Journal of Organizational Behavior最新文献

Although leader anger expression targeted at employees' unethical behavior is pervasive in the workplace, we still know little about its theoretical meaning and consequences. To address this theoretical blind spot, we drew on fairness heuristic theory to investigate whether, how, and when unethical-behavior-targeted (UB-targeted) leader anger expression affects team outcomes. Our findings from two time-lagged field studies suggest that a punishment-based distributive justice climate mediates the positive effects of UB-targeted leader anger expression on team organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and team viability. Moreover, leader moral decoupling weakens these indirect relationships. Specifically, the indirect relationships are weaker when the leader separated judgments of performance from those of ethics. These findings highlight the importance of a fairness perspective in understanding the consequences of leader anger expression targeted at unethical behaviors.

Peer voice endorsement is widespread in the workplace. Drawing on social information processing theory and sociofunctional view, this paper proposes that observers' (both negative and positive) psychological and behavioral responses to peer voice endorsement depend on their instrumental attribution for peer voice. Specifically, when observers have a higher level of instrumental attribution, peer voice endorsement is more positively associated with status threat, in turn affecting observers' negative gossip. When observers have a lower level of instrumental attribution, peer voice endorsement is more positively associated with perceived peer competence, which in turn affects observers' role modeling proactive behavior. These results are largely supported by data from a multi-wave field study and two experimental designs. The theoretical and practical implications of this study and future research directions are presented.

As workers and family members, individuals ought to celebrate seemingly positive events (e.g., a promotion and the purchase of a home). Yet, the numerous identities that contemporary workers hold increase the likelihood of an event that is pleasant in one domain being problematic in another and more cognitively and affectively complex than anticipated. We theorize that these events are likely to prompt self-evaluations that are positive (“I'm a success!”) and negative (“I'm a failure.”) across one's identity set, with questions such as “Who have I become?” and “Is this who I ought to be?” The result is self-ambivalence, that is, a simultaneously oppositional orientation toward oneself. We view this as a contemporary cognitive and affective experience for which theorizing in work and family is largely absent. Our conceptual model begins with “work–family ought events,” events accompanied by both possibilities and limitations that prompt identity-related self-examination. We acknowledge the influence of multi-level social systems including organizational, societal, individual, and partner factors, which can intensify self-ambivalence. We propose the experience of self-ambivalence has implications for self-concept clarity and ultimately well-being in both the work and family domains and extend theory on this problem of self-ambivalence, a problem that heretofore “had no name.”

Challenge and hindrance appraisals are important to understand the effect of job demands. To date, challenge and hindrance appraisals have been studied in tandem. However, it is unknown whether, how, and when the two appraisals jointly affect employee performance. Integrating effort justification theory and goal orientation theory, the current manuscript seeks to investigate the three-way interaction effects of challenge appraisal, hindrance appraisal, and both performance-prove goal orientation and learning goal orientation on task performance via job meaningfulness and activated positive emotions. In a diary study among 96 employees over 10 consecutive workdays (N_Occasion = 960, N_Employee = 96), we found that at the daily level, hindrance appraisal strengthens (a) the effects of challenge appraisal of job demands on job meaningfulness and activated positive emotions and (b) the indirect effects of challenge appraisal on task performance via job meaningfulness and activated positive emotions. Furthermore, the strengthening effects of hindrance appraisal are more pronounced as individual trait performance-prove goal orientation increases, but they do not vary as individual trait learning goal orientation decreases. These research findings shed light on effort justification in explaining the interaction effects of challenge and hindrance appraisals and the role of goal orientation in the process.

Changing workplace dynamics have led employers to increasingly adopt electronic monitoring technologies so supervisors can observe and ensure employee compliance and productivity—outcomes the monitoring literature has long supported. Yet, employee productivity depends on strong leader–member social exchange, and the relational consequences of electronic monitoring for supervisor and employee are not well understood. To help resolve this tension within the monitoring literature and add understanding in regard to the effects of electronic monitoring on employee productivity, we use social exchange theory to examine the implications of electronic monitoring for the supervisor–employee exchange relationship. We theorize that electronic monitoring facilitates (rather than inhibits) production deviance and inhibits (rather than facilitates) task performance by undermining the exchange of social benefits and, consequently, eroding leader–member social exchange. Yet, we also hypothesize that supervisors who give performance monitoring data back to employees in a developmental way (i.e., developmental feedback) compensate for the loss of certain social benefits, and, thereby, buffer the negative relational consequences of electronic monitoring. Across an experimental online study and a field study, we find converging support for our predictions and rule out alternative explanations. This research provides timely insights into how to effectively use electronic monitoring without promoting unintended consequences.