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This study aims to explore how gender influences the impact of interpersonal trust among subordinates on spontaneous work behaviors such as sharing responsibility and knowledge and engaging in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The goal is to understand factors that contribute to the effectiveness of women as supervisors and subordinates in the manufacturing sector.

Data were gathered from 308 subordinates and 71 supervisors working in the manufacturing sector in mainland China using a survey methodology. Descriptive statistics, correlation, confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical moderated regression were the statistical techniques used.

Results indicate that both affect- and cognition-based trust among subordinates positively impact responsibility- and knowledge-sharing behaviors, OCB-individual (OCB-I) and OCB-organization (OCB-O). For female subordinates, the gender of the supervisor alters the relationship between both forms of trust and responsibility-sharing behavior and OCB-O, but not knowledge-sharing behavior and OCB-I. Cognition-based trust plays a dominant role for male subordinates, while affect-based trust is more relevant to female subordinates. Finally, while the gender of the supervisor moderates the impact of both affect- and cognition-based trust, it is significant for female subordinates only.

This study is not without limitations. First, the authors had access to a limited sample of female supervisors and female subordinates, which is not uncommon in the manufacturing sector that is mostly composed of male employees. Second, the cross-sectional nature of the study does not allow the capture of the impact of change in trust over time. However, it is believed that the multi-source design, the novelty of the study’s findings and their implications to interpersonal trust theory and supervisory practice compensate for the limitations. For starters, this study endorses the crucial role of interpersonal trust among employees in predicting important organizational behaviors. It corroborates the conceptual distinction between affect- and cognition-based trust and empirically validates the concepts of affect- and cognition-based trust, RSB, KSB and OCB in China. It uses multi-source data and measures behavioral outcomes of workers as observed by their immediate supervisors. These contributions speak to the empirical viability of our theoretical framework that may be useful to those contemplating cross-cultural research.

The study started with the question, does gender matter. The answer is that it does and that it has implications for human resource management. The gender of both supervisors and subordinates affect the way interpersonal trust among workers elicit desirable organizational behaviors such as sharing responsibilities, sharing knowledge and other forms of citizenship behavior. Female supervisors need to build trust among their female employees before they can expect effective organizational behavior. The story is different for male supervisors and male employees. This has implications in the way male and female supervisors are trained. It also has implications for work group formation and composition. What the study does not know is whether these findings are limited to the manufacturing sector or unique to China. It is recommended that a cross-cultural comparative research be undertaken to address those questions.

In light of the study’s findings, it is proposed that supervisory training and development programs should take into consideration that female supervisors encounter more challenges in eliciting favorable behaviors on the part of female subordinates in a work environment that is male-dominated.

The unique value contribution of the study pertains to the role of gender – the gender of the supervisor and the gender of the subordinate in shaping organizational behavior. Specifically, the authors show that the supervisor’s gender influences the relationship between affect-based trust and RSB, KSB and OCB-O and the relationship between cognition-based trust and OCB-O. Their point is that these relationships are significant only for female supervisors. In addition, they show that gender similarity between the supervisor and the supervised matters, only when both are female. These findings limit the role of interpersonal trust in eliciting favorable organizational behavior across the board and question the portability of interpersonal trust theory across industries and cultures.

The recent significant occurrences of dysfunctional, and perhaps unethical, decision making and actions by a number of highly successful corporate executives suggest that there are systematic explanations for the questionable managerial behaviors that go beyond simple attributions of individual character flaws. This paper draws from four management research streams to identify some enabling conditions that constitute plausible mechanisms that may have exacerbated the present situation. Research traditions include the literature pertaining to the primacy of the rights of shareholders in equity capital financed corporate organizations, the literature describing the mechanisms whereby charisma is socially constructed and institutionalized, the literature attributing the gravitation toward positions of power on the part of individuals with predispositions to act in an unethical manner and the literature describing conditions which limit the ability of principals to fully specify the provisions of contracts with agents who are in positions of control of corporate organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of role stressors on job stress among airline employees in mainland China. More specifically, the aggravating effects of shift work and the mitigating effects of decision latitude are explored to facilitate strategies of intervention aimed at reducing job stress.

Data are collected using a field survey in Mandarin from 485 airline employees, including pilots, flight attendants, and service employees in five major cities in mainland China.

The findings demonstrate that role overload and role conflict have significant positive effects on job stress. Furthermore, both shift work and its interference with non‐work activities significantly elevated the impact of role overload on job stress. Findings also reveal that decision latitude mitigated the detrimental effect of role overload on job stress for employees working on fixed shift, but not for employees working on rotating shift.

