While scholars frequently argue that nascent entrepreneurs will be more successful if they are resilient, this assumption remains untested and the mechanisms for its potential benefits are unknown. ...To establish the utility of this psychological construct, we draw from Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory (1998) to develop and test theory on the processes through which psychological resilience influences first-time entrepreneurs' business survival. Results of a time-lagged study of nascent entrepreneurs followed over a 2-year period support this theory, highlighting the cognitive and behavioral ways in which psychological resilience helps nascent entrepreneurs become less vulnerable to their stressful circumstances.
Motivating Organizations to Learn Chadwick, Ingrid C.; Raver, Jana L.
Journal of management,
03/2015, Volume:
41, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Organizations must learn and adapt to succeed in today’s ever-changing business environment, so it is essential for scholars to better understand the antecedents to learning processes among ...individuals, teams, and organizations as a whole. In this article, the authors offer a multilevel theory that illustrates how individuals’ motivation for different achievement goals, that is, goal orientations, shape the way they individually and collectively participate in organizational learning processes. This framework is grounded in a theoretical synthesis of organizational learning and achievement goal theories, which highlights the value of using an emergent motivational theory to better understand how predominantly cognitive learning processes may emerge across levels in organizations. In particular, the authors illustrate how mastery- and performance-oriented norms emerge in work groups and influence information interpretation and integration. The authors further describe how groups’ goal orientation norms can become embedded in the organizational culture, which impacts the ways in which learning processes are institutionalized throughout the organization. This theoretical framework provides a fuller depiction of why and how learning unfolds in organizations, which may facilitate future research on the microfoundations of organizational learning and how these can enable organizations to enhance their capabilities.
Summary
We extend research on employee voice by examining what persuades managers to enact voice messages communicated on organizations' idea management platforms (i.e., software systems designed to ...gather, vet, and enact employee voice). Applying the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion, we propose that voice message quality affects managerial voice enactment via peer endorsement and that peer opposition qualifies the latter effect. Specifically, we argue that peers are more likely to endorse higher‐ versus lower‐quality voice messages because they are attentive recipients who are motivated to support higher‐quality voice. In turn, we argue that managers are influenced by image concerns and legitimacy inferred by social proof, and thus, they will enact voice messages with higher levels of peer endorsement, especially when combined with lower opposition. Results of our archival analysis of over 5000 voice messages communicated on five organizations' idea management platforms support our predictions, such that peer endorsement mediates the relationship between voice message quality and managerial voice enactment, and that this relationship is stronger under conditions of lower versus higher peer opposition. Altogether, our research illuminates how voice messages on idea management platforms are endorsed and ultimately enacted by organizational leaders.
Cross-cultural research is dominated by the use of values despite their mixed empirical support and their limited theoretical scope. This article expands the dominant paradigm in cross-cultural ...research by developing a theory of cultural tightness-looseness (the strength of social norms and the degree of sanctioning within societies) and by advancing a multilevel research agenda for future research. Through an exploration of the top-down, bottom-up, and moderating impact that cultural tightness-looseness has on individuals and organizations, as well as on variance at multiple levels of analysis, the theory provides a new and complementary perspective to the values approach.
Summary
Prior research connecting employee voice with better career outcomes has almost exclusively focused on how frequently employees speak up. In the current research, we shift the focus to voice ...quality—recipients' perceptions of the value of an employee's voice communications, as inferred by message characteristics (i.e., rationale, feasibility, organizational‐focus, and novelty). Grounded within social exchange theory, we argue that peers and managers develop more positive evaluations (i.e., higher performance and promotion ratings) of employees who express higher‐quality voice, above and beyond how frequently they speak up, because voice quality better demonstrates employees' capability, commitment, and helpful intentions, which obligates the reciprocation of rewards. We further assert that voice frequency moderates these effects, such that high‐quality voicers are evaluated more positively, and low‐quality voicers are evaluated more negatively, as voice frequency increases. After conducting four studies through which we developed and validated a superordinate measure of voice quality, we conducted time‐lagged surveys with peers and managers to assess these hypotheses. Results fully supported our predictions for the direct benefits of voice quality on voicers' outcomes, above and beyond voice frequency; yet, the hypothesized interaction only emerged for peer‐rated outcomes.
Despite scholars' and practitioners' recognition that different forms of workplace harassment often co-occur in organizations, there is a paucity of theory and research on how these different forms ...of harassment combine to influence employees' outcomes. We investigated the ways in which ethnic harassment (EH), gender harassment (GH), and generalized workplace harassment (GWH) combined to predict target individuals' job-related, psychological, and health outcomes. Competing theories regarding additive, exacerbating, and inuring (i.e., habituating to hardships) combinations were tested. We also examined race and gender differences in employees' reports of EH, GH, and GWH. The results of two studies revealed that EH, GH, and GWH were each independently associated with targets' strain outcomes and, collectively, the preponderance of evidence supported the inurement effect, although slight additive effects were observed for psychological and physical health outcomes. Racial group differences in EH emerged, but gender and race differences in GH and GWH did not. Implications are provided for how multiple aversive experiences at work may harm employees' well-being.
