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This study investigates how leaders react when they perceive a threat to their hierarchical position, such as by engaging in abusive supervision in ways that diminish followers’ organizational citizenship behavior. It also tests for a dual harmful role of leaders’ dispositional contempt in this process.

Three-wave survey data were collected among 231 leader–follower dyads across different industry sectors.

Leaders’ beliefs that their authority is being threatened by high-performing followers can lead followers to halt their voluntary work behaviors, because leaders engage in verbal abuse. The harmful role of leaders’ dispositional contempt in this process is twofold: It enhances abusive supervision directly, and it operates as an indirect catalyst of the mediating role of abusive supervision.

Organizations would be better placed to decrease the risk that disruptions of the hierarchical order, as perceived by leaders, escalate into diminished work-related voluntarism among employee bases by promoting leadership approaches that consider employees deserving of respect instead of disdain.

This study details how and when leaders who fear they may lose authority, evoked by the strong performance of their followers, actually discourage followers from doing anything more than their formal job duties.

Concepts equip the mind with thought, provide our theories with ideas, and assign variables for testing our hypotheses. Much of contemporary research deals with narrowly circumscribed concepts, termed simple concepts herein, which are the grist for much empirical inquiry in the field. In contrast to simple concepts, which exhibit a kind of unity, complex concepts are structures of simple concepts, and in certain instances unveil meaning going beyond simple concepts or their aggregation. When expressed in hylomorphic structures, complex concepts achieve unique ontological status and serve particular explanatory capabilities. We develop the philosophical foundation for hylomorphic structures and show how they are rooted in dispositions, dispositional causality, and various mind–body trade-offs. Examples are provided for this emerging perspective on “Big concepts” or “Big Ideas.”

This study investigates despotic leadership (DL) as an antecedent to bullying behavior with a mediating role of moral emotions at work. Another aim is to study the moderating role of self-concordance to buffer the relationship between DL and arousal of moral emotions.

The authors collected two-source (self-reported and supervisor reported) time-lagged data in the shape of a three-wave survey (i.e. one month time interval for each time) from 242 dyads in the health sector of Pakistan.

The results revealed that moral emotions mediated the relationship between DL and bullying behavior. Furthermore, self-concordance moderates the relationship between DL and moral emotions, such that the relationship will be stronger in the case of low self-concordance.

Managers need to promote a culture that accommodates diversity of opinion at the organization so that everyone is able to express and share their views openly. Organizations should encourage supervisors to participate in leadership development programs aimed at eliminating DL.

This study establishes the role of self-concordance and moral emotions in the relationship between despotic leadership DL and bullying behavior.

Published studies of the relationships between personality, affect, and organizational change have been overwhelmingly quantitative, while clinical and psychodynamic approaches have seldom dealt with the context of organizational change. We used semistructured interviews to explore the “middle ground”, by researching how participants in change believed aspects of their personalities contributed to their responses, particularly on an affective level. We found that traits such as openness to experience, resilience, pragmatism, change self-efficacy, and locus of control influenced participants' perceptions of how they reacted to organizational change. The findings point to the important role that qualitative research into personality can play in improving understanding of emotional responses to organizational change.

This research aims to systematically explore the cognitive and emotional effects of values-related and performance-related negative brand publicity and investigate how the psychological effects translate into different behavioural outcomes. In addition, it examines the relative effectiveness of two major brand response strategies in mitigating negative publicity.

Two experimental studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. Study 1 examines the effects of values- and performance-related negative brand publicity, using a 3 (negative brand publicity: values-related vs performance-related vs control) × 2 (brand: Dove vs Axe) between-subjects experiment. Study 2 further compares the effects of two major brand response strategies on consumers’ post-crisis perceived trustworthiness and trust and responses towards a brand involved in negative publicity. A 2 (negative brand publicity: values-related vs performance-related) × 2 (brand response strategy: reduction-of-offensiveness vs corrective action) between-subjects design was used.