This is a cross‐sectional study using perceptual measures.

The findings suggest that aviation managers in China need to focus not only on decision latitude but also on job and organizational design to mitigate the impact of job demands on stress. While decision latitude works to ease demands among those who work on fixed shifts, it does not work in the same way for those working on rotating shifts.

This paper corroborates the cross‐cultural applicability of stress theory by demonstrating the detrimental role of rotating shift on stress while at the same time calling attention to some cultural shaping of the findings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of job demand, job control, and supervisory support on stress among nurses in China, Japan, Argentina, and the Caribbean using the Job demand‐control (JDC) and the Job demand‐control‐support (JDCS) models.

The authors have employed a comparative research design, cross‐sectional survey methodology with convenient random sampling, and a commonly used statistical analytic strategy.

The results highlight that job demand, job control, and supervisory support are important variables in understanding stress among nurses. This has been corroborated in China, Japan, Argentina, and the Caribbean. Based on their findings and what is available in the literature, the authors report that the JDCS model has universal significance albeit it works somewhat differently in different contexts.

This study's contribution comes from its comparative nature, theoretical anchor, its use of one of the most popular models of stress, its focus on a profession that is demonstrably stressed, its use of common measures and an established analytic strategy. The study's findings underscore the cross‐cultural usefulness and application of the JDCS model along with its threshold and substitution effects and limiting conditions.

This paper aims to raise some important questions for cross‐cultural research on occupational stress and well‐being and sets the stage for the five papers in the special issue.

This paper reviews some previous literature on cross‐cultural understanding of occupational stress and well‐being, why such research is difficult to undertake, and summarizes the five original manuscripts that comprise this special issue.

Manuscripts in this special issue represent authors from several countries and report data collected from over a dozen countries. Some contributions attempt to replicate previous North American and European research findings in other countries while others undertake comparative studies of two or more countries.

It is important to undertake more cross‐cultural comparative research of the effects of occupational stress and well‐being to determine whether any boundary conditions exist for previous results based in North American and European samples. In addition, future research should include assessments of some national culture values.

This introduction aims to highlight the special contributions made by the articles in this issue in understanding how emotions are implicated in the process of managing.

Presents a model as a means of framing the discussion of the articles included in this issue.

Argues that emotions and emotional skills are essential for everyday managerial work and that the traditional stereotype of the exclusively rational manager has been replaced by one in which managers are expected to create and nourish positive relationships by effectively managing their own emotions and those of their employees.

Managers need to be aware of the impact that their expressed emotions have on their work units' emotional climate, their employees' emotions, their effectiveness as well as that of their employees, and the organization's overall success.

The paper offers insight into the emotions of managing.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of self‐serving attributions by service providers in reaction to customers' perceived negative and positive behaviors.

Questionnaires are completed by 398 service providers.

The hypotheses, supported by the results, are that service providers would make more external attributions of negative customer behaviors and more internal attributions of positive behaviors. However, the external attributions of negative behaviors are expected to be positively related to burnout because it conflicts with the organizational message regarding the customer's rights. Attributions are found to mediate the relationship between frequency of customers' behaviors and burnout. Empowerment is positively related to internal attributions of both positive and negative behaviors.

The study is conducted with a convenience sample and does not represent a broad spectrum of the service sector. Customers positive and negative behaviors are explored through respondents' self‐reports. Furthermore, the service encounters, namely a one‐time service interaction or a long‐term service relationship are not differentiated.

Self‐serving attributions made by employees do not always accord to managerial policy. In order to minimize the conflict between the organizational notion of the customer's rights and service provider's self‐serving attributions, management must make a clear distinction between customer negative behaviors and service failure. While service providers should assume responsibility for correcting failures, they should not be blamed for customer negative behaviors. Furthermore, management should encourage the internal attribution of positive customer behaviors.

While in most contexts the attribution of negative events externally is found to have a positive effect, the effect of such attribution in the service context is not obvious. The notion of the customer being always right suggests that in the case of a conflict, the service provider is wrong by default. Making external attributions of negative customer behaviors conflicts with organizational standards as well as creates a gap between the service provider's external behavior and his/her internal state. The research question addresses the mediating role of such attributions in the relationship of the frequency of customers' behaviors and service providers' burnout. In additon, to address this issue more fully, the scope of customer behavior beyond the adverse behaviors examined in previous studies is broaden.