Coworkers are a source of mixed emotions yet research on emotional ambivalence—i.e., the co-existing and intertwining positive and negative feelings toward a subject—toward peers in work groups is ...scarce. We draw from the literature on competitive dynamics in peer relationships to explore how women and men’s emotional ambivalence is elicited by the presence of a “tall poppy,” a peer who disproportionately and visibly performs better relative to his or her peers. Informed by role congruity theory, we assert that men are socialized into peer relationships that embrace competition and camaraderie, so men tend to exhibit emotional ambivalence toward peers regardless of whether the focal coworker is a “tall poppy.” By contrast, women are socialized into a gender role that emphasizes harmony and equality so the presence of a “tall poppy” violates the female gender role, thereby eliciting more emotional ambivalence compared to when women work with equally matched peers. Experiencing emotional ambivalence then results in attempts to relationally distance oneself from the source of mixed emotions (e.g., ostracism, withdrawal). Two experimental studies—a behavioral laboratory study with students and an online experiment with working adults—both provided full support for these theorized relationships.
The current research integrates theory on the contextual characteristics that impact bystanders’ decisions to prosocially intervene against workplace incivility. We built a model based upon two of ...the most influential theories of prosocial intervention—Latané and Darley’s (
1970
)
decision-tree model
and Piliavin et al.’ (
1981
)
arousal: cost-reward model
—and assert that decisions to intervene are affected by the inherent ambiguity of the uncivil context as well as the costs versus rewards of intervention in ways that facilitate action. Yet, depending on the gender composition of the dyad involved in the uncivil exchange, and both the moral identity and the role (i.e., supervisor versus coworker) of the observer, ambiguity and cost-reward considerations may differ in their relative impact. Policy capturing methodology was used to test the relative influence of ambiguity-reduction (i.e., harm to the target, appeal for help) versus cost-reward (i.e., target’s task performance level, bystander workload) situational cues on coworker and supervisor bystanders’ decisions to intervene with either social support to the target or confronting the perpetrator. Results of a large-scale experiment with over 3400 participants revealed that each of the situational cues surrounding the uncivil exchange positively influenced observers’ decisions to intervene in theorized ways and that cost-reward considerations and role obligations are intricately intertwined.
Our research was motivated by the goal of better understanding how male and female first-time entrepreneurs psychologically appraise key stressors during the business start-up process, and how these ...stress appraisals are related to psychological distress after business launch. Informed by role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002), we argue that financial and social stressors during business launch are appraised as particularly stressful by women. Both starting a business due to financial needs motivation (i.e., high agency) and failing to receive social support during business launch (i.e., low communion) are incongruent with the female gender role. We further argue that these negative stress appraisals early in the business launch process will be associated with higher psychological distress during the later stages of running their business. We investigated these relationships in a field study of nascent entrepreneurs surveyed at three time points over a 1-year period during which they developed and launched their first business. The results of this investigation support our hypotheses, such that female entrepreneurs had higher stress appraisals when faced with gender role incongruent stressors of high financial need and low social support. These higher stress appraisals among women were in turn related to higher psychological distress several months later during business operation compared with their male counterparts. We discuss these findings in light of their implications for psychological stress and strain among nascent entrepreneurs, as well as the unique challenges faced by women as they enter entrepreneurship.
The nature of police officers’ jobs requires them to experience chronic exposure to potentially psychologically traumatic events (PPTEs), that is, direct or indirect exposure to actual or threatened ...death, serious injury or sexual violence (APA, 2013). ...police agencies’ organizational cultures are often unsupportive at best (Dhanani et al.), and officers report very high levels of other organizational stressors including inconsistent leadership styles, bureaucratic red tape, lack of resources, unfair/inconsistent personnel practices, unsupportive peers, and unfair workload distributions (Bikos, 2020; Carleton et al., 2020; Ricciardelli et al., 2020). ...we believe that interdisciplinary collaborations—such as those among I-O psychologists, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurobiologists—are essential to address the complex problem of how to reduce racialized violence and other forms of police misconduct. Overview of police trauma and its effects One of the problems with some I-O psychology solutions (e.g., setting performance standards, de-escalation training) laid out by Dhahani et al. is that they prioritize rational decision making, cognitive control, and self-regulation; however, these prefrontal cortex-driven executive functions are largely inactive when an individual is exposed to a life-threatening situation (Shields et al., 2016). ...rather than having a supportive organizational environment where one’s PSNS can engage to “rest and digest” after PPTEs, the SNS stays hyperactivated due to the psychologically unsafe organizational environments in which officers work (i.e., organizational stressors). ...many police organizations are not only failing to help officers process their PPTEs but are instead further contributing to the burden of stress officers are experiencing because of the invalidating nature of the organizational climate.
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