A central idea in the feedback seeking literature is that there should be a positive relationship between self-efficacy and the likelihood of seeking feedback. Yet empirical findings have not always ...matched this theoretical claim. Departing from current theorizing, we argue that high self-efficacy may sometimes decrease feedback seeking by making people undervalue feedback and that perspective taking is an important factor in determining whether or not this occurs. Results from 5 studies, utilizing diverse methodologies and samples, support our hypothesis that the relationship between self-efficacy and feedback seeking depends on the extent to which one engages in perspective taking. In the absence of perspective taking, self-efficacy tends to be more negatively related to feedback seeking. However, when perspective taking occurs, this relationship tends to be more positive. We also provide evidence that this interaction effect is mediated by perceptions of the value of feedback. We discuss the implications of our theory and findings for the feedback seeking literature and more broadly.
Organizations often need to deal with ambiguous threats, which are complex, unprecedented, and difficult-to-predict events that hold the potential to cause harm. Drawing on the attention-based view ...of work behavior, we propose that employees do not always remain vigilant to such threats. Consequently, we argue that, in the face of those threats, employees can fail to notice or recognize problems or vulnerabilities in their organizations' work processes or products that can hinder coping. We posit that this effect is, paradoxically, more pronounced when employees are working with trustworthy managers who are perceived as capable and focused enough on the well-being of their units to adequately deal with work challenges. Thereby, we highlight that employees may overlook problems and thus not speak up, precisely when their input is highly desired to address ambiguous threats and can be effectively used by competent and caring managers. Using a combination of field surveys and preregistered experiments, we demonstrate support for our arguments. In the process, we present an alternative attention-based perspective to the voice literature that has so far predominantly focused on cost-benefit-based explanations (i.e., how employees evaluate the perceived costs of speaking up vs. presumed benefits) when describing hurdles to employee voice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Despite the ubiquity of gossip in the workplace, the management literature offers a limited understanding of its consequences for gossip senders. To understand whether gossiping is beneficial or ...detrimental for the gossip sender, it is necessary to consider the perspective of gossip recipients and their response to gossip. We develop a typology of gossip that characterizes archetypal patterns of interpreting gossip. We then draw from attribution theory to develop a multilevel process model of workplace gossip that focuses on how the gossip recipient's attributions of a gossip episode shape the gossip recipient's subsequent response and behaviors. In addition to the valence and work-relatedness dimensions of gossip that comprise the typology, we examine credibility and the status of the gossip target as fundamental features of the gossip episode that jointly affect the gossip recipient's attributions. At the episodic level, the process of deciphering the gossip sender's motives influences the subsequent reciprocation of gossip. Depending on the locus of causality attributed to the gossip episode, gossip also contributes to the perceived trustworthiness of the gossip sender and the gossip recipient's cooperation with or social undermining of the gossip sender over time. The proposed model suggests that the potential benefits or social consequences of gossip for the gossip sender depend on the characteristics of the gossip and the context of the gossip episode that serve as inputs to the gossip recipient's attributional process.
Scholarship on impunity has centered around quantifiable prosecutions related to criminal acts that often occur outside of the workplace. We offer insights into the psychological experience of ...impunity by shifting the focus to organizational settings and embedding impunity within discussions of workplace misconduct. We distinguish between (a) perceived personal impunity, which reflects employees' belief that they will not face punishment for their own misconduct; and (b) perceived contextual impunity, which reflects employees' belief that their organization will not punish employees for their misconduct. We develop and validate measures for each impunity perception and establish a preliminary nomological network by investigating factors that influence each perception and their relationship with workplace misconduct. Consequently, we offer nuanced insights into how distinct impunity perceptions result in workplace misconduct relative to other established predictors. Our perceived workplace impunity measures provide a valuable tool for assessing impunity perceptions and predicting instances of misconduct. In addition, they offer practical insights into impunity's functions within organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
This study zooms in on sustainability transformation processes by deploying Stouten, Rousseau, and Cremer's (SRC) model of ten key evidence-based steps in managing planned organizational change as an ...anchor to develop a sequential sustainability transformation model (STM) for business organizations. The study highlights phases and steps in sustainability transformation with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Implementing planned organizational change models in sustainability transformation provides new evidence that the governance (G) factor plays the most significant role among ESG factors. Moreover, the study reveals the importance of developing more robust metrics to gauge governance factors. This study also connects change management with sustainability transformation and addresses future research in this nexus.
•The study sheds light on sustainability transformation for business organizations.•It illuminates the implementation of environmental, social, and governance factors.•It shows a science-based, step-by-step roadmap to reaching sustainability.•It highlights the importance of developing more robust governance metrics.•The findings convey sustainability-oriented takeaways for business organizations.
