Cross-level Moderating Effect Research Articles

Daily Job Crafting Helps Those Who Help Themselves More

Not all members are engaged in job crafting behavior in the same context, yet little research has addressed boundary conditions of daily job crafting. This study addresses these important issues and how the effects of daily job crafting vary depending on the work situation. We consider job autonomy and leader support as between- person level moderators and reveal how it affects the impact of daily job crafting on daily job satisfaction. Through the experience sampling method, we collected 946 days of data from 108 members for hypothesis testing. The analysis results showed that the main effect of daily job crafting and the cross-level moderating effect of leader support were significant, and the moderating effect of job autonomy was not significant. In particular, the positive effect of daily job crafting on daily job satisfaction was strengthened for members with low leader support. These findings highlight that leader support is an important social context to job crafting, and provides insights when members can get more advantages from their daily job crafting.

Job Crafting Alone or Together? : Job Crafting, Collective Job Crafting, and Creativity

There is an extensive literature on job crafting on creativity but much less is known about how their creativity affect when team with high level of job crafting work together in team context. We use the term ‘collective job crafting’ to capture phenomenon of team members actively changing their jobs together. We examined how job crafting affect creativity both at individual- and team-level. We tested a cross-level moderating effect of team coordination on relationship between job crafting and individual creativity. Based on a sample of 481 team members with 108 teams, our results show that individual job crafting is directly related to individual creativity. As well as, collective job crafting indirectly affected team creativity through team coordination at team level. These results highlight how job crafting contributes to performance. Implications of our finding and future research directions are discussed.

The Target of Incivility Cannot Be an Island

Abstract. To address the inconsistencies regarding the effects of incivility on employee productivity and career satisfaction, this study adopted a multilevel approach to examine the cross-level moderating effect of department-level incivility on the negative impact of individual-level incivility. We tested our hypotheses using data from 717 faculty nested within 79 departments at a southwestern university. The hierarchical linear modeling results supported that individual-level incivility negatively related to career satisfaction but not productivity. Further, department-level incivility moderated the negative effects of individual-level incivility such that the negative effects of individual-level incivility on career satisfaction and productivity were reduced when most people in the department experienced incivility or when individuals were not singled out for being mistreated. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Wealth and Competitiveness of National Economic Systems Moderates the Importance of Big Five Personality Dimensions for Life Satisfaction of Employed Persons in 18 Nations

Measures of personality have been shown to predict employee satisfaction at work and in life, but these findings arise mostly from research conducted in national cultures of Anglo heritage. To broaden the generality of such findings, we explore the relationships between Big Five dimensions of personality and satisfaction with life across representative samples of 13,265 employed persons in 18 nations. We argue that the strength of relationships between these personality dimensions and life satisfaction will be moderated by a national economic culture characterized by wealth and by competitiveness, since employees derive their satisfaction with life from the personality qualities especially valued in such economic systems. Using data from the World Values Survey and its Wave 6 short-form measure of the Big Five, we find that the dimensions of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability predict higher life satisfaction pan-nationally for employed persons. Cross-level moderation effects were found: national wealth enhances the linkage of conscientiousness and emotional stability to life satisfaction; agreeableness links to life satisfaction in wealthier but not in poorer nations; extroversion predicts life satisfaction in more competitive nations but not in less competitive nations. To explain this variability in the relationships of Big Five personality dimensions with the life satisfaction of employed persons, we reason that the national cultures of wealth and of competitiveness surrounding working life establish an incentive context within which enactments of these personality dispositions will generate greater social and personal rewards from the experience of work, yielding higher levels of life satisfaction among employed persons.

Daily Job Crafting Helps Those Who Help Themselves More: The Moderating Role of Job Autonomy and Leader Support.

Not all members are engaged in job crafting behavior in the same context, yet little research has addressed boundary conditions of daily job crafting. This study addresses these important issues and how the effects of daily job crafting vary depending on the work situation. We consider job autonomy and leader support as between-person level moderators and reveal how it affects the impact of daily job crafting on daily job satisfaction. Through the experience of the sampling method, we collected 946 days of data from 108 members (61.9% were male and 38.1% were female) for hypothesis testing. The analysis of results showed that the main effect of daily job crafting and the cross-level moderating effect of leader support were significant, and the moderating effect of job autonomy was not significant. In particular, the positive effect of daily job crafting on daily job satisfaction was strengthened for members with low leader support. These findings highlight that leader support is an important social context in job crafting, and provides insights when members can get more advantages from their daily job crafting.

