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The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the performance orientation of employees and self‐promotion in the form of overstating one's performance. It is hypothesized that this relationship depends on task clarity and personalized responsibility.

Data were collected by means of a survey among 281 employees of two Dutch organizations, one active in water management, the other in the justice field.

As expected, a positive relationship was found between performance orientation and self‐promotion, but only when task clarity was low. Personalized responsibility appeared to reduce the strength of the relationship between performance orientation and self‐promotion, but only under conditions of low task clarity.

Inducing high levels of task clarity seems to be generally effective in reducing self‐promotion. If it is not possible to increase task clarity, personalized responsibility is a second best option to reduce self‐promotion

The focus on high performance in modern organizations tends to induce employees to promote themselves as excellent performers. Performance‐oriented employees are especially known to react in this way while they can simultaneously be assumed to refrain from any behavior that is likely to be noticed as self‐promoting. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that factors that can enhance the visibility or traceability of self‐promotion will lead to a reduction in self‐promoting impulses. In the current study, two such factors, task clarity and an employee's personalized responsibility, have been investigated.

Using Bonner's model, this paper aims to examine the effects of skill level and the two task complexity dimensions – clarity and quantity of information – on subjects' internal control risk assessments.

The research expands the literature by isolating the individual components of task complexity and examining how skill interacts with either component in affecting decision making. It uses a 2×4 mixed factors laboratory experiment. This design allows the effects of task complexity and skill between and within subjects to be examined. The mixed factors design includes two levels (high and low) for each dimension of task complexity (clarity and quantity) on a between‐subjects basis, with four separate cases on a within‐subjects basis. Skill level is measured as the subject's task‐related knowledge. The subjects are senior‐level students in auditing courses at three Midwest universities.

It is found that subjects assess control risk too high, consistent with the conservatism principle. Skill level mediates this finding: high‐skill subjects make more accurate risk assessments; low‐skill subjects consistently assess control risk too high. Over repetitions of complex tasks, high‐skill subjects make more accurate assessments, while low‐skill subjects initially overstate, then improve. For repetitive simple tasks, both skill levels get worse, increasingly overstating their assessments. These findings support current practice, indicating that experienced auditors make complex risk assessments, where repetitive performance of complex tasks improves risk assessments. However, repetitive simple tasks may result in assessing control risk too high, resulting in excessive testing.

Consistent with prior research, the results suggest task complexity and subject skill are important considerations in experimental research designs.

Voice assistant technology represents one of the most radical artificial intelligence innovations. Drawing on the processing fluency theory and consumer learning literature, this study aims to explore how consumer acceptance of new products is influenced by voice assistant function (VAF), along with the impacts of role clarity and learning modality.

Four between-subjects experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 tested the main effect of VAF on consumer acceptance. Study 2 included role clarity as a mediator between VAF and consumer acceptance. Study 3 examined the moderation effect of learning modality and contrasted the effectiveness of experiential and verbal learning in helping increase consumer acceptance. Study 4, as a post hoc study, tested serial mediations to validate whether processing fluency was indeed the mechanism explaining the indirect relationship between VAF and consumer acceptance via role clarity.

The negative impact of VAF on consumer acceptance was demonstrated in all four studies. Studies 2 and 3 showed VAF decreased role clarity which further influenced consumer acceptance. Moreover, Study 3 evidenced that experiential learning was more effective than verbal learning in increasing consumer acceptance of voice-assisted products via role clarity. Study 4 demonstrated that VAF decreased role clarity, which in turn decreased processing fluency, leading to lower consumer acceptance.

This research views the usage of voice-assisted products as a coproduction process between consumers and the VAF. Accordingly, findings provide novel insights into processing fluency of tasks assisted by VAF through the lens of role clarity and learning modality, which enriches the understanding of potential barriers and opportunities for consumers to accept voice-assisted products.

