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The extant literature mainly focuses on the antecedents and outcomes of envy at the individual level. Workgroups have become ideal units for research on envy given the ubiquitous teamwork in organizations. This study aims to examine whether, how and when envy climate can influence group performance.

The authors analyzed data collected in three waves from a sample of 72 groups with 475 team members in full-service hotels in China.

Envy climate was negatively associated with group performance via intragroup relationship conflict. Furthermore, competitive climate moderated the effect of envy climate on intragroup relationship conflict and the indirect effect of envy climate on group performance through intragroup relationship conflict.

The present research offers organizations valuable insights into how to minimize the climate of envy and competition within a group and relieve the relationship conflict that may damage group performance.

Drawing on a social functional perspective of emotions, this study enriches the envy research by conceptualizing envy climate as a collective perception and clarifying its effect on group performance. The authors extend the understanding of envy climate by showing how a climate of envy embedded in a group influences group performance and also explain when group members may be more likely to act in a destructive way to respond to such a climate.

In their chapter, Rupp, Bashshur, and Liao (this volume) have made an impressive contribution to the literature on multi-level justice. These authors have provided both a precise conceptual definition of justice climate and a measurement strategy (referent shift) that will greatly smooth the progress of future empirical inquiry. The goal of this commentary is to expand these important ideas by moving in two directions. First, we discuss what it means to be an individual when justice is experienced as a member of a team. Toward this end, we describe research on social identity theory and social categorization theory, emphasizing how these paradigms could further increase our knowledge. Second, we discuss two new manifestations of multi-level justice that have hitherto been neglected: intraunit justice (group perceptions regarding how team members generally treat one another) and interunit justice (perceptions regarding the way one group treats another). All of these multi-level justice concepts are organized into a new taxonomy.

This paper aims to explore the effect of perceived “self-to-team” deep-level diversity on team’s creative output from a social identity lens’ view.

An experimental study was designed (n = 30 in each experimental condition, namely, homogeneous, heterogeneous and mixed) and vignettes were used to manipulate the experimental conditions. Employees from four Indian organizations participated in the experimental study.

Results indicated that deep-level homogeneous group perceived higher team creative output as compared to the deep-level heterogeneous group. Perceived team creativity climate was found to mediate the effect of team diversity on team’s creative output. Further, it was observed that the quality of perceived creativity climate (positive and negative) moderated the relationship between diversity and team’s creative output.

The diversity–climate–creativity model presented in the paper may help managers to understand how “deep-level” group composition affects a group’s creative performance. The findings of this study may act as a platform for building effective diversity management policies.

The current research has contributed to the limited team diversity and creativity literature. Based on the experimental study, the paper has uniquely investigated team diversity and creativity link along with examining the role of a mediator (creativity climate) and moderator (quality climate) in the relationship. As the study was conducted in Indian settings, the findings were interpreted based on the typical Indian psycho-social characteristics.

Globally, elderly populations are increasing at unprecedented rates. This has precipitated change in the way practitioners are thinking of delivering eldercare services, especially in the public sector. In Norway, innovation scholars, the Norwegian government, and most municipalities delivering eldercare services agree that they must innovate to meet upcoming demands. However, infrastructural impacts are not expected for 15 years. Thus, the more difficult question becomes when a change is so distant, when or with whom should you innovate? The purpose of this paper is to determine innovative readiness by looking at group climate.

The study will explore the differences between two groups within an organization: one group that participated (participant group) in formal innovation training and and the other group (nonparticipant group that did not participate in the training). The differences in each group’s climate will be explored using a t-test.

There exist two identifiable group climates within the same organization. The participant group’s climate indicated that their members are ready for innovative change by showing that they are task oriented (C2), engaged (S1), and have an overall positive attitude toward innovation (A1 and A2). On the contrary, the nonparticipant group’s climate indicates that their members are not ready for innovative change. This group has a dominant role of acceptance (D2), rather than pursuing ideas or causes they believe in, they accept those tasks given to them. Each group’s level of innovation understanding was relatively similar prior to any formal training.

This research shows that even though a manager within an organization is championing or encouraging innovative behavior, there can still exist two different group climates: a group that is genuinely interested in innovation and one that is not. Should participation in innovation training be mandatory or voluntary? This study showed the latter that the participant group’s climate indicated its members were more ready for innovative change, while the nonparticipant group’s climate indicated its members were not. This could be an important group dynamic for managers to consider when building a new innovative initiative, especially if that organization struggles with maintaining engagement and positivity for that change.

The Dutch juvenile justice system locks up an increasing number of adolescent boys and girls at a cost of approximately €250,000 for each inmate annually (Boone & Moerings, 2007; Tonry, 2005). Questions have been raised, however, about the cost‐effectiveness of treatment in closed institutions. This study, with a sample of 49 adolescents residing in a Dutch youth prison, examined the role of group climate in establishing and maintaining treatment effects. Results show that an open group climate, with group workers paying more attention to the psychological needs of the adolescents and giving them ‘space’ to experiment, led to inmates feeling that they were ‘being understood by the group workers’. This perception of being understood was associated with greater treatment motivation and higher internal locus of control. Positive prison workers in the living group turned out to be a key factor in building an open group climate and subsequently higher internal locus of control and greater treatment motivation.

