Research in Organizational Behavior最新文献

We present theory suggesting that experiences at work that meet employees’ expectations of need fulfillment drive work engagement. Employees have needs (e.g., a desire to be authentic) and they also have expectations for how their job or their organization will fulfill them. We argue that experiences at work that confirm employees’ need fulfillment expectations yield a positive emotional state that is energizing, and that this energy is manifested in employees’ behaviors at work. Our theorizing draws on a review of the work engagement literature, in which we identify three core characteristics of work engagement: (a) a positive emotional state that (b) yields a feeling of energy and (c) leads to positive work-oriented behaviors. These key themes provide the foundation for further theorizing suggesting that interactions at work confirm or disconfirm employees’ need fulfillment expectations, leading to different levels of engagement. We extend our theorizing to argue that confirmation, or disconfirmation, of different need expectations will yield emotional experience of varying magnitudes, with confirmation of approach-oriented need expectations exerting stronger effects than the confirmation of avoidance-oriented need expectations. We close with a review suggesting that organizational contextual features influence the expression of these needs, sustaining or undermining the positive emotional experiences that fuel work engagement.

We review the new and growing body of work on power in teams and use this review to develop an emergent theory of how power impacts team outcomes. Our paper offers three primary contributions. First, our review highlights potentially incorrect assumptions that have arisen around the topic of power in teams and documents the areas and findings that appear most robust in explaining the effects of power on teams. Second, we contrast the findings of this review with what is known about the effects of power on individuals and highlight the directionally oppositional effects of power that emerge across different levels of analysis. Third, we integrate findings across levels of analysis into an emergent theory which explains why and when the benefits of power for individuals may paradoxically explain the potentially negative effects of power on team outcomes. We elaborate on how individual social comparisons within teams where at least one member has power increase intra-team power sensitivity, which we define as a state in which team members are excessively perceptive of, affected by, and responsive to resources. We theorize that when power-sensitized teams experience resource threats (either stemming from external threats or personal threats within the team), these threats will ignite internal power sensitivities and set into play performance-detracting intra-team power struggles. This conflict account of power in teams integrates and organizes past findings in this area to explain why and when power negatively affects team-level outcomes, and opens the door for future research to better understand why and when power may benefit team outcomes when power’s dark side for teams is removed.

Leveraging insights gained through a burgeoning research literature over the past 28 years, this paper presents a significant revision of the model of creativity and innovation in organizations published in Research in Organizational Behavior in 1988. This update focuses primarily on the individual-level psychological processes implicated in creativity that have been illuminated by recent research, and highlights organizational work environment influences on those processes. We revisit basic assumptions underlying the 1988 model, modify certain components and causal connections, and introduce four new constructs into the model: (1) a sense of progress in creative idea development; (2) the meaningfulness of the work to those carrying it out; (3) affect; and (4) synergistic extrinsic motivation. Throughout, we propose ways in which the components underlying individual and team creativity can both influence and be influenced by organizational factors crucial to innovation.

Most of the numerous studies on social status over the last decade have focused on how individual characteristics influence status attainment and effects, while much less research has examined the role of context in status dynamics. Given how important and pervasive contextual values are in all types of status hierarchies and all aspects of social life, studies on contextual influences are crucial. In order to spur more research on this critical factor, we review existing theories and empirical findings on the antecedents and effects of social status and closely inspect the untested underlying assumptions of the most prominent theory in status research: the functionalist perspective. We aim to expand the functionalist perspective by incorporating the importance of context and proposing the contextual value perspective. We discuss the different influences of cooperative versus competitive relationships—as an example of contextual factors—on status conferral and experience. We also examine the implications of the contextual value perspective for new and promising directions in status research.

There is evidence, spanning many decades of research, that the subjective well-being (SWB) of workers, including life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and positive affect, positively correlates with the performance of workers and organizations. However, the size of the relationships is typically small to moderate. In this review we address the question of why the relationships are not stronger. We first review evidence of a relationship moving from well-being to performance through various pathways. Workers who are high in SWB are now understood to have: 1. better health, 2. lower absenteeism, 3. greater self-regulation, 4. stronger motivation, 5. enhanced creativity, 6. positive relationships, and 7. lower turnover. Each of these variables can predict individual and organizational performance. However, the sheer number of known and possible pathways means the relationships are bound to be complex, and there are mitigating conditions at every turn. Thus, second, we review the evidence of moderators of these mediators, hypothesizing when a happier workforce is a more productive one, and when not. Future research is needed to firmly establish the pathways from different types of SWB through the mediators to metrics of performance, to further establish the moderating conditions in which these relations are most likely to occur, and to evaluate how much SWB is needed to maximize effectiveness. We end by urging scholars to conduct this future research using the highest standards of scientific integrity.

The webpages of organizations are both a form of representation and a type of narrative. They entertain, persuade, express a point of view, and provide a means to organize collective action and economic exchange. Increasingly, webpages are the primary point of access between an organization and its environment. An organization's online presence offers a major new source of rich information about organizations. In this paper, we develop three perspectives on websites from an organizational point of view: as identity projects, tools, and relational maps. We draw on data from the online and offline presences of “brick and mortar” nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to both illustrate how a digital transformation shaped these organizations and identify a host of new methods that can be used to study organizations using webpages. Finally, we reflect on both the strengths of these new sources of data as well as possible limitations and conclude with theoretical implications for organizational scholars.

Transactive Goal Dynamics (TGD) Theory is a multi-level, relational theory of goal pursuit that can be used to understand behavior within organizational teams. The theory describes the nature of goal-related interdependence (called transactive density) within dyads and groups, and predicts when transactive density will have positive versus negative consequences for goal-related outcomes. TGD Theory states that within many close dyads and teams, individuals’ goals, pursuits, and outcomes come to affect each other in a dense network of goal-related interdependence, with the individuals possessing and pursuing goals oriented toward themselves, other members of the system, and the system as a whole. This article discusses novel implications of the theory for the understanding of organizational teams and team leadership, and constraints on relational dynamics within organizational contexts.

Liminality, defined as a state of being betwixt and between social roles and/or identities, is the hallmark of an increasingly precarious and fluctuating career landscape. The generative potential of the liminality construct, however, has been restricted by six key assumptions stemming from the highly institutionalized nature of the rites of passage originally studied. As originally construed, liminality (1) implied both an objective state and the subjective experience of feeling betwixt and between, and was (2) temporary, (3) obligatory, (4) guided by elders and/or supported by a community of fellow liminars, (5) rooted in culturally legitimate narratives, (6) and led to a progressive outcome, i.e., the next logical step in a role hierarchy. By recasting these assumptions as variables, we improve the construct’s clarity, precision, and applicability to contemporary liminal experiences that are increasingly under-institutionalized. We illustrate the utility of our updated conceptualization by arguing that under-institutionalized liminality is both more difficult to endure and more fertile for identity growth than the highly institutionalized experiences that gave rise to the original notion. Drawing from adult development theory, we further propose that for under-institutionalized experiences to foster identity growth, the identity processes involved need to be more akin to identity play than identity work. We discuss the theoretical implications of our ideas for research on liminality, identity, and careers.