This study explored whether crowdsourcing work characteristics are associated with perceived work effort in competitive crowdsourcing markets. The study also investigated the important contextual variables and internal mechanisms related to perceived work effort.

A questionnaire was posted as a crowdsourcing task on China's Time Fortune website. Data from 231 valid questionnaires were analyzed using SmartPLS 3.

Crowdsourcing workers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations were significantly and positively correlated with their perceived work effort. Task autonomy and feedback were significantly and positively correlated with intrinsic motivation. Skill variety, task significance, task identity, and task clarity had no significant correlations with intrinsic motivation. However, task clarity was significantly and positively correlated with perceived work effort. Moreover, the relationship between workers' trust in task requesters and perceived work effort was fully mediated by intrinsic motivation.

This study extended the job characteristic model into the virtual competitive crowdsourcing market. The authors verified the relationship between task clarity/trust in task requesters and workers' motivation and perceived work effort.

Numerous accounting studies have investigated the effects of participatory budgetary processes. The job satisfaction of participating employees is one of the most frequently researched issues. Increased employee participation in budgeting widens the responsibilities and experience of employees. However, it might also increase the level of task difficulty and reduce task clarity. The purpose of this study is to design an improved budgeting system for subordinates so as to enhance job satisfaction in a working environment of difficult task setting and low goal clarity.

The present paper employs two models (direct and indirect) to investigate the level of employee satisfaction during budgetary participation, focusing on the hotel industry in Macau.

The direct model suggests that task difficulty and clarity do not directly affect satisfaction levels among employees during budgetary participation. However, the indirect model suggests that, under conditions of increased task difficulty and unclear goal situations, the level of job satisfaction is mediated indirectly through the influence of four core dimensions (budget variety, autonomy, task identity, and feedback). The study thus finds that improved design of budgetary processes, taking account of four core dimensions (budget variety, autonomy, task identity, and feedback), produces greater job satisfaction among employees who are desirous of satisfying higher‐order needs. Moreover, these employees are rated by superiors as performing higher‐quality work during the budgetary process.

The paper contributes to the budgeting literature in several ways. It confirms the beneficial effect of improved budgetary design in enhancing employees' job satisfaction in a working environment of task difficulty and unclear goal setting, which is particularly important in the hotel industry and other service sectors. The paper also extends the literature that has hitherto typically focused on the examination of factors that affect the level of employees' job satisfaction, and recognizes the importance of budgetary design to job satisfaction.

An internship is an essential part of vocational-oriented degree programs because it enhances the employability of graduates and prepares them for career development. Thus, it is important to understand how students view internships and whether they are satisfied with their internship experience. This paper explores the effects of organizational and individual factors on internship satisfaction.

Based on a literature review on internship, we propose a theoretical model in which organizational factors, including supervisor support and task clarity, and individual factors, including interns' perceived functional value and perceived social value, can lead to internship satisfaction while task clarity, perceived functional value and perceived social value can affect interns' self-initiative behavior. The proposed model was tested using responses from 161 Chinese students in Macao SAR.

The results of structural equation modeling indicated that supervisor support and perceived social value had direct and significant impacts on internship satisfaction while task clarity and perceived functional value had direct and significant impacts on interns' self-initiative behavior. Additionally, supervisor support significantly influenced task clarity, perceived functional value and perceived social value.

The paper identifies that supervisor support has a strong and significant impact on internship satisfaction. Additionally, the current study indicates that organizations should pay great attention to appoint the right work supervisors who are able to assign appropriate tasks to interns, provide clear guidance and facilitate social interaction between interns and other people.

This study aims to examine the effects of occupational characteristics on the length of time required to socialize newcomers. The authors examine task mastery, role clarity and social acceptance as indicators of socialization.

To test the hypotheses, the authors used occupational data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and survey data of subject matter experts in 35 occupations.

