Search results

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between employees’ deference to leaders’ authority and their upward ingratiatory behavior, which may be invigorated by two personal resources (dispositional greed and social cynicism) and two organizational resources (informational justice and forgiveness climate).

In this study survey data were collected among employees who work in the banking sector.

Strict adherence to leaders’ authority stimulates upward ingratiatory behavior, especially when employees (1) have a natural tendency to want more, (2) are cynical about people in power, (3) believe they have access to pertinent organizational information and (4) perceive their organization as forgiving of mistakes.

For human resource (HR) managers, this study points to the risk that employees’ willingness to comply blindly with the wishes of organizational leaders can escalate into excessive, inefficient levels of flattery. Several personal and organizational conditions make this risk particularly likely to materialize.

This study extends prior human resource management (HRM) research by revealing the conditional effects of an unexplored determinant of upward ingratiatory behavior, namely, an individual desire to obey organizational authorities unconditionally.

Adapting a positive business ethics framework, the purpose of this paper is to offer a new perspective to manage bullying at work. Specifically, this paper reports an empirical study which examines how the good work of servant leadership may lower employees’ exposure to workplace bullying, with compassion as a mediator and social cynicism beliefs (SCBs) as a moderator.

Survey data were gathered from 337 essential health professionals working in various public and private health-care organisations in Pakistan. Structural equation modelling was used to test the research model.

This study found that perceived servant leadership helps in lessening employee exposure to workplace bullying by strengthening their compassion. However, SCBs moderate the mediating role of compassion in employees’ perceptions of the servant leadership–bullying relationship.

This study has implications in developing models of leadership to build employees’ empathetic resources to combat workplace bullying. The authors found that servant leadership and workplace compassion, embodying positive, ethical and sustainable attributes, play a crucial role in managing bullying at work by promoting relational dignity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the relationships between employee perceptions of servant leadership, workplace bullying and employee compassion while considering SCBs as a boundary condition.

Healthy employees are assets for organizations, especially in service organizations. This study considered variables that lead to psychological, life and workplace well-being for hotel employees. A comprehensive model is proposed for which Job Demand–Resource (JD-R) theory provides theoretical support.

Data from four hundred and five hotel employees were collected to observe the individual and organizational factors that directly and indirectly result in three types of well-being: workplace, psychological and life.

Results provide significant positive direct and indirect effects of individual characteristics (personal cynicism and job stress) on psychological, life and workplace well-being. Similarly, organizational characteristics (organizational values and job characteristics) showed positive direct and indirect effects on life and workplace well-being.

The findings provide a strong recommendation for managers to focus on individual- and organizational-level factors that enhance the well-being of employees.

This study contributes to the literature by explicating why individuals become effective in performing tasks in intercultural context. Drawing from the social axioms theory and intelligence theory, this study specifically investigates and generates new insights about the role of social complexity belief and cultural intelligence (CQ) in enhancing intercultural task performance.

Two sets of studies were conducted. Study 1 was conducted in Australia (n = 222) wherein survey data were collected from employees (i.e. self-reports). In a subsequent study which was conducted in the Philippines (Study 2; n = 211), archival data were obtained from the annual performance reviews of the employees (provided by immediate supervisors) in addition to the employees' self-reports.

Results are validated in both studies that social complexity belief relates positively and significantly to intercultural task performance. Moreover, results show that social complexity belief influences overall CQ (and its cognitive and metacognitive dimensions) and in the process impacts intercultural task performance.

This study offers new insights related to intercultural task performance effectiveness. In particular, this study highlights the role of social complexity belief system. Furthermore, this study extends the nomological network of CQ by explicating how an individual's belief can relate to his/her level of CQ which then influences intercultural task performance. Aside from generating knowledge, this study also offers practical insights for human resources practitioners and for employees who are finding new ways to improve and enhance intercultural task performance.

Many consumer-focused corporate social responsibility (CSR) studies suggest a positive link between the responsibility demonstrated by a company and consumers’ intention to favor the company in their purchases. Yet an analogous causal effect between corporate social and financial performances is not evident. This chapter conceptualizes how social desirability and cynicism contribute to the discrepancy between consumers’ attitudes and their actual purchase behavior, and analyzes why consumer choices indicated in surveys do not consistently convert into actions.

We develop a conceptual framework based on hybrid choice modeling to estimate the impact of two new variables, Corporate Social Desirability and Corporate Social Cynicism, on CSR research. The model presented synthesizes research findings from the fields of CSR and psychology with a discrete choice methodology that allows inclusion of psychological aspects as latent variables.

The goal of the framework is to bridge the gap between choices stated by consumers in CSR surveys and their actual choices by quantifying and extracting the effects of biases that otherwise threaten the validity of such survey results. As the next step, the practical value of the model must be evaluated through empirical research combining a CSR choice study with social desirability and cynicism measurement.

The framework proposes a novel way of controlling CSR surveys for potential biases created by social desirability and cynicism and enables quantification of this impact, with potential application to other fields where psychological aspects may distort research results. Future empirical evidence based on the framework may also offer new insights into the mechanisms by which the two biases distort findings.

Leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship is a crucial context for individuals’ generation of creative ideas. Unlike the fruit research between LMX quality and employee creativity, the relationship between LMX ambivalence and employee creativity is scarce. This study thus aims to examine the effect of LMX ambivalence on employee creativity.

This study conducted an on-site survey of research and development teams in China and distributed paired questionnaires with a time lag of one month. Data from 116 leaders and 484 subordinates were collected and analyzed.

The results showed that LMX ambivalence was directly negatively or indirectly negatively related to employee creativity via self-efficacy. Employee cynicism acted as a potential personal moderator of the effect of LMX ambivalence, specifically, employee cynicism attenuated the negative influence of LMX ambivalence on employee creativity via self-efficacy.

This study extends our knowledge of the complex effects of LMX relationships by empirically exploring whether and how LMX ambivalence influences employee creativity, with self-efficacy introduced as one crucial underlying mechanism. Meanwhile, this study enriches the existing cynicism literature by demonstrating the role of employee cynicism as a buffer in the relationship between LMX ambivalence and employee creativity.

With the spread of COVID-19, governments have initiated lockdown procedures and forced organizations to switch to remote working. Employees working remotely in isolated and confined situations are experiencing great stress and uncertainty. This study aims to investigate how remote workers perform during lockdowns.

Drawing on social information processing theory, this study developed and tested hypotheses linking professional isolation, cynicism and task performance. This study was comprised of 497 remote workers in the financial industry in China.

The findings revealed that professional isolation is positively related to cynicism, and cynicism is negatively related to task performance. Cynicism mediates the relationship between professional isolation and task performance. The results indicated that psychological hardiness moderated the mediation effect of professional isolation on task performance through cynicism.

This research offers implications for managers and practitioners on reducing employees' feeling of isolation through effective communication, collaboration and support via online platforms and preventing and reducing cynicism by introducing clear organizational policy and practice to balance job demands and job resources. Meanwhile, managers can develop commitment, control and challenge components of employees' psychological hardiness to enhance job performance.

This study extends the remote working literature in a crisis situation and fills the gap in the cynicism literature by understanding the role played by cynicism for remote workers. The current study also adds to the literature by highlighting the importance of psychological hardiness for remote workers during the pandemic.

Adopting a social exchange framework, this article examines the relationship between organizational cynicism and leader–member exchange (LMX) using two different methodologies.

Study 1 utilizes a longitudinal panel design (N = 291) to examine the reciprocal relationships between organizational cynicism and LMX over time. Study 2 (N = 348) positions loyalty as a possible mechanism through which organizational cynicism might impair LMX.

Study 1 provides evidence for the existence of some reciprocity in the relationships between organizational cynicism and LMX; however, organizational cynicism appears to be a stronger predictor of LMX than the obverse. The results of Study 2 suggest that cynical employees are less loyal to their supervisors, and this cynicism can interfere with the reciprocity process inherent in the creation and maintenance of high-quality social exchanges at work.

This is the first study to examine the relations between organizational cynicism and LMX in a longitudinal design. Additionally, the inclusion of loyalty and demonstration that organizational cynicism impacts loyalty to supervisors negatively represents a novel direction in organizational cynicism research.

This paper aims to examine the effect of social cynicism on consumer cynicism. The negative inferred motive is tested as a mediator between social cynicism and consumer cynicism; whereas, negative affectivity is tested as a moderator between social cynicism and negative inferred motive.

The study was carried out in India using a mixed-method approach. In the first stage, a survey was conducted to test the moderated mediation model, followed by in-depth interviews in the second stage. The survey was analysed using structural equation modelling, while themes were generated from the data collected through interviews.

The study established the effect of social cynicism on consumer cynicism. Negative inferred motive mediated the relationship between social cynicism and consumer cynicism. Negative affectivity moderated the influence of social cynicism on negative inferred motive.

With rising anti-consumption behaviours, it is imperative to understand why consumers turn cynical towards marketers. The study indicates that consumer cynicism is influenced by previous experiences of the consumer with the society and is not merely a reaction to arm-twisting by firms. As social cynicism cannot be changed drastically, understanding how it impacts consumer cynicism would help a firm handle its marketing efforts better.

The study empirically validates the relationship between social cynicism and consumer cynicism. The mediating effect of negative inferred motive on consumer cynicism was also validated. The study is also the first to point out the moderating role of negative affectivity on the relationship between social cynicism and negative inferred motive.

The purpose of this study is to examine how and when supervisors’ bottom-line mentality (BLM) influences workplace cheating behavior. Specifically, the authors draw upon social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and the negative reciprocity norm (Gouldner, 1960) argument, to explain that supervisor BLM is likely related to organizational cynicism and subsequently those employees may engage in cheating behavior as a way to make things even with the organization. Furthermore, the authors theorized that organizational cynicism and supervisors’ BLM via organizational cynicism, increase cheating behavior among employees with a weak moral identity.

To test the current model, the authors collected data from 232 employees working in various Pakistani firms.

The results affirmed the authors’ moderated-mediation model. The positive indirect effects of supervisors’ BLM on workplace cheating behavior, through organizational cynicism, are moderated by employees’ moral identity.

This is the first study that examine the mediating and moderating role of organizational cynicism and employees’ moral identity in the relationship between supervisors’ BLM and workplace cheating behavior.