Journal of Organizational Behavior最新文献

Coming up with creative ideas is not easy. In this conceptual article, we integrate organizational behavior, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience literatures to propose that different forms of attention may be a key to maximizing creative usefulness and novelty. Specifically, we develop a neurocognitive framework of attentional control to propose differential pathways from creative goal-directed attention (a narrow and selective focus) to deliberate information processing, and from undirected attention (a wide and unconstrained focus) to spontaneous information processing. These propositions have implications for creative usefulness and novelty, respectively—namely, that creative goal-directed attention should facilitate the usefulness of creative outputs to a greater extent than their novelty, whereas undirected attention should promote the novelty of creative outputs to a greater extent than their usefulness. Our framework further suggests that time spent experiencing creative goal-directed attention followed by undirected attention is the optimal sequence for maximizing both the usefulness and novelty of creative outputs. In combination, our framework advances theoretical understanding of attentional pathways to creative outcomes and offers practical implications for maximizing creative potential at work.

Tang, Y., Huang, X., & Wang, Y. (2017). Good marriage at home, creativity at work: Family–work enrichment effect on workplace creativity. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(5), 749–766, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2175

On Page 754, the text of Hypothesis H4 “Employees' creative personality moderates the indirect relationship between their marital satisfaction and workplace creativity through family–work resource spillover, such that the relationship is more pronounced when employees' creative personality is high than when it is low.” was incorrect. This should have read: “Employees' creative personality moderates the indirect relationship between their marital satisfaction and workplace creativity through family–work resource spillover, such that the relationship is more pronounced when employees' creative personality is low than when it is high.”

We apologize for this error.

The weekend constitutes an important recovery period for employees. However, psychologically reattaching to work on Monday can be difficult because employees must transition from their private to their work role. Building on boundary theory and integrating a sleep and circadian perspective, we shed light on this transition by investigating antecedents and outcomes of Monday reattachment. We propose that three weekend sleep characteristics differentially relate to reattachment on Monday: weekend sleep quality, catch-up sleep (extended sleep duration on the weekend), and social sleep lag (differences in sleep times workweek vs. weekend). Successful reattachment on Monday should, in turn, be related to lower levels of exhaustion and higher task performance during the workweek. We conducted a weekly diary study with 310 employees (933 weeks) over four workweeks. Two-level path models demonstrated that higher weekend sleep quality was indirectly related to lower levels of workweek exhaustion via higher levels of Monday reattachment. In contrast, higher catch-up sleep was related to higher levels of workweek exhaustion via lower levels of Monday reattachment. Accordingly, we demonstrate that Monday reattachment can set the tone for the entire workweek, but the capability to reattach can depend on weekend sleep as a core recovery process.

Paradox theory suggests that contradictory demands, like applying current work methods while exploring new ones, should be viewed as dualities with competing and complementary aspects. It advocates for employee ambidexterity, where employees must manage exploitation and exploration. We know little about how personal dispositions affect ambidexterity independently or when interacting with situational factors. Based on a time-lagged survey of 364 employee–supervisor pairs from 74 R&D teams, we found that proactive disposition was positively related to ambidexterity, enhancing creativity. Guided by trait activation theory, we found further that paradoxical supervision and job autonomy enhanced the relationship between proactive disposition and employee ambidexterity and the indirect effect of proactive disposition on creativity via ambidexterity. We discuss these findings' theoretical and practical implications, extending the literature on proactivity, ambidexterity, and paradox theory.

The star performer gender gap highlights women's challenges in being recognized as star performers. We investigated whether people hold shared beliefs about characteristics star performers possess (i.e., implicit star performer theories, ISPTs) and whether perceptions of stars are (a) gendered and (b) context-specific. Guided by categorization theory, we argue that individuals have shared perceptions of what constitutes a star performer. Employing an inductive approach, we uncovered the existence of ISPTs that are distinct and differ from previously identified implicit theories, such as those about leadership. Specifically, stars were believed to have six characteristics: Driven, Relational, Extraordinary, Fascinating, Tenacious, and Brilliant. We then applied role congruity theory to argue that perceptions of star performers would be gendered and context-dependent. Using an experimental approach, we ascertained that people associated star performers with more masculine than feminine attributes, what we labeled the think star, think men phenomenon. Moreover, this association was context-dependent, such that the association of star performers with masculine attributes was stronger in men-dominated occupations. Our third study used a non-reactive approach (i.e., “Princeton trilogy”), and results showed that star performers are seen as possessing more masculine attributes than very good employees. Overall, our three studies using inductive, experimental, and indirect methods based on eight samples of 2322 participants consistently supported the existence of ISPTs and the think star, think men phenomenon, improving our understanding of the star performer gender gap.

Contemporary work teams are increasingly faced with external pressures and changing demands that thrust them into stressful conditions that require coping to maintain not only performance but also well-being. In this paper, we treat the COVID-19 pandemic as an extreme case of multilevel stressors and coping in teams to investigate how teams and their members simultaneously cope with stressors at both individual and team levels and the impacts this has on their well-being. We conducted a longitudinal qualitative multi-case study involving 12 teams, utilizing data from 69 members collected through diaries, interviews, and surveys over a period of 6 months. Our findings illustrate how the needs and coping efforts of teams and individuals can sometimes conflict, resulting in opposing states of well-being at different levels. We frame this phenomenon as the multilevel well-being paradox. Our emergent process model of multilevel coping in teams suggests that teams thrive when they establish a shared appraisal of stressors and coping options through active team reflection, and when they adopt coping approaches that align with the specific stressors experienced at both levels. This study advances our understanding of coping in teams by illuminating the intricate interplay between team and individual well-being and highlighting the paradoxical nature of this relationship.