Journal of Organizational Behavior最新文献

Traditionally, older employees have held higher positions in the organizational hierarchy. However, today, there is significant variation among firms in the extent to which age is correlated with rank. In this study, we integrate the career timetable and social exchange theory to propose that age–rank correlation is related to organizational performance, serially mediated by the perceived age discrimination climate and organizational innovation. We further suggest that the direction of this indirect relationship depends on firms' environmental dynamism. We find support for our moderated serial mediation framework using multisource data from 12,829 employees, 68 top HR representatives, and 229 top managers in 68 firms. Under lower levels of environmental dynamism, age–rank correlation was negatively related to perceived age discrimination climate and had a positive indirect relationship with organizational performance. Under higher levels of environmental dynamism, age–rank correlation was positively related to perceived age discrimination climate and had a negative indirect relationship with organizational performance. Our study provides a more nuanced view of the fading link between age and rank, which has typically been viewed negatively and from an individual perspective only. Additionally, our results have important practical implications for organizations navigating a shifting workforce demographic in increasingly dynamic environments.

Organizations need resilient employees to navigate and leverage constant change and maneuver in turbulent, disruptive contexts. As such, it is imperative to advance a nuanced understanding of drivers and enablers of employee resilience, especially in the current business context of pervasive digitalization and the growing practice of work-from-everywhere. Our research explores how digitalization in the organization is reflected in the employees' behavior of taking charge and resilience. By accounting for core self-evaluation, digital literacy, and inclusive climate boundary conditions, we offer a holistic picture of under what conditions digitalization enhances taking charge and employee resilience. To test our study model, we follow a survey research design and rely on 173 employees' data working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Our results show that digitalization is positively related to employee resilience. Further, our findings show that core self-evaluation, digital literacy, and inclusive climate moderate the impact of digitalization on employee resilience. Our results received further support in a two-wave online survey with 306 employees in the United States. The support we found for the hypothesized mediating relationship highlights the criticality of taking charge in relation to digitalization and employee resilience. Taking charge is critical in relatively turbulent environments as it helps employees deal with changes in processes, procedures, and structures.

Research on social networking primarily focuses on the long-term benefits of upward networking on career success. However, how it influences employees in the short term is largely overlooked. Integrating conservation of resources theory and self-control strength model, we developed a moderated dual-pathway model that simultaneously examines the immediate benefit and cost of upward networking and investigates how trait self-control moderates the dual-pathway mechanism. Based on two experiments and a time-lagged experience sampling study, we examined the moderated effects of trait self-control, as well as the conditionally indirect relationship between upward networking and work engagement through the resource gain of perceived impact at work and the resource loss of ego depletion. We found that, on the one hand, for employees high in trait self-control, engaging in upward networking is likely to be related to perceived impact at work and indirectly affects work engagement. On the other hand, for employees with low trait self-control, engaging in upward networking is likely to increase ego depletion and indirectly affects work engagement. Overall, our findings contribute to theories of social networking and self-control and specifically highlight the complexity of upward networking, which both empowers and burdens employees in terms of immediate work outcomes.

While leader-expressed humility has received an upsurge in attention in recent years, a fundamental issue that remains unaddressed is whether leader-expressed humility, as a bottom–up leadership approach, could indeed elevate followers' workplace status and eventually unleash their leadership potential; if so, how and when? Drawing on expectation states theory (EST) and using two multi-wave datasets, including one from 216 one-to-one matched supervisor–subordinate dyads in China (Study 1) and the other from 210 subordinates in Western countries (Study 2), we provide evidence that leader humility is effective in elevating followers' workplace status, particularly when followers' individualistic orientation is high. This elevated perception of workplace status also increases followers' leadership potential, demonstrated by their motivation to lead and taking charge behaviors. These findings offer novel theoretical and practical insights into the implications of leader humility for followers' leadership potential.

Given Machiavellianism's strong historical and theoretical roots in power and politics, there are surprisingly few empirical studies, if any, that directly examine how Machiavellians attain and maintain power in organizations. Understanding this is important because Machiavellian employees have managed to effectively gain power to reach managerial positions of influence in organizations despite their negative reputation. Further, there are contradictory theories and peripheral empirical findings that suggest they gain power either by strategically forging important connections or through coercive force. We propose that a Mach middle manager perspective can help illuminate which power-gaining strategy is used. Drawing from the Machiavellianism literature and power dependence theory, we theorize how Mach middle managers gain coercive power through abusive supervision on those with less power (their subordinates), while building close guanxi with those with more power (their senior manager) to obtain relational empowerment. Moreover, we theorize that they maintain power by increasing both power-gaining strategies when Mach middle managers perceive a high threat to hierarchy from subordinates, suggesting these parallel relations are positively connected. We found support for our theoretical model using data from a multi-confederate experimental lab study and two multi-wave field studies. The theoretical and empirical implications of our findings are discussed.

We rely on social interdependence theory to examine bottom-line mentality (BLM) as a motivational state that explains the effects of competitive rewards on oppositional actions in the forms of decreases in interpersonal organizational citizenship behavior (OCBI) and increases in social undermining. In line with social interdependence theory, we also examine learning goal orientation as a motivational attribute that can weaken these effects, suggesting that in comparison to employees low on learning goal orientation, employees high on the attribute are less likely to respond to their BLMs (that result from competitive rewards) with dysfunctional behaviors, because these employees will pursue their bottom-line outcomes with an innate motivation to learn. We tested our hypotheses with three studies: an experimental study, a multisource, field study from a U.S. corporation, and a diverse, multisource, time-lagged field study. Results from the experimental study and first field study revealed that BLM mediated the negative relationship between competitive rewards and OCBI; the second field study replicated these findings and demonstrated support for our full moderated mediation model. We provide theoretical and empirical support for the notion that BLM can serve as a motivational state that explains the effects of competition on workplace behaviors and learning goal orientation influences these effects.