Management scholars have long depended on convenience samples to conduct research involving human participants. However, the past decade has seen an emergence of a new convenience sample: online ...panels and online panel participants. The data these participants provide—online panel data (OPD)—has been embraced by many management scholars owing to the numerous benefits it provides over “traditional” convenience samples. Despite those advantages, OPD has not been warmly received by all. Currently, there is a divide in the field over the appropriateness of OPD in management scholarship. Our review takes aim at the divide with the goal of providing a common understanding of OPD and its utility and providing recommendations regarding when and how to use OPD and how and where to publish it. To accomplish these goals, we inventoried and reviewed OPD use across 13 management journals spanning 2006 to 2017. Our search resulted in 804 OPD-based studies across 439 articles. Notably, our search also identified 26 online panel platforms (“brokers”) used to connect researchers with online panel participants. Importantly, we offer specific guidance to authors, reviewers, and editors, having implications for both micro and macro management scholars.
Whereas substantial research portrays gossip as a detrimental behavior, other work observes that gossip performs essential social functions, such as distributing valuable information. Collectively, ...the literature indicates that gossip has the potential to harm and benefit the relationship between the gossip sender and receiver. Our study brings consensus to this conversation by drawing a distinction between how much gossiping occurs—gossiping extent—and characteristics of that gossip—gossip truthfulness and gossip interestingness. Drawing on social exchange theory and cognitive‐motivational‐relational theory, we build a within‐person theoretical model that proposes gossip truthfulness will strengthen the receiver's perception of the social exchange relationship, whereas gossip interestingness will increase the receiver's state happiness. Ultimately, these proximal reactions will increase the receiver's helping behavior toward the sender. We tested our model with a 15‐day experience sampling study (Study 1) and an experiment (Study 2). Results showed that gossip truthfulness had a positive effect on the receiver's perception of the social exchange relationship, leading the receiver to provide more helping behavior to the sender. Gossip interestingness had a positive effect on the receiver's state happiness, leading to increased helping behavior toward the sender. Gossip interestingness also had a serial indirect effect on helping behavior, via increased state happiness that increased receiver social exchange perceptions. In contrast, gossiping extent had a negative indirect effect on helping behavior via decreased receiver happiness, as well as a negative serial indirect effect via decreased receiver happiness and social exchange perceptions. Our model provides employees with insights into how gossip impacts the sender–receiver relationship.
We draw on cognitive-motivational-relational theory to build a theoretical model that outlines how speaking up affects voicers' emotions and subsequent social behavior. Across three studies-an ...experimental pilot study, a daily within-person study of employee–coworker dyads, and a preregistered experiment-we test our proposal that promotive voice elicits pride due to a sense of social accomplishment, whereas prohibitive voice elicits anxiety due to a sense of social uncertainty. We demonstrate that these feelings of pride and anxiety have diverging effects on voicers' tendency to withdraw from social interaction during the rest of the day. In turn, these diverging effects on voicers' interpersonal avoidance influence voicers' daily interpersonal citizenship behaviors. We further propose that recipients of voice have the potential to "hijack" voicers' affective appraisals in a manner that can amplify or attenuate their emotional reactions and subsequent social behavior. Our results disentangle the complex experience of speaking up and provide novel insights into how voicers and organizations can maximize the benefits of voice while minimizing its harmful social side effects.
The construct of feeling trusted reflects the perception that another party is willing to accept vulnerability to one's actions. Although this construct has received far less attention than trusting, ...the consensus is that believing their supervisors trust them has benefits for employees' job performance. Our study challenges that consensus by arguing that feeling trusted can be exhausting for employees. Drawing on Stevan Hobfoll's conservation of resources theory, we develop a model in which feeling trusted fills an employee with pride—a benefit for exhaustion and performance—while also increasing perceived workload and concerns about reputation maintenance—burdens for exhaustion and performance. We test our model in a field study using a sample of public transit bus drivers in London, England. Our results suggest that feeling trusted is a double-edged sword for job performance, bringing with it both benefits and burdens. Given that recommendations for managers generally encourage placing trust in employees, these results have important practical implications.
