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1 – 6 of 6Sagi Akron, Ofek Feinblit, Shlomo Hareli and Shay S. Tzafrir
The purpose of this study was to explore the relation between diversity in work group members’ employment arrangements and the actual performance of the work groups.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to explore the relation between diversity in work group members’ employment arrangements and the actual performance of the work groups.
Design/methodology/approach
A field study was conducted on 31 work groups in a public plant belonging to the industrial sector that constitute a unique data set. The 441 employees are contracted under four significantly different employment arrangements and are mixed together in heterogeneous work groups, but perform similar tasks.
Findings
The results indicated that the influence of employment arrangement diversity on work group performance is best represented as variation, and work arrangements diversity is positively correlated with improved work group performance.
Research limitations
The study design prevented assessment of employees’ opinions. Rather, the authors used objective type of employment arrangements as the basis for calculating diversity as separation. Using mean Euclidean distance as suggested by Harrison and Klein (2007), the authors arbitrarily set the distance between two different employment arrangements as one.
Practical implications
The research results help in the stages of recruiting, structuring and development and application of necessary work team. Formal emphasis of diversity in work arrangements improves performance.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies using unique data set analyzing real-life team diversity and performance in the public sector. The research highly contributes to organizational decision-making processes regarding the importance of incorporating non-standard work arrangements in organizations. Management’s implementation of formal diversity seems to alleviate the negative sides of diversity and increases its positive performance effects.
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Shay S. Tzafrir and Shlomo Hareli
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the interplay among promotion decision, emotions, and perceptions of organizational justice.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the interplay among promotion decision, emotions, and perceptions of organizational justice.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts Weiner's attribution theory of motivation and emotion, using it as a tool in the analysis. By using this framework, this paper analyses potential positive and negative emotional, and consequently, behavioral reactions of promoted and non‐promoted employees. The analysis focuses on emotional reactions as a function of the cause and the process for the decision in question from the subjective perspective of the employee whose fate is determined by that decision.
Findings
This paper suggests that the decision and the process of promotion can lead to the experience of a myriad of discrete emotional states. It contends that such emotional reactions are resulting from considerations of justice related to the perceived causes of the promotion decision and the process that lead to it.
Originality/value
By integrating attribution theory of emotion and motivation with considerations of justice, this paper analyses the conditions that lead to specific emotions in employees who are promoted and non‐promoted, showing that procedural and interactional justice serves as carriers of attributions (i.e. causal information).
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Shlomo Hareli, Noga Shomrat and Nahum Biger
The paper aims to study how shame, guilt and fear experienced by failing employees determine their explanation of the failure.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to study how shame, guilt and fear experienced by failing employees determine their explanation of the failure.
Design/methodology/approach
Employees participated in two studies, one assessing actual personal examples of failures and another used imaginary vignettes. To manipulate the extent to which guilt or shame was the dominant emotion experienced by the failing employee, participants were asked to generate counterfactual thoughts typical of each of these feelings. Fear was manipulated by describing a threatening atmosphere in the organization. Measured was the likelihood that the employee took responsibility for what happened and provided a valid explanation. Likelihood of explaining the event by using excuses, justifications, concessions or denials was also measured.
Findings
Findings indicate guilt was associated with explanations that help the organization learn from the failure and assist employees in restoring their relationships with the organization and co‐workers. Heightened levels of fear, however, decreased this desirable effect of guilt. Shame had no unique contribution to an employee's choice of explanations.
Research limitations/implications
The use of self‐reports and vignettes limits the ecological validity of the present findings. Nevertheless, it provides preliminary evidence for the importance of the factors under study.
Practical implications
These findings contribute to an understanding of the ways organizations can provide emotional settings conductive to constructive failure inquiries both for organizations and employees.
Originality/value
The role emotions play in explanation of failures is an understudied issue both in social psychology and organizational research. The present study opens an avenue for more studies in this direction.
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Shlomo Hareli, Motti Klang and Ursula Hess
The purpose of the present research is to test the hypothesis that hiring decisions are influenced by the perceived femininity and masculinity of candidates as inferred from their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the present research is to test the hypothesis that hiring decisions are influenced by the perceived femininity and masculinity of candidates as inferred from their career history.
Design/methodology/approach
Two job selection simulation studies were conducted in which students with and without personnel selection experience assessed the suitability of male and female job candidates for male and female sex‐typed jobs. The candidate's CVs varied with regard to the gender typicality of the candidate's career history.
Findings
As predicted, when they previously had occupied another gender atypical job, both men and women were perceived as more suitable for a job that is more typical of the opposite gender. These decisions were mediated fully for women and partially for men by the impact of the gender typicality of the candidate's career on their perceived masculinity or femininity. In addition, men who had a gender atypical career history were perceived as less suitable for gender typical jobs. Thus, for men a gender atypical career history can serve as a “double edged sword.” Importantly, experienced and inexperienced decision makers were equally subject to this effect.
Originality/value
Career history provides individuating information about a candidate over and above the skills and experiences they are likely to have. Gender type is one such information that is pertinent in a job market that divides jobs into male and female typical and makes hiring decisions on this basis. Previous research has largely ignored this aspect of career history.
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Louise Boulter and Clive Boddy
The purpose of this paper is to better comprehend the subclinical psychopath's intra and interpersonal moral emotions in the context of their natural habitat, the workplace…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to better comprehend the subclinical psychopath's intra and interpersonal moral emotions in the context of their natural habitat, the workplace, alongside implications for employees and organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on affective events theory (AET) to illuminate this dark-side phenomenon. Thematic analysis is used to identify themes from qualitative data collected from a small sample of interviews conducted with human resource management (HRM) directors and other managers.
Findings
The findings show that the subclinical psychopath is agentic, being unfettered by intra self-directed conscious moral emotions. The predominant moral emotion directed at employees during interpersonal workplace exchanges is typically anger. However, it appears likely the subclinical psychopath fakes this moral emotion as a smokescreen for manipulative and exploitative gains. The predominant moral emotion directed by employees towards the subclinical psychopath is fear. Employees resort to avoidance and withdrawal behaviour and intentions to quit become a reality.
Practical implications
The signalling quality of employees' moral emotions and subsequent dysfunctional avoidance and withdrawal behaviour can provide valuable information to HRM professionals in the detection of subclinical psychopaths which is acknowledged as notoriously difficult.
Originality/value
This study contributes new knowledge to subclinical psychopathy and makes novel use of AET to explore this personality type as a driver of employees' negative workplace emotions, the impact on employees' behaviour alongside implications for organisational effectiveness.
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