 769 workers across industries, we identified five distinct profiles. Among these, four displayed significant changes over time, supporting a dynamic view of LMX. Interestingly, greater fluctuations in LMX quality were associated with decreasing LMX trajectories, while higher telework intensity tended to reduce these fluctuations. Results demonstrated that monitoring practices played a critical role: observational monitoring was linked to the least desirable profiles, while interactional monitoring reduced the likelihood of belonging to those profiles. Moreover, monitoring practices impacted LMX trajectories, regardless of profile membership. The implications for LMX theory and managerial practices in a hybrid work context are discussed.

Recently, multiple, speeded assessments (MSAs) have emerged as an attractive selection and assessment method that confronts candidates with a large set of job-related behavioural simulations. This study draws on the theory of behavioural signatures (Mischel & Shoda, 1995, Psychological Review, 102, 246) to argue that there is untapped potential in MSAs. Besides obtaining information on candidate's mean level, it also allows assessing their intraindividual patterns of behaviour variations (“behavioural signatures”) across these simulations. We predicted that an assessment of behavioural signatures represents substantive information and improves the prediction of future performance above and beyond mean scores. Data were obtained from a sample of 96 junior managers who were rated by assessors on four interpersonal dimensions in an MSA that contained 18 short interpersonal role-plays. Results showed that participants can indeed be characterized by unique intraindividual patterns of behaviour variations across the role-plays and that participants differ in terms of these behavioural signatures. Moreover, between-person differences in behavioural signatures matter because, for submissiveness, affiliation and quarrelsomeness, they predict supervisory ratings of communication skills above and beyond participants' mean levels of submissiveness, affiliation and quarrelsomeness. The conceptual, research and practical implications of introducing the notion of behavioural signatures in assessment contexts are discussed.