Findings show that occupational differences account for a significant variance in the time needed to socialize newcomers. Across occupations, it takes longer to achieve task mastery than role clarity or social acceptance. Occupational complexity increases the time it takes for newcomers to attain task mastery, role clarity and social acceptance. Additionally, unstructured work and decision-making freedom increase the time it takes for newcomers to attain role clarity.

This study provides both theoretical and empirical guidance on the duration of the organizational socialization period. The study also provides empirical support for prior propositions that different types of newcomer learning occur at different rates.

The purpose of this study is to explore alternative models of substitutes for leadership. These alternative models are a leadership-only model, substitutes for the leadership-only model and substitutes for the leadership-mediated-effects model.

Four occupational groups were targeted, namely, PhD faculty of institutions of higher education, medical doctors who work in district headquarters’ hospitals, licensed pharmacists and certified engineers. Also, a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data, and 523 usable responses were received.

Partial least square path modeling was used for data analysis, and the results of structural models revealed that: the dimensions of transformational leadership significantly affected the followers’ outcomes; a few substitutes for leadership also significantly affected the followers’ outcomes; and, in some cases, substitutes for leadership significantly mediated the relationship between dimensions of transformational leadership and followers’ outcomes.

Findings of the study provide useful implications to improve the managerial practices of organizational leaders, work design strategies in organizations and overall organizational policies for effective functioning. Other developing countries with similar socio-economic status may use these findings to improve organizational functioning.

This study makes important contributions to the leadership literature. It tests three alternative models in the domain of substitutes for the leadership theory and tests the separate effects of dimensions of transformational leadership and substitutes for leadership on followers’ work outcomes. Further, it specifies the mediating effects of substitutes for leadership on the dimensions of transformational leadership and followers’ work outcomes. Most important, this study for the first time tests transformational leadership and substitutes for leadership concepts in Pakistani work settings and advances the theoretical and empirical literature in this local context.

This research integrates recent work on customer information acquisition in services marketing and economics of information research with literature on industrial buying behavior for the purpose of proposing and empirically testing a model that explores information acquisition in industrial purchasing.

To test the proposed model, an online survey was prepared using WebSurveyor and an introductory e‐mail with a link to the survey was sent to a sample of members of a professional organization of industrial purchasing managers.

Results indicated a differential use of information sources across differing purchase situations. When purchasing situations were perceived to be easy to evaluate, there was a significantly greater use of impersonal information sources. In addition, we offer evidence that the use of both personal and impersonal information sources does, in fact, increase the perception of goal clarity with respect to the purchasing task among industrial purchasers.

If marketers can help provide key information – both personal and impersonal – to their customers, they are helping to clarify the purchasing task. These communication efforts can then contribute to that satisfying outcome which might ultimately enhance the relationship between the two parties.

The paper aims to explore the role of climate for creativity and innovation as the situational variable to lead to both expected and unexpected consequences (e.g. performance and unethical behavior), by discovering the relationships among task characteristics (e.g. difficulty, clarity and performance pressure), individual psychological aspects (e.g. mindfulness and self-justification) and work environmental conditions (e.g. peer behavior and climate for creativity and innovation). In this study, task characteristics are proposed to positively associate with unethical behavior via mindfulness. Moreover, climate for creativity and innovation is proposed to moderate the relationship between self-justification and unethical behavior. Finally, unethical behavior is predicted to positively influence on performance.

Data were collected from the sample of salespeople, who are working for variety of companies in Vietnam. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and SmartPLS 3 are implemented to test the path model.

Emphasizing both bright and dark sides of promoting creativity and innovation, the study highlights the role of climate for creativity and innovation in strengthening the positive relationship between self-justification and unethical behavior. In turn, unethical behavior positively influences performance. Further, the findings indicate that mindfulness contributes in explaining unconscious unethical behavior.

Exploring the relationships among climate for creativity and innovation, unethical behavior and performance, this paper contributes for deeper understanding of variety aspects of innovation. Demands for an intelligent management in modern workplaces are suggested.