Resilience is a topic of growing interest in the literature focused on organizations. There is an extensive research on resilience but it is embedded in a variety of disconnected literatures that ...have developed in different research fields, involving varying levels of analysis and different subconstructs. This has resulted in a general confusion surrounding the concept of resilience and its relationship to similar constructs. In this paper, we synthesize this fragmented literature to better understand organization-related resilience and set the stage for future work in this area. First, based on a bibliographic coupling analysis of 1,667 articles, we identify 10 historical clusters that have shaped this domain and highlight how these clusters have developed over time. Second, drawing on recommendations for how research can develop high-quality concept definitions, we analyze subconstructs, conceptual definitions, and measures applied in this domain. Third, we distinguish resilience from related constructs. Overall, our synthesis revealed that resilience is an important and distinct concept in organization-related research. In spite of this, the field has suffered from the presence of a jingle-jangle fallacy, which means that existing conceptualizations of resilience assign different meanings to this label, while at the same time various subconstructs exist. Thus, fourth, we develop a framework integrating the broad literature of organization-related resilience into three distinct themes of research that offer different insights into how entities across levels deal with adversity. In an attempt to provide guidance for research that builds upon this review, we conclude with an agenda for future investigations.
In the United States, leaders of the highest valued companies, best-ranked universities, and most-consumed media outlets are more likely to be White than what would be expected based on White ...people's representation in the U.S. population. One explanation for this racial gap is that U.S. respondents' prototype of a leader is White by default-which is, in turn, what causes White (vs. non-White) people to be promoted up the organizational ladder more quickly. Although this explanation has empirical support, its central premise was recently challenged by experimental evidence documenting that U.S. respondents no longer associate leaders, more than nonleaders, with being White. To reconcile these contradictory findings, we conducted three preregistered experiments (N = 1,316) on the topic of whether leaders, more than nonleaders, continue to be associated with Whiteness (i.e., being categorized as White or being represented with stereotypically White qualities). Results suggest that associations between leaders and Whiteness hold up to scrutiny, but that detecting them may depend on what methods researchers employ. In particular, when researchers use direct methods of detecting racial assumptions (e.g., self-report measures), there appears to be no evidence of an association between leaders and Whiteness (Experiment 1). Yet, when researchers use more indirect methods of detecting racial assumptions (e.g., a Princeton trilogy task), an association between leaders and Whiteness readily emerges (Experiments 2 and 3). In short, although respondents refrain from freely expressing associations they may harbor between leaders and Whiteness, these associations do not appear to have dissipated with time.
Although workplace incivility has received increasing attention in organizational research over the past two decades, there have been recurring questions about its construct validity, especially ...vis-à-vis other forms of workplace mistreatment. Also, the antecedents of experienced incivility remain understudied, leaving an incomplete understanding of its nomological network. In this meta-analysis using Schmidt and Hunter's Methods of meta-analysis: Correcting error and bias in research findings (3rd ed.), Sage random-effect meta-analytic methods, we validate the construct of incivility by testing its reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, as well as its incremental predictive validity over other forms of mistreatment. We also extend its nomological network by drawing on the perpetrator predation framework to systematically study the antecedents of experienced incivility. Based on 105 independent samples and 51,008 participants, we find extensive support for incivility's construct validity. Besides, we demonstrate that demographic characteristics (gender, race, rank, and tenure), personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, negative affectivity, and self-esteem), and contextual factors (perceived uncivil climate and socially supportive climate) are important antecedents of experienced incivility, with contextual factors displaying a stronger association with incivility. In a supplementary primary study with 457 participants, we find further support for the construct validity of incivility. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this study.
Information technologies have become an existential part of business organizations, with much of their operations being carried out through specific ICT tools. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted ...the need for digitalisation both in business entities and in other types of organization/institutions, with the use of different technologies being a preferred option for decision-makers to shape new business architectures/options to solve problems. The extent to which such technologies are integrated into technical infrastructures depends on the strategy implemented by top management. From this perspective, it becomes a necessity to outline a digital strategy that directs the company to reconfigure its organizational architecture by adopting information technologies. The issues of resource efficiency, time reduction and maintaining competitiveness continue to occupy an important position in the long-term development policies of business organizations. The new business environment, dominated by technology, constant change and uncertainty, has highlighted the need to develop different businesses based to a greater extent on equipment and automated operations. As a result, terms such as artificial intelligence, big data, industry 4.0, smart cities, smart businesses, intelligent firms have become commonplace in everyday language, both in companies and in other types of institutions/organizations.
Organizational climate is arguably the most studied representation of the social context of organizations, having been examined as an antecedent, outcome, or boundary condition in virtually every ...domain of inquiry in the organizational sciences. Yet there is no commonly recognized, domain-independent theory that is used to explain why and how climates both form and affect behavior. Rather, there is a set of climate theories (and literatures) housed across a variety of divergent content domains. As a result, researchers who study climate in one domain are often unaware of climate advancements made in another. This lack of a theoretical lingua franca for climate limits our ability to understand what is known about climate and how climate research-whether domain-specific or domain-independent-can progress in a more cogent fashion. To resolve these fractures and unify climate scholarship, this article integrates existing theoretical perspectives of climate into a singular climate theory that summarizes and articulates domain-independent answers to the questions of why and how climates form and influence behavior in organizations. Using the individual drive to reduce uncertainty in meaningful social settings as the motivational mortar for this theoretical integration, we offer a needed reorientation to the field and illuminate a path forward for both future domain-specific and domain-independent climate advancements.
