Journal of Organizational Behavior最新文献

The rise of gig work—flexible, short-term, task-based labor, often mediated by digital platforms—has significantly reshaped the employment landscape. This special issue presents five articles that investigate gig work through the lens of organizational behavior (OB), offering new theoretical perspectives and practical insights into this rapidly growing labor segment. The articles examine a range of psychological processes central to gig work, including identity regulation, flow experience, psychological detachment, safety and risk assessments, and algorithmic management. Taken together, they demonstrate that gig work represents more than just a novel context for applying existing theories; it also provides opportunities to rethink foundational OB constructs such as autonomy, motivation, emotional well-being, and managerial control. This special issue illustrates how distinctive features of gig work—algorithmic oversight, precariousness, and limited organizational attachment—challenge traditional assumptions embedded in existing OB theories. Furthermore, it highlights methodological challenges and opportunities unique to gig research. By showcasing gig work's theoretical richness and methodological distinctiveness, we aim to stimulate future research that positions gig work not as peripheral, but as a central domain in the evolution of OB.

Leader role transition is a critical stage in which new leaders learn leadership skills, develop their leader identity, and gain social validation. As the successful transition to one's leader role has important implications for individual career success and organizational performance, research interest in this topic has steadily grown over the last decade. However, this literature is developing in a rather fragmented and isolated manner. The absence of a unifying conceptual framework stands to potentially stymy progress and understanding of this phenomenon. Therefore, we highlight leader role transition as a unique leadership topic and aim to provide a holistic understanding of leader role transition as a dynamic process. In a systematic review of 136 articles, we identify three key lines of inquiry (i.e., adjustment, identity transformation, and social construction) and synthesize them through the lens of role transition theory. In doing so, we develop an integrative framework that aims to move this literature toward a more comprehensive and process-based understanding of leader role transition. We conclude our review with recommendations for future research directions.

Trust and helping both reflect positive relationships between organizational members and are vital to organizational success. Although prior research has demonstrated their connection with each other, most studies have examined trust and helping behavior in a static manner. Relatedly, although recent research has started to utilize network methods to consider the role of the surrounding social context in shaping trust, these inquiries remain limited by a static, aggregate view, looking at network structures such as one's network size or position in the network. The current study aims to advance our understanding by examining how trust and helping behaviors coevolve dynamically within social networks, incorporating both dyadic and triadic (third-party) influences. Integrating social information processing theory with social exchange theory, the current study explores how individuals develop trust and engage in helping behaviors in a triad through interacting with each other and observing the informational and social elements in the triad. Based on three-wave social network data from a Chinese hospital, we used stochastic actor–based modeling to examine the dynamic coevolution of trust and helping ties over time. The results demonstrated that trust and helping networks evolve reciprocally, influenced by the types of relationships and agents involved. Specifically, interpersonal helping fosters trust within dyads, and trust can be transferred through third-party connections. Employees are more likely to trust a coworker when they receive indirect help from the coworker or when the coworker engages in helping behaviors with others. Employees also tend to help a coworker when both are trusted by a third party. Overall, these results highlight the importance of third-party influences in shaping trust and helping behaviors, offering new insights for both theory and practice.

Value congruence research is based on the assumption that the alignment of individual and organizational values leads to positive outcomes, irrespective of the particular values involved. This assumption can, however, be questioned based on research indicating that different types of values are related to diverging outcomes. A prime example of this research draws from self-determination theory (SDT), which asserts that intrinsic values (e.g., contributing to society) are positively related to beneficial outcomes (e.g., well-being, commitment, OCB), whereas extrinsic values (e.g., fame) are negatively related to such outcomes. We integrate SDT with value congruence research to answer whether outcomes depend on the congruence between individual and organizational values as well as on the content of the values involved. Using longitudinal data from 740 employees and applying polynomial regression analysis, we show that the relationships of individual and organizational values with outcomes depend on the content of values. For instance, when intrinsic values are congruent, work engagement increases with rising individual and organizational values. Conversely, the presence of extrinsic values is associated with increased deviant behavior and emotional exhaustion, even under conditions of value congruence. Our findings advocate a contingency approach to value congruence research, which considers the critical importance of the content of values. We conclude by discussing practical implications and directions for future research.

Justice literature has long documented how the level of leaders' high-arousal positive and negative affect at a certain point in the day influences their subsequent justice rule adherence. However, this approach overlooks the impact of fluctuations in leaders' affect (the magnitude of dispersion in leaders' affective states) throughout the day. As an essential step toward a more precise and nuanced theory, we adopt a more comprehensive and dynamic approach to examining the impact of leaders' affect. We first differentiate leaders' affect fluctuation within the high-arousal positive affect/negative affect category (daily positive/negative affect fluctuation) from affect fluctuation across affect categories in arousal (daily arousal fluctuation) and valence (daily valence fluctuation) throughout the day. Drawing on ego-depletion theory and implicit theories of leadership emotions, we hypothesize that leaders' daily affect fluctuation inhibits their daily justice rule adherence through the mechanism of ego-depletion. We also argue that these relationships are weaker for female leaders compared to male leaders. Analysis of interval-based experience sampling data collected from 83 managers suggested that leaders' daily positive affect fluctuation (but not daily negative affect fluctuation), daily arousal fluctuation, and daily valence fluctuation were positively related to their daily ego-depletion, which, in turn, decreased daily justice rule adherence. Furthermore, the results indicated that the indirect effect of leaders' daily valence fluctuation on daily justice rule adherence was weaker for female leaders compared to male leaders.

Although there has been a growing interest in studying the dark side of personality among working individuals, studies have predominantly focused on dark triad traits. However, to understand when employees turn to their dark side, it is crucial to gain insights into the specific factors that trigger dark triad states. Because the ability to regulate one's behavior in part relies upon periods of rest and recovery, impaired sleep might play a crucial role in understanding why and when dark triad expressions occur at work. Using a 10-day experience sampling method (ESM) design among 103 employees (N_{repeated observations} = 786), the current study tested (i) the within-person relationship between sleep perception (sleep quality and quantity) and dark triad states and (ii) whether distress tolerance mediates this relationship. The results indicate negative associations between sleep quality/quantity and each of the dark triad states. Moreover, distress tolerance partly mediates the relationship between sleep perception and overall dark triad states. These findings suggest that sleep-deficient employees are more prone to exhibit dark traits, contributing to insights on mitigating such expressions in the workplace.

Inefficacy plays a crucial role in the manifestation of burnout, leading to various adverse outcomes for employees and organizations. Although previous studies have empirically demonstrated that individuals with high conscientiousness are less prone to experiencing inefficacy, this relationship remains undertheorized. Leveraging the theory of purposeful work behavior and the organizational cognitive neuroscience perspective, we provide a novel theoretical framework and develop a neurological index representing the achievement goal–directed mechanism connecting conscientiousness to inefficacy among employees. We conducted a survey involving 201 full-time working adults from diverse organizations, measuring their brains through structural MRI and resting-state fMRI. The results reveal that a neurological index indicative of the achievement goal–directed mechanism—specifically, resting-state functional connectivity of the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex with the left hippocampus (RSFC of MPFC-HC)—was negatively associated with inefficacy and positively associated with conscientiousness. Importantly, mediation analysis establishes that this neurological index partially mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and inefficacy. These findings carry significant theoretical and practical implications for addressing inefficacy in the workplace.