Although studies have linked procedural justice to a range of positive attitudes and behaviors, the focus on justice has neglected other aspects of decision‐making procedures. We explore one of those ...neglected aspects: procedural timeliness—defined as the degree to which procedures are started and completed within an acceptable time frame. Do employees react to how long a procedure takes, not just how fair it seems to be? To explore that question, we examined the potential effects of procedural timeliness using six theories created to explain the benefits of procedural justice. This integrative theory‐based approach allowed us to explore whether “how long” had unique effects apart from “how fair.” The results of a three‐wave, two‐source field study showed that procedural timeliness had a significant indirect effect on citizenship behavior through many of the theory‐based mechanisms, even when controlling for procedural justice. A laboratory study then replicated those effects while distinguishing procedures that were too fast versus too slow. We discuss the implications of our results for research on fostering citizenship behavior and improving supervisors’ decision‐making procedures.
•Fairness propensity is a tendency to view events, people, and organizations as fair.•We validate a measure of fairness propensity with strong construct validity.•Fairness propensity is partly rooted ...in communal life narratives and traits.•Fairness propensity anchors impressions of initial justice encounters.•It also anchors perceptions of adherence to justice rules.
Scholars have long acknowledged that perceptions of justice and fairness are “in the eye of the beholder.” Unfortunately, few attempts have been made to identify the substantive constructs that reside within that subjectivity. As a result, it is difficult to know whether low employee-rated fairness reflects managers who are truly violating justice rules, or whether it instead points to employees who are unusually strict in their perceptions. Drawing on fairness heuristic theory and conceptualizations of personality, we introduce fairness propensity—a tendency to view events, people, and organizations as fair. We theorize that fairness propensity is predicted—in part—by life narrative themes and trait dispositions that are communal in nature, given the relevance of fairness to relationships. We further theorize that fairness propensity shapes perceptions of overall fairness by influencing both “fairness anchors”—the first impressions of how fair authorities are—and perceptions of adherence to justice rules. A field study using employees from multiple organizations supported these predictions, even when controlling for other personality variables in the justice domain. We discuss the implications of fairness propensity for future research in the justice literature.
Many employees feel a general sense of unfairness toward their supervisors. A common reaction to such unfairness is to talk about it with coworkers. The conventional wisdom is that this unfairness ...talk should be beneficial to the aggrieved employees. After all, talking provides employees with an opportunity to make sense of the experience and to “let off steam.” We challenge this perspective, drawing on cognitive-motivational-relational theory to develop arguments that unfairness talk leads to emotions that reduce the employee’s ability to move on from the unfairness. We first tested these proposals in a three-wave, two-source field study of bus drivers (Study 1), then replicated our findings in a laboratory study (Study 2). In both studies, we found that unfairness talk was positively related to anger and negatively related to hope. Those emotions went on to have direct effects on forgiveness and indirect effects on citizenship behavior. Our results also show that the detrimental effects of unfairness talk were neutralized when the listener offered suggestions that reframed the unfair situation. We discuss the implications of these results for managing unfairness in organizations.
Workplace intrusions—unexpected encounters initiated by another person that disrupt an individual’s work—are generally characterized as negative experiences that deplete resources, increase role and ...information overload, and promote strain. In contrast, our research argues that intrusions may also provide benefits to the employees who are intruded upon. Taking a multistudy approach, we investigate how intrusions impact the extent to which employees engage in their own work—work engagement—and the extent to which they engage in work with others—collaboration. We also investigate the indirect effects of intrusions on employees’ task-focused and person-focused citizenship behavior through these mechanisms. We tested our predictions with a within-person experimental critical incident study (Study 1), an experiment (Study 2), and an experience-sampling methodology study with a sample of scientists involved in research and development (Study 3). Our research investigates the dynamics of various types of workplace intrusions, with results suggesting that intrusions may lead to beneficial employee outcomes in addition to the adverse outcomes previously demonstrated in the literature. Given the ubiquitous nature of intrusions in organizations, our findings have both theoretical and practical significance.
Although impression management scholars have identified a number of tactics for influencing supervisor evaluations, most of those tactics represent supervisor‐targeted behaviors. This study examines ...the degree to which employees form supportive relationships with peers for impression management purposes. In so doing, we explore this intriguing question: Will employees gain more from forming supportive relationships with “stars” (i.e., top performers who are “on the fast track” in the organization) or “projects” (i.e., “works in progress” who need help and refinement to perform well)? We examined this question in 2 field studies. Study 1 included 4 sources and 2 time periods; Study 2 included 2 sources and 3 time periods. The results showed that supportive relationships with both stars and projects seemed to represent impression management opportunities, insofar as they predicted supervisor positive affect and perceptions of employee promotability. Impression management motives only predicted supportive relationships with stars, however, not projects. Relationships with projects were driven by prosocial motives not concerns about managing images. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of our results for the managing of impressions and peer relationships.
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