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The recent economic recession has led many organizations to downsize, or eliminate positions, in an effort to cut labor costs and improve profitability. Survivors may suddenly find themselves over-rewarded, or prematurely promoted, into one or more vacant positions. One negative consequence of over-reward in particular, impostor phenomenon, may present significant challenges at both the individual and organizational level. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to examine the consequences and coping strategies of survivors who perceive themselves as over-rewarded and under-qualified for a job. Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources Theory (COR) serves as this study's framework to explicate the outcomes associated with impostor feelings and how impostors cope with their perceived inadequacy. Specifically, we propose that impostor feelings will be positively related to emotional exhaustion. To deal with the exhaustion, impostors may rely on coping strategies in order to master the additional internal and external demands created by feelings of impostorism. The type of strategy used by impostors to cope with the exhaustion is influenced by the level of perceived social support. That is, impostors who perceive higher levels of support will resort to active coping while those who perceive lower levels of support will resort to avoidant coping. Managerial implications and directions for future research are offered.

Recent developments in identity theory are used to understand emotions in distributive justice theory. Three issues are examined: the consistency vs. enhancement dynamic, the status dynamic, and the resource dynamic. Results reveal individuals initially react positively to over-rewards; later they react more negatively. We suggest that the enhancement process occurs initially; the consistency process occurs later. Regarding status, persons respond negatively to unjust outcomes when they come from higher status persons. Finally, positive emotions are a resource for individuals initially and across encounters, buffering the effect of repeated unjust outcomes. Overall, this study helps develop emotions in distributive justice theory.

Stakeholders often engage in actions aimed at either benefitting or punishing firms for their behaviour. Such behaviours can have very serious implications for various types of firm performance, including financial performance. Though one might expect that the investigation of possible precursors of such “stakeholder action” would be a priority of researchers in stakeholder theory, to date research within the stakeholder literature directed towards understanding stakeholder behaviour has been somewhat scarce. In this chapter, I present common themes and assumptions that prevail in the existing research on stakeholder action, identify certain important questions concerning such assumptions and suggest avenues for future research on stakeholder behaviour.

This study examines how the structure of referent networks, or the social network defined by knowing others’ reward levels, affects perceptions of distributive justice. The homogeneity of rewards in the referent network, the amount of inequality in the referent network, and an individual’s reward level are all associated with distributive justice perceptions. Several moderating relationships are also examined.

We relied on data from a controlled laboratory experiment to test a series of theoretically derived hypotheses.

The study shows that several aspects about the structure of the referent network are important for shaping perceptions of distributive justice. Specifically, the reward heterogeneity and amount of inequality in the network are found to be negatively associated with distributive justice, while reward levels are found to be positively associated with distributive justice. Furthermore, the effect of reward levels on distributive justice is moderated by both (i) the presence of a referential standard for rewards and (ii) the amount of inequality in the network.

While being among the first studies to demonstrate effects of referent networks on perceptions of fairness, it is unclear how group memberships combine with referent network effects and which factors may blur these relationships in uncontrolled environments. Subsequent scholarship on the effect of referent networks on justice perceptions should leverage multiple data sources.

Research on the effects of referents on justice perceptions has focused on particular referent individuals. We recast this issue in terms of referent networks, which highlights the empirical reality that individuals have a variety of sources or alters which could operate as referents.

The paradox of the contented female worker refers to the fact that women are generally disadvantaged (fewer material rewards) in the workplace relative to men, but are just as satisfied with their jobs as men. We review various arguments offered to explain the paradox with special attention given to justice-based explanations. Data collected from 30 countries as part of the 2005 ISSP are examined and show that the paradox is essentially a universal, worldwide phenomenon.