The results suggest that values-related negative brand publicity is perceived as being more diagnostic and elicits a stronger emotion of contempt, but a weaker emotion of pity than performance-related negative brand publicity. Moreover, values-related negative brand publicity has a stronger negative impact on consumer responses than performance-related negative brand publicity. Interestingly, compared to perceived diagnosticity of information and the emotion of pity, the emotion of contempt is more likely to cause differences in consumer responses to these two types of negative brand publicity. Regarding brand response strategy, corrective action is more effective than reduction-of-offensiveness for both types of negative brand publicity, but the advantage of corrective action is greater for the performance-related case.

This research enriches the negative publicity and brand perception literature, showing the asymmetric cognitive, emotional and behavioural effects of values- and performance-related negative brand publicity. It also identifies the psychological mechanisms underlying consumer responses to negative brand publicity, and it provides empirical evidence for the relative effectiveness of two major brand response strategies.

Theorists, such as Darwin and Aristotle, have long argued that facial expressions communicate information about a person's emotional state. Recently, validated coding strategies for facial expressions have been developed, which enable researchers to reliably assess a person's affect. Although social, health, and clinical psychologists have regularly employed these objective measures of facial expressions (OMFE), occupational stress and well-being researchers are yet to benefit from this method. The subsequent chapter integrates the facial expression and occupational well-being literature. Specifically, we discuss the advantages of OMFE over self-reports and implications of OMFE for future research on occupational well-being.

The assumption of an automatic link between disaster exposure and pathological outcomes is increasingly being questioned. Recognition of the possibility of positive reactions and growth outcomes in this context necessitates the development of alternative models and, in particular, the accommodation of the resilience construct in research and intervention agenda. Reviews possible vulnerability and resilience factors and adopts a risk management framework to outline its potential for modelling the complex relationships between these variables and both growth and distress outcomes. Resilience and vulnerability is discussed at dispositional, cognitive and organisational levels. The paradigm developed here focuses attention on facilitating recovery and growth in professionals for whom disaster work and its consequences is an occupational reality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the trajectory of cultural stereotypes on Uncertainty Avoidance emergent from two French multinational corporations. The exploration of respondents' comparisons of their own culture with other cultures illustrates that cultural stereotypes are derived from structural conditions that had developed over time, but came to be (mis)attributed to innate and prevalent cultural habits.

Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources, characterized by qualitative methodologies. Primary data respondents were predominantly ethnic Chinese Singaporeans, and secondary data respondents were predominantly French. In‐depth interviews were introduced in three phases.

The stereotype of the “uncertainty avoidant” Chinese Singaporean employees was employed by the top manager in one of the case studies (ECI) to lend legitimacy to the employees' exclusion from top management positions. The converse argument was made that “uncertainty avoidance” is absent among the French, who are hence more qualified as ECI top managers. Both claims were unfounded in this inquiry. Further evidence points to structural factors mediating employee behavior.

Structural factors were found to lend greater credibility in accounting for employee behaviors outlined in this study, more so than cultural ones. Future research surfacing complementary statistical insights will provide more concrete and representative evidence to this exploratory inquiry.

An alternative view of Uncertainty Avoidance through a structural account is proposed, based on evidence from qualitative inquiries.

To improve understanding of uncivil workplace behaviour, the present study sought to examine the relationships between emotional intelligence, positive affect, negative affect and perpetration of uncivil behaviour in the workplace.

Email, workplace networks and social media were used to recruit 113 managers who completed an anonymous online self-report survey of measures relating to emotional intelligence, positive and negative affect and engaging in uncivil workplace behaviour.

Results showed that greater emotional intelligence was significantly associated with higher positive affect and less negative affect as well as less likelihood of engaging in uncivil behaviour. Higher levels of negative affect were associated with engaging in uncivil behaviour. Analyses indicated that the relationship between lower emotional intelligence and engaging in uncivil workplace behaviour was mediated by negative affect only. The findings support the importance of emotional intelligence and affect in workplace functioning and shed light on possible precursors of the destructive behaviours that comprise workplace incivility.

These findings contribute insight into uncivil workplace behaviour and provide a foundation for examining the contribution of all stakeholders including victims and perpetrators as well as implications for management and organisational practices.