A cross-level moderating effect of team trust on the relationship between transformational leadership and cohesion

ABSTRACTWe draw on the concept of the shared mental model to explain the cross-level direct and moderating effects of team trust on the relationship between coach transformational leadership and cohesion. Using hierarchical linear modelling, we analysed 597 national level high school and university volleyball players to test our research model. Our results revealed that, (a) at the individual level, coach transformational leadership has a positive effect on athletes’ perceptions on cohesion and (b) team trust, a group-level construct, is positively related to social cohesion and moderates the coach transformational leadership-cohesion relationship. The moderating effect demonstrates that the positive effect of coach transformational leadership on cohesion could be enhanced when high levels of team trust are shared within the group. Implications for coach education and sport psychology in terms of theory and research are discussed.

Modeling Measurement as a Sequential Process: Autoregressive Confirmatory Factor Analysis (AR-CFA).

To model data from multi-item scales, many researchers default to a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) approach that restricts cross-loadings and residual correlations to zero. This often leads to problems of measurement-model misfit while also ignoring theoretically relevant alternatives. Existing research mostly offers solutions by relaxing assumptions about cross-loadings and allowing residual correlations. However, such approaches are critiqued as being weak on theory and/or indicative of problematic measurement scales. We offer a theoretically-grounded alternative to modeling survey data called an autoregressive confirmatory factor analysis (AR-CFA), which is motivated by recognizing that responding to survey items is a sequential process that may create temporal dependencies among scale items. We compare an AR-CFA to other common approaches using a sample of 8,569 people measured along five common personality factors, showing how the AR-CFA can improve model fit and offer evidence of increased construct validity. We then introduce methods for testing AR-CFA hypotheses, including cross-level moderation effects using latent interactions among stable factors and time-varying residuals. We recommend considering the AR-CFA as a useful complement to other existing approaches and treat AR-CFA limitations.

When do satisfied employees become more committed? A multilevel investigation of the role of internal service climate

The objective of the study is to improve the current understanding of frontline employee perceptions of health by investigating the role of job security and satisfaction. The linkage between perceived health and organizational commitment is also explored. This study further tests the cross-level moderating effect of internal service climate based on a multilevel design. Based on a multilevel study that involved 1251 employees, including both frontline employees and supervisors from 29 casinos, results reveal that the relationship leading from job security and job satisfaction to organizational commitment through perceived health is contingent on organizational-level service climate; and the relationship is more salient for casinos with low-quality internal service climate. Theoretical and managerial implications are presented in the study.

Cross-level Moderating Role of Firm’s R&D Intensity between Social Exchange Relationship and Innovative Behavior in R&D Employees of Small- and Medium-Sized Firms

