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1 – 10 of 91Ashita Goswami, Prakash Nair, Terry Beehr and Michael Grossenbacher
The purpose of this paper is to examine affective events theory (AET) by testing the mediating effect of employees’ positive affect at work in the relationships of leaders’ use of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine affective events theory (AET) by testing the mediating effect of employees’ positive affect at work in the relationships of leaders’ use of positive humor with employees’ work engagement, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs); and the moderating effect of transformational leadership style on the relationship between leaders’ use of positive humor and subordinate’s positive affect at work.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were obtained from 235 full-time employees working for a large information technology and business consulting corporation. Moderated mediation (Hayes, 2013) was performed to test the proposed model.
Findings
Leaders’ positive humor was related to creation of subordinates’ positive emotions at work and work engagement. Positive emotions at work did not mediate between leaders’ humor and performance or OCBs. In addition, leaders’ use of transformational leadership style made the relationship between leaders’ positive humor and employees’ positive emotions at work stronger.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides evidence of the positive relationship of leaders’ positive humor with employees’ positive emotions at work and work engagement. Such knowledge may help to inform the training workshops in humor employed by practitioners and potentially create a more enjoyable and fun workplace, which can lead to greater employee engagement.
Originality/value
AET helps explain effects of leader humor, but the effects of are complex. Leader’s use of even positive humor is most likely to have favorable effects mainly depending on their leadership style (transformational) and if their humor successfully leads to positive emotions among employees.
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Employees' entrepreneurial behavior, innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking can contribute to business performance and success, making it important for the organization…
Abstract
Purpose
Employees' entrepreneurial behavior, innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking can contribute to business performance and success, making it important for the organization. Yet, little is known about how management can promote their employees' entrepreneurial behaviors. Based on workplace resources theories, the present study tested a serial mediation model. Empowering leadership predicts employees' resources of role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work via demand-ability fit and need-supply fit, which subsequently lead employees to exhibit entrepreneurial behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
Korean employees (n = 200) working in a variety of industries participated in a two-wave survey with a five-week time lag.
Findings
Structural equation modeling supported a serial mediation model showing how empowering leadership can promote employees' person-job fit. Increased person-job fit was related to enhanced employees' role breadth self-efficacy and meaningful work, which in turn predicted entrepreneurial behaviors. Alternative models with more direct paths did not improve model fit, highlighting the roles of the mediators. Empowering leadership is an important resource facilitating entrepreneurial activities through its influence on employees' fit perceptions and resources.
Originality/value
The present study contributes to entrepreneurial behavior literature by showing the importance of job and personal resources in explaining the determinants of employees' entrepreneurial behavior.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential effects of empowering leadership on followers’ subjective career success through psychological empowerment, protean career…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential effects of empowering leadership on followers’ subjective career success through psychological empowerment, protean career orientation, and career commitment.
Design/methodology/approach
Full-time employees working in the USA were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Participants answered surveys at three separate points over a six-week period (n=261). Structural equation modeling and bootstrapping were used to verify the indirect effect of empowering leadership on career satisfaction controlling for common method variance and growth need strength.
Findings
Empowering leadership was positively related to followers’ subsequent psychological empowerment, which in turn predicted protean career attitudes and career commitment, but only career commitment had a significant relationship with career satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
Empowering leadership behaviors focus on potentially career-enhancing factors, including providing followers with the confidence, inspiration, and authority to assume control of their work lives. Empowering leaders benefit their followers’ careers, and psychological empowerment and career commitment may be important mechanisms in the empowering leadership-career success relationship when their effects are considered simultaneously. Employees’ development of a protean career orientation has less direct effect on subjective career success than simple commitment to a career.
Originality/value
Empowering leadership has been overlooked in career literature. The findings advance the understanding of how empowering leader behaviors could help employees’ subjective career success in a serial mediation model. Additionally, the study empirically demonstrates that psychologically empowered employees are more likely to engage in protean career actions and navigate their own career goals.
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Procedural justice consists of employees' fairness judgments about decision-making processes used to allocate organizational rewards and has been linked to positive work outcomes…
Abstract
Purpose
Procedural justice consists of employees' fairness judgments about decision-making processes used to allocate organizational rewards and has been linked to positive work outcomes. The study drew from social exchange and reciprocity theories to examine a model proposing psychological empowerment and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) as two psychological processes explaining the relationship of procedural justice with employees' work effort and thriving.
Design/methodology/approach
Three-waves of data with one-month time lags were obtained from 346 full-time US employees. Structural equation modeling tested the hypotheses.
Findings
Results supported the model. Procedural justice at Time 1 was positively related to psychological empowerment and OBSE at Time 2, which both led to employees' work effort and thriving at Time 3.
Originality/value
The study provided a theoretical explanation for procedural justice resulting in better work effort and thriving: Psychological empowerment and OBSE may provide a bridge for the effects of procedural justice on employees’ work effort and thriving.
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Misty M. Bennett, Terry A. Beehr and Lana V. Ivanitskaya
The purpose of this paper is to examine work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, taking into account generational cohort and life cycle stage differences.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, taking into account generational cohort and life cycle stage differences.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey participants (428 employed individuals with families) represented different generations and life cycles. Key variables were work/family characteristics and centrality, work-family and family-work conflict, and age.
