Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how organizational diversity may be associated with immigrants’ quality of coworker relationships. More specifically, this paper examines how immigrants’ perceived deep-level similarity and perceived workplace ethnic diversity may be associated with their quality of coworker relationships.

A final sample of 347 immigrant employees were surveyed. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Immigrants’ quality of coworker relationships is positively associated with their perceived deep-level similarity with other coworkers. In addition, perceived workplace ethnic diversity moderates this relationship such that the relation is stronger as perceived workplace ethnic diversity increases.

The study and analyses are based on cross-sectional and single-source data and cannot determine causality. The study is also restricted to immigrants in the USA.

Findings provide evidence that increased levels of ethnic diversity and deep-level similarity in the workplace may improve immigrants’ quality of relationships, helping them integrate more successfully in organizations. Thus, managers seeking to benefit from diversity should strive for the creation of truly multicultural organizations or workgroups and focus on fostering similarities in deep-level attributes to maximize their potential.

Immigrants are an important asset for organizations, but research about their inclusion in organizations is limited, especially when examining their integration in their workplaces. This study addresses some of these limitations by looking at the effect of diversity in organizations.

Researchers recognize that interpersonal relationships contribute to the career development of professional employees. The purpose of this paper is to extend this research to individuals working at a formative point in their careers. Guided by Social Cognitive Career Theory, a model is developed that tests whether the quality of individuals’ work relationships at an early career stage has implications for their development of career cognitions and career exploration behaviors.

Structural equation modeling is used to test the model in two samples of employed students (n=372 and n=166).

Coworker relationship quality had a direct influence on career self-efficacy, which led to increased career outcome expectations, goals and exploration behaviors. The influence of supervisor relationship quality was mixed across studies.

Findings suggest that the quality of individuals’ relational experiences at work, even at an early career stage, has implications that extend beyond the workplace to affect their careers more generally.

Results speak to the dangers associated with a poor interpersonal climate for employees at an early career stage, and suggest that managers invest in opportunities that allow these employees to build stronger bonds with coworkers. The results also suggest that career counselors and internship coordinators be sensitive to the interpersonal climate of organizations with whom they contract.

This study offers insight into the connection between early employment experiences and individuals’ career cognitions and career exploration behaviors.

This paper extends the sales literature by moving beyond salespeople ' s role as knowledge gatherers to their role as knowledge sharers with personnel outside the sales unit. The aim is to develop and test a conceptual model to establish how pay-for-performance (economic factor) affects knowledge sharing behaviour under the contingency roles of coworker relationship quality (social psychological factor) and knowledge sharing norms (sociological factor).

Using the Dun & Bradstreet database, the authors collected responses from 374 salespeople in 51 Canadian industrial firms through an on-line survey. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) as multiple salespeople were nested within the organization and the data were comprised of individual- and organizational-level constructs.

When there is misalignment between rewards and knowledge sharing behavior, motivational loss hampers knowledge sharing. However, when employees are provided with an environment that fosters high coworker relationship quality and consensual knowledge sharing norms, the motivational loss resulting from the incongruence between pay-for-performance and knowledge sharing behavior is mitigated.

Implications regarding how salespeople ' s knowledge sharing contributes to relationship marketing along with practical ramifications for how sales managers can encourage knowledge sharing are discussed.

This study contributes to the sales literature (e.g. control, key account management, expanding role of sales) by testing a model that integrates different theoretical perspectives to examine what types of control mechanisms and which combinations of these controls affect salespeople ' s engagement in knowledge sharing behaviors.

Although reputation is important to career success, little is known about how individuals develop their personal reputation at work. This study seeks to investigate the role of work relationship quality and citizenship behavior as partial mediators of the political skill‐personal reputation relationship.

In total, 145 triads from a manufacturer in the Midwestern USA provided data for the study. Employees rated their political skill and citizenship behavior, supervisors rated their relationship quality, and coworkers rated the employees' personal reputation. Based on the complementary theories of signaling and social exchange, the relationships between the constructs were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

Political skill demonstrated both direct and indirect effects on the development of personal reputation. In particular, work relationship quality and citizenship behavior partially mediated the relationship between political skill and personal reputation.

Personal reputation was evaluated by a randomly selected coworker, but a collection of perceptions would be helpful.

Political skill training and/or mentoring relationships may help individuals manage their personal reputation at work, thus benefiting their careers.

This study focused on personal reputation in a work environment. However, the results also may be useful to individuals in different types of organizations.

This is one of the first studies to investigate how individuals develop their personal reputation at work. Unlike previous research that used self‐evaluations of personal reputation, this study used peer evaluations, which is more appropriate for the construct.

Although research has suggested that enterprise system (ES) implementations have major impacts on employee job characteristics and outcomes, there has been limited research that has examined the impacts of ES implementations on interpersonal relationships over time. Building on and extending recent studies that have examined changes in employee job characteristics and outcomes during an ES implementation, this research examined the nature, extent, determinants and outcomes of changes in an important interpersonal relationship construct—coworker exchange (CWX)—following an ES implementation. CWX is considered a critical aspect of employees' job and an important determinant of their success in the workplace. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), the authors theorize that employees will perceive a change in CWX following an ES implementation.

A longitudinal field study over a period of 6 months among 249 employees was conducted. Latent growth modeling was used to analyze the data.

The authors found that employees' work process characteristics, namely perceived process complexity, perceived process rigidity and perceived process radicalness, significantly explained change, i.e. decline in our case, in CWX during the shakedown phase of an ES implementation. The decreasing trajectory of change in CWX led to declining job performance and job satisfaction.