지금까지 조직 내 사회적 교환관계에 대한 실증 연구들이 지속적으로 축적되고 있다. 그 결과, 리더-멤버 교환관계(LMX)와 팀-멤버 교환관계(TMX)의 긍정적인 효과가일관적으로 검증되고 있다. 그리고 조직 내 사회적 교환관계가 혁신의 중요한 선행영향요인임이 규명되고 있다. 그렇지만, 그간의 선행연구들 중에서 중소기업 및 연구개발인력을 대상으로 한 연구들은 수적으로 그리 많지 않을 뿐만 아니라, 그들의 특성을반영한 연구들은 찾아보기 어려운 실정이다. 본 연구는 제한된 자원 하에서도 혁신을추구해야 하는 중소기업의 특성을 고려하여 조직 내 사회적 교환관계가 기업혁신의 실질적 주체인 연구개발 인력의 혁신행동을 높일 수 있는 지를 파악하였다. 또한, 기업R&D 투자가 LMX, TMX와 혁신행동 간의 관계를 교차수준에서 강화시킬 수 있는지를 규명해 보았다. 62개의 중소기업과 해당 중소기업의 232명 연구개발 인력들을대상으로 분석한 결과, 첫째, LMX가 혁신행동에 정적인 영향을 주는 것으로 나타난반면, TMX는 혁신행동에 유의하지 않은 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, LMX와혁신행동 간의 관계에서 기업 R&D 투자의 교차수준 조절효과는 유의하지 않은 것으로나타난 반면, TMX와 혁신행동 간의 관계에서 기업 R&D 투자는 유의한 교차수준조절효과가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 구체적으로 기업 R&D 투자가 높은 중소기업에서만TMX가 혁신행동에 미치는 정의 관계는 강화되는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구는 이러한분석결과를 토대로, 중소기업 연구개발 인력의 사회적 교환관계인 LMX, TMX와혁신행동 간의 관계를 심층적으로 고찰하였다. 이와 동시에 사회적 교환관계인 LMX, TMX와 혁신행동 간의 관계에서 기업의 R&D 투자의 교차수준 조절효과 분석을 통해중소기업의 경쟁력 제고를 위한 R&D 투자의 중요성을 제시하였고, 이론적ㆍ실무적시사점을 제안하였다.Over the past decades, many studies have examined the relationship between leader-member exchange and team-member exchange as social exchanges in organizations and the potential positive consequences. In addition, many studies have confirmed social exchange in organizations as antecedents of innovation. However, up until now, most studies have dealt with general research settings such as large-sized firms, government, and so on. However, small- and medium-sized firms and their R&D employees have been the engines of growth and innovation in Korea’s economic structure. Nevertheless, there have been only limited discussions of this topic. Considering the search for innovation in spite of limited resources of small- and medium-sized firms, this study investigated whether social exchange in R&D employees, who play the leading role in corporate innovation, in small- and medium-sized firms would positively impact innovative behavior. In addition, we investigated whether R&D intensity would positively moderate the relationship among LMX, TMX and innovative behavior. To this end, we conducted a survey of 62 small- and medium-sized firms and 232 R&D employees working in R&D teams. The results showed that LMX had positive effects on innovative behavior, but TMX had no significant effects on innovative behavior. In addition, firm’s R&D intensity showed the positive cross-level moderating effect on the relationship between TMX and innovative behavior, but not for the relationship between LMX and innovative behavior. Based on the research findings, this study discussed the relationship between social exchange in R&D employees and innovative behavior. At the same time, this study suggested the importance of R&D intensity for the improvement of competitiveness in small- and medium- sized firms through the cross-level moderating effect analysis. Lastly, we suggested theoretical and practical implications with limitations and future research tasks.

Worse-off than others? Abusive supervision’s effects in teams

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how relative abusive supervision (i.e. team member’s perceived abusive supervision as compared with the team mean) influences team member’s job attitudes through the mediating role of relative leader–member exchange. This study also explores the cross-level moderating roles of team-level abusive supervision and team-level leader–member exchange (LMX) in the process.Design/methodology/approachThis study used two-wave data from 1,479 employees in 145 work teams, and tested a cross-level moderated mediation model using multilevel structural equation modeling.FindingsResults demonstrate that the negative indirect effects of relative abusive supervision on job satisfaction and team affective commitment through relative LMX are stronger when team-level abusive supervision is low rather than high.Originality/valueIntegrating LMX theory with a relative deprivation perspective, this study conceptualizes and operationalizes relative abusive supervision, develops an individual-within-group model of abusive supervision’s consequences in teams and demonstrates a cross-level moderating effect of team-level abusive supervision in buffering relative abusive supervision’s negative consequences.

Adolescents' academic engagement mediates the association between Internet addiction and academic achievement: The moderating effect of classroom achievement norm

Although the association between Internet addiction and academic achievement has been widely observed in adolescents in recent years, little is known about the mechanisms of Internet addiction and its adverse effects on academic achievement in terms of individual factors and classroom contexts. The present study examined the relationship between Internet addiction and academic outcomes, the mediating role of academic engagement, and the cross-level moderating effect of classroom achievement norm. By using a short-term longitudinal design, two-wave data were obtained from 2407 students from 47 classes in China over six-months. A multilevel structural equation model was used to explain the nested data structure. Results indicated that the negative effect of Internet addiction on adolescents' later academic achievement was mediated by academic engagement and disaffection at the individual level. Furthermore, classroom achievement norm moderated the association between academic disaffection and achievement, with a significant indirect effect in the high classroom achievement norm classes and a non-significant effect in the low classroom achievement norm classes. These results held after controlling for an individual's gender, age and academic achievement in the first term at the individual level and the class size and school at the classroom level. In conclusion, this study reveals the internal mechanism of how students' Internet addiction leads to the decline of academic achievement. It also provids a practical and effective outlook on the prevention and intervention of the negative effects of Internet addiction in the future teaching practice from the perspective of personal motivation and classroom environment.