Findings
Generational differences in both directions were found. Gen X-ers reported the most work-family conflict, followed by Millennials and then Baby Boomers. Baby Boomers exhibited family-work conflict the most, followed by Gen X-ers, and then Millennials, a surprising finding given generational stereotypes. Some of these differences remained after controlling for children in the household (based on life cycle stage theory) and age. Millennials were highest in work centrality, whereas Baby Boomers were highest in family centrality. Employees with children ages 13-18 reported the most work-family conflict, and employees with children under the age of six reported the most family-work conflict.
Research limitations/implications
This study found that generation and children in the household make a difference in work-family conflict, but it did not support some of the common generational stereotypes. Future studies should use a time-lag technique to study generational differences. To reduce work-family conflict, it is important to consider its directionality, which varies across generations and life cycle stages.
Practical implications
This informs organizations on how to tailor interventions to help employees balance work/life demands.
Originality/value
This study is the first to simultaneously examine both generation and life cycle stage (children in the household) in regard to work-family conflict.
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Mansik Yun, Nga Do and Terry Beehr
The purpose of the current research is to examine the crucial role of employees' perception of an incivility norm in predicting supervisors' incivility behaviors, which in turn…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the current research is to examine the crucial role of employees' perception of an incivility norm in predicting supervisors' incivility behaviors, which in turn, results in employees enacting incivility toward their coworkers and employees' emotional exhaustion.
Design/methodology/approach
In Study 1, an experience sampling method (a daily-diary approach) in which 143 male participants from several construction sites completed a total of 1,144 questionnaires was used . In Study 2, cross-sectional data from 156 male employees working in a manufacturing organization was collected. In Study 3, a quasi-experiment was conducted in which 33 and 36 employees were assigned to the intervention and control groups, respectively.
Findings
In Studies 1 and 2, it was revealed that employees are likely to experience their supervisor’s incivility behaviors when perceiving such incivility behaviors are more acceptable within the organization (incivility norm). Further, once employees experience incivility from their supervisor, they are more likely to enact incivility toward their coworkers and experience emotional exhaustion. In Study 3, changing organizational policies via implementing grievance procedures was effective in improving the study’s outcome variables.
Originality/value
Incivility norms predict some negative work outcomes such as incivility behaviors as both a victim and instigator, and emotional exhaustion. Further, reducing an adverse organizational norm (i.e. incivility norm) via instituting grievance procedures was effective in reducing incivility behaviors and emotional exhaustion.
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The main purpose of the current research is to examine affective and cognitive mechanisms by which the trickle-down effect of work engagement from leader to follower takes place.
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of the current research is to examine affective and cognitive mechanisms by which the trickle-down effect of work engagement from leader to follower takes place.
Design/methodology/approach
The current research consisted of two independent studies. In study 1, an experience sampling method was used (N = 1,321 data points from 171 participants) to test within-person effects. In study 2, the authors recruited 266 employees working in 61 teams with two data collections one month apart, to test between-team effects among variables.
Findings
In two independent studies, leaders' work engagement resulted in followers engaging in surface acting (an affective process) and developing self-efficacy (a cognitive process), which in turn resulted in followers' work engagement.
Originality/value
The current research provides some clarifications to the literature on work contagion of engagement by examining dual mechanisms. In particular, although previous research emphasized the negative aspects of surface acting, the current research suggests that surface acting can be potentially helpful by facilitating the contagion effect of work engagement leaders to followers. Further, this research also examines the facilitative role of self-efficacy in mediating the relationship between a leader's work engagement and followers' work engagement. Finally, the authors conducted two independent studies that used different research designs, and results were consistent across the two studies, which can provide evidence for the robustness of the results.
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Jeremy A. Henson and Terry Beehr
The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of subordinates’ individual differences or traits and their performance behavior on the formation of leaders’ LMX, based on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of subordinates’ individual differences or traits and their performance behavior on the formation of leaders’ LMX, based on leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, thus proposing that both who subordinates are and what they do may affect supervisors’ LMX perceptions.
Design/methodology/approach
Two studies were conducted. The first was a non-experimental field study and the second was a laboratory experiment.
Findings
Study 1, a non-experimental field study, HLM, showed that subordinates’ self-reported characteristics predict their leaders’ LMX ratings; Study 2, a laboratory experiment, showed that subordinate performance causes leaders’ LMX perceptions while holding subordinate’s individual differences constant.
Originality/value
The current research was the first to demonstrate experimentally that LMX develops over multiple interactions. Additionally, it demonstrates that task-oriented behavior (i.e. job performance) and personality characteristics (i.e. internal locus of control and self-efficacy) are predictors of LMX.
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Simon T. Tidd and Raymond A. Friedman
This study investigates the impact of conflict style as a coping strategy in response to role conflict. Recent research has begun to examine workplace uncertainty as a mediator in…
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of conflict style as a coping strategy in response to role conflict. Recent research has begun to examine workplace uncertainty as a mediator in the role stress process. Using this overall framework, we developed and tested hypotheses regarding the effect of conflict style activeness on the link between role conflict and uncertainty. Results supported the mediating role of uncertainty in the role stress process, thus replicating previous research. Additionally, the results showed that exhibiting a more active approach to conflict management decreased the negative impact of role conflict on uncertainty. These findings suggest that individuals may be able to reduce the negative individual impact of role conflict in their environment by adopting positive behavioral styles while avoiding negative ones.