The role of CWX and its importance in the context of ES implementations is a key novel element of this work.

The purpose of this investigation is to explore whether perceptions of organizational justice are related to coworker trust and morale. As jobs have become more broadly defined and collaboration with colleagues has become increasingly important for accomplishing work, coworker relationships are especially critical to manage effectively.

Survey packets were distributed to 364 non‐supervisory employees at six small companies in a large Midwestern city in the USA. Useable surveys were returned from 264 respondents for a response rate of 72 percent.

The results showed that distributive, procedural, and interactional justice perceptions are related to perceptions of coworkers. The distribution of rewards, organizational policies and procedures, and interpersonal treatment by supervisors are related to coworker trust and morale.

This study was a cross‐sectional field study with the data collected at one point in time, precluding statements regarding causality. In addition, common method variance is a concern given the use of a self‐report survey.

The results highlight the importance of fairness in rewards, procedures, and treatment for productive coworker relationships. Suggestions are provided for managers to enhance perceptions of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice in the workplace.

Prior research on justice has focused primarily on individual and organizational outcomes. The study adds to this research base by examining whether perceptions of justice are associated with the quality of coworker relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on the relative impact of the various workplace resources on employees' effective coping with job stress symptoms, taking into account synergistic and antagonistic effects. The authors used job demands-resources (JD-R) theory as an overarching theoretical framework to test the hypotheses.

The authors used a factorial survey experiment and a within-person design. Data were obtained from a random sample of 97 Greek employees working in public and private organizations. Multilevel modeling regression techniques were used for data analyses. The authors examined the relative effect of various job resources at different levels on employees' ratings of effective coping with job stress symptoms. In parallel, the authors investigated the possible synergistic and antagonistic interactions between the specific job resources.

The authors found that managers' leadership and humor style, their relationship with subordinates and coworkers’ support had positive effects on employees' coping with job stress. In addition, the authors found that the manager's leadership style interacts with manager–subordinate relationship quality and coworkers’ support as well as the latter interacts with the manager's humor style and manager–subordinate relationship quality. The study model explained 50% of the variance in effective coping with stress ratings.

The study highlights the importance of workplace resources as contextual variables, for the effective coping with stress symptoms at work. It highlights that a combination of workplace resources produces a net effect that was better than would have been expected based solely on the individual performance of these job resources. As such, the research answer calls to attend to the effects of synergistic effects of workplace resources on effective coping with stress symptoms at work.

Considering the potential economic losses this might bring about, researchers have begun to explore ways to mitigate procrastination. Drawing on the job demands-resources model and the spillover-crossover model, this study aims to investigate the association between harmonious passion and procrastination at the intra- and interpersonal levels.

This study used a two-wave multisource questionnaire survey to acquire 256 cases nested in 128 coworker dyads from two hotels in Shanghai. Multilevel analysis and the actor–partner interdependence model were adopted to examine the hypotheses.

The results indicate that employees’ harmonious passion is indirectly negatively associated with procrastination (i.e., cyberslacking and soldiering) through workplace well-being at the intrapersonal level; employees’ harmonious passion is indirectly negatively associated with their coworkers’ procrastination (i.e., cyberslacking and soldiering) through the coworkers’ workplace well-being; and the crossover influence of employees’ harmonious passion on coworkers’ workplace well-being is contingent upon interpersonal conflict at the dyadic level, such that the crossover influence is stronger in condition of low rather than high interpersonal conflict.

Hotels are suggested to provide training programs to employees for enhancing their capabilities to maintain harmonious passion and promote their communication skills to decrease the likelihood to experience interpersonal conflict.

This study offers a comprehensive insight into the association between harmonious passion and procrastination in hospitality employees, which extends the understanding of the outcomes of harmonious passion and the profit of harmonious passion at the interpersonal level.

This study addresses how and when the experience of family-induced work strain might steer employees away from efforts to promote innovative ideas. In particular, it proposes a mediating role of role ambiguity and moderating roles of two coworker resources (goal congruence and goodwill trust) in this process.

The research hypotheses are tested with data obtained from a survey administered among employees who work in a professional services organization.

An important explanatory mechanism that links family interference with work to diminished championing efforts is that employees hold beliefs that their job roles are unclear. The extent to which employees share work-related mindsets with coworkers, as well as their belief that coworkers are trustworthy, attenuate this harmful effect.

For HR managers, the study shows a clear danger that threatens employees who feel drained by significant family demands: The negative situation may escalate into work-related complacency (diminished championing), which then may generate even more hardships. As it also reveals though, employees can leverage high-quality coworker relationships to contain this danger.

This study adds to HR management research by investigating the role of negative spillovers from family to work in predicting idea championing, as explained by negative beliefs about job-related information deficiencies but buffered by high-quality coworker relationships.

Underpinned by affective events theory (AET), this paper examines the effect of coworker friendship on coworker incivility in family-style restaurants. Furthermore, this paper seeks the mediation effect of positive workplace gossip.

Using a time-lagged approach, 83 headwaiters and 326 servers at family-style restaurants located in Port Said and Ismailia responded, and their responses were analyzed using AMOS v. 24.

Multigroup analysis findings proved that coworker friendship increased positive workplace gossip in favor of the server sample. At the same time, the latter decreased coworker incivility in favor of the headwaiter sample. Besides, positive workplace gossip partially mediated the coworker friendship–incivility association in favor of the server sample. Furthermore, incivility levels increase between married coworkers and their peers in favor of the server sample.

From the AET lens, this paper offers valuable insights into affective and emotional reactions to closest coworkers' judgmental behavior in the restaurant industry.