Environmental uncertainty, turbulence, and heterogeneity create a host of strategic and operational challenges for today’s organizations (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998). To cope with the challenge of simultaneously developing and nurturing both today’s and tomorrow’s core competencies, firms increasingly rely on effective use of corporate entrepreneurship (Covin & Miles, 1999). These facts make it imperative that managers at all levels actively participate in designing and implementing a strategy for corporate entrepreneurship actions. The recent literature reveals that there is a general although certainly not a complete consensus around the position that successful corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is linked to improvement in firm performance (Ireland et al., 2001). Covin, Ireland and Kuratko (2003) suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a legitimate path to high levels of organizational performance and that the understanding of corporate entrepreneurship as a valid and effective practice with real, tangible benefits is occurring across firm type and managerial levels. Other researchers cite corporate entrepreneurship’s importance as a growth strategy (Kuratko, 1993; Kuratko et al., 1993; Merrifield, 1993; Pinchott, 1985; Zahra, 1991; Zahra & Covin, 1995; Zahra, Kuratko & Jennings, 1999). As an example, Dess, Lumpkin and McGee (1999) note that, “Virtually all organizations – new start-ups, major corporations, and alliances among global partners – are striving to exploit product-market opportunities through innovative and proactive behavior” – the type of behavior that is called for by corporate entrepreneurship. Barringer and Bluedorn (1999) suggested that in light of the dynamism and complexity of today’s environments, “…entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors are necessary for firms of all sizes to prosper and flourish.” Developing an internal environment that cultivates employees’ interest in and commitment to creativity and the innovation that can result from it contributes to successful competition in today’s competitive arenas. A valuable and appropriate internal organizational environment is a product of effective work (often within the context of corporate entrepreneurship) by managers at all levels (Floyd & Lane, 2000).

In this paper, we review the literature on pay variation (e.g., pay dispersion, pay compression, pay range) in organizations. Pay variation research has increased markedly in the past two decades and much progress has been made in terms of understanding its consequences for individual, team, and organizational outcomes. Our review of this research exposes several levels-related assumptions that have limited theoretical and empirical progress. We isolate the issues that deserve attention, develop an illustrative multilevel model, and offer a number of testable propositions to guide future research on pay structures.

In our 10th volume of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, we offer eight chapters that examine the role of the economic crisis in occupational stress and well being research. The first three chapters are considered more general overviews, and each examines a different aspect of economic stress and well being. Our lead chapter, by Songqi Liu and Mo Wang, provides an in-depth review of perceived overqualification. They develop and present a multilevel model of perceived overqualification that explicitly addresses antecedents, consequences, as well as the intermediating linkages within the relationships. The second chapter by Mindy K. Shoss and Tahira M. Probst also takes a multilevel approach by examining outcomes of economic stress. Specifically, they discuss how employee experiences with economic stress give impetus to emergent outcomes and employee well being. In our third overview chapter, Aimee E. A. King and Paul E. Levy develop a theoretical framework for organizational politics in an economic downturn. Specifically, they propose an integrative model that examines the role of the economic downturn, politics, and well being.

Prior research that attempts to empirically correlate research activity and effective teaching generates conflicting results. These contradictory findings contribute to the scrutiny that currently threatens to undermine accounting education and to impact funds currently directed toward the support of accounting research. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of relevant research on students’ perceptions of effective teaching. This two-phase study incorporates both a between-subjects decision-making experiment and a ranking instrument to measure the importance of various faculty attributes of teaching effectiveness. The two factors of interest in this study are whether a hypothetical accounting professor (1) conducts and publishes relevant research and (2) incorporates relevant research into classroom lectures. The results of the first phase of the study experimentally demonstrate that students enrolled in accounting classes perceive the professor who does both (conducts and publishes relevant research and incorporates research into classroom lectures) to be significantly more effective than others. Specifically, the study identifies a statistically significant two-way interaction between the two factors of interest. This suggests that students perceive the professor's research to be a component of teaching effectiveness if, and only if, that research is incorporated into the classroom experience of the student. The second phase of the study finds that students generally rank both of the faculty research attributes lower in importance than other previously identified factors used to describe the professor.