The paper's aim is to document a survey of Australian construction workers that was conducted to examine whether conditions of within‐group homogeneity and between‐group heterogeneity in perceptions of coworkers' safety response were satisfied. The factor structure of coworkers' safety response is to be explored and the relationship between workgroup members' perceptions of their coworkers' safety response and the workgroups' injury rate is to be examined in three organizations.

A safety climate survey was conducted within three organizations. Retrospective and prospective workgroup injury data were collected from company records. The factor structure of coworkers' safety response was analysed using principal components analysis (PCA). Within‐group homogeneity and between‐group heterogeneity were examined using inter‐rater agreement and analyses of variance respectively. Bivariate correlations were used to explore linkages between perceptions of coworkers' safety response and workgroup injury rates.

Two distinct factors were indicated by the PCA were labeled “Coworkers' actual safety response” and “Coworkers' ideal safety response”. “Coworkers' actual safety response” demonstrated significant between‐group variance and within‐group consensus in two of the three organizations. No significant between‐group variation was found for ‘Coworkers' ideal safety response'. Neither aspect of coworkers' safety response was consistently significantly correlated with workgroup injury rate.

Further research should examine the relationship between coworkers' safety response and workgroup safety performance using measures other than reportable injury rates.

The confirmation that “Coworkers' actual safety response” is a facet of group safety climate suggests that interventions to develop coworkers' support for safety within workgroups may be helpful. In particular, strategies to speed up the process of assimilation into workgroups through induction and teambuilding exercises should be evaluated.

The study builds on previous research examining group safety climate in construction, providing further evidence that coworkers' safety response items should be included along with supervisors' safety response items in the measurement of group safety climate. The findings suggest important directions for future empirical evaluation of the impact of coworkers' response on workgroup safety climate and performance in the construction industry.

Purpose – This chapter highlights that we do not know why justice climate is related to various unit outcomes and proposes a number of mechanisms.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter draws on the extant literature on justice climate, organizational climate, and a number of theories to link justice climate to unit outcomes.

Findings – We have little understanding of the mechanisms linking justice climate to unit outcomes and it is important to consider various mechanisms.

Research limitations/implications – The primary limitation of this chapter is that although we present several ideas for future research, we do not provide any new empirical findings. The primary implications have to do with specifying the theoretical mechanisms responsible for the effects of justice climate on unit outcomes.

Originality/value – The novel aspect of this chapter is that it questions why justice climate is related to several disparate outcomes and tries to take a theoretical approach to uncover the mechanisms.

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between gender, nationality, care responsibilities for children, and the psychological work climate of researchers.

Basic Design: Based on a dataset of approximately 2,900 cases, the main effects of gender and nationality, their interaction effect and the interaction effects of gender with care responsibilities for minor children, and with hierarchical position are considered in relation to work climate. Dummy regressions and t-tests were performed to estimate and compare the means and regression parameters of the perceived group climate and the view of leaders as evaluated by researchers. The dataset used was taken from a full survey of employees of the Max Planck Society, which is one of Germany’s largest research organizations with over 80 facilities and institutes in various disciplines and a focus on basic research.

Results: Gender differences concerning the evaluation of the work climate are particularly pronounced among doctoral candidates and researchers who have a non-EU nationality. Gender gaps increasingly level out with each successive career step. Additionally, a main effect of gender and a weak interaction of gender and care responsibility for minor children was supported by the data. A main effect of nationality on work climate ratings was found but could not be meaningfully interpreted.

Interpretation and Relevance: The interaction effect between gender and the position of a researcher can be interpreted as being a product of the filtering mechanism of the research system. With this interpretation, the results of the study can plausibly be explained in the light of previous research that concludes that female researchers face higher career hurdles than male researchers.

This chapter reviews research on multi-level organizational justice. The first half of the chapter provides the historical context for this issue, discusses organizational-level antecedents to individual-level justice perceptions (i.e., culture and organizational structure), and then focuses on the study of justice climate. A summary model depicts the justice climate findings to date and gives recommendations for future research. The second half of the chapter discusses the process of justice climate emergence. Pulling from classical bottom-up and top-down climate emergence models as well as contemporary justice theory, it outlines a theoretical model whereby individual differences and environmental characteristics interact to influence justice judgments. Through a process of information sharing, shared and unique experiences, and interactions among group members, a justice climate emerges. The chapter concludes by presenting ideas about how such a process might be empirically modeled.

In order to manage strategic demographic change in economic and labor markets, a common human resource (HR) change strategy is to increase the diversity of the workforce through hiring over time. This study examined department level consensus and valence regarding an organizational HR strategy to shift demography toward greater diversity in race and sex composition over an eight‐year period. Though the organization had experienced significant change in organizational demography: an increase in the overall representation of white women (36 percent) and minorities (41 percent) over time; work group members in units with the greatest change did not necessarily agree nor hold positive perceptions regarding these HR changes. The results show that HR strategies that focus on structural change without working to develop supportive group norms and positive climate may be inadequate change strategies.