How Does Transformational Leadership Promote Innovation in Construction? The Mediating Role of Innovation Climate and the Multilevel Moderation Role of Project Requirements

Innovation plays a critical role in the sustainable development of the construction industry. This research aims at examining transformational leadership’s role in shaping employees’ innovative behavior by analyzing the mediating effect of innovation climate and the cross-level moderating effect of innovativeness as a project requirement. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 300 construction industry professionals in China and 251 valid replies were received. Data collected by the questionnaire were analyzed using the method of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results showed that transformational leaders could nurture a mutual climate for innovation to motivate employees’ innovative behaviors. In addition, innovativeness as a project requirement at the project level strengthens the indirect link amongst transformational leadership and innovative behavior via the innovation climate. Therefore, in the presence of higher innovativeness as a project requirement, transformational leadership is more prone to exert a positive influence upon an individual’s innovative behavior via the perceived innovation climate. The research findings improve understanding of the roles of leadership and innovation climate in affecting individual behavioral outcomes, and could help project managers and leaders encourage innovative ideas within project organizations.

GLOBE Leadership Dimensions: Implications for Cross-Country Entrepreneurship Research

We highlight the potential theoretical and empirical contributions that GLOBE dimensions of culturally endorsed leadership theories (CLTs) can make to advance entrepreneurship research. Theoretically, they occupy a unique position in the culture-entrepreneurship fit perspective in that they mediate the influence of cultural values on entrepreneurial behaviors. Empirically, they could be used in a number of ways in entrepreneurship research – either in OLS regressions that estimate the influence of CLTs on country-level aggregate rates of entrepreneurship or in multi-level analyses that aim to predict the influence of country-level CLTs on individual-level entrepreneurial behaviors (direct effects as well as cross-level moderation effects).

The social enterprises’ organizational commitment

This study was to investigate the organizational commitment of members of social enterprises, and the effects of the individual and the organizational variables. The social entrepreneurship was defined as the organizational-level value that includes balanced social and economic purposes to differentiate social enterprises from commercial enterprises or non-profit organizations. The study examined the effect of psychological ownership on organizational commitment, and the moderating effect of social entrepreneurship using multilevel methodology. Also, it tested the effect of perceived organizational support as an individual-level moderator. A survey research was conducted by gathering 140 employees of 32 companies(social enterprises=16, smaller enterprises=16), and HLM 6.08 was used to analyze the cross-level relationships. In terms of the results of affective commitment. the positive effect of psychological ownership and the moderating effect organizational support were significant, while cross-level moderating effect of social entrepreneurship was not found. The results of continuance commitment showed a different pattern where the cross-level moderating effect of social entrepreneurship was found significant, indicating that the non-significant effect of psychological ownership needs to be examined in more detail. From the results, the study provided theoretical and practical implications for the human resource management to improve members’ organizational commitment of Korean social enterprises.

The Social Enterprises’ Organizational Commitment: The Effect of Psychological Ownership and the Moderation Effects of Social Entrepreneurship and Organizational Support

This study was to investigate the organizational commitment of members of social enterprises, and the effects of the individual and the organizational variables. The social entrepreneurship was defined as the organizational-level value that includes balanced social and economic purposes to differentiate social enterprises from commercial enterprises or non-profit organizations. The study examined the effect of psychological ownership on organizational commitment, and the moderating effect of social entrepreneurship using multilevel methodology. Also, it tested the effect of perceived organizational support as an individual-level moderator. A survey research was conducted by gathering 140 employees of 32 companies(social enterprises=16, smaller enterprises=16), and HLM 6.08 was used to analyze the cross-level relationships. In terms of the results of affective commitment. the positive effect of psychological ownership and the moderating effect organizational support were significant, while cross-level moderating effect of social entrepreneurship was not found. The results of continuance commitment showed a different pattern where the cross-level moderating effect of social entrepreneurship was found significant, indicating that the non-significant effect of psychological ownership needs to be examined in more detail. From the results, the study provided theoretical and practical implications for the human resource management to improve members’ organizational commitment of Korean social enterprises.

A multi-level test for social regulatory focus and team member creativity

PurposeIn this study, self-leadership strategy serves as a self-regulatory mediating mechanism of individual differences in predicting individual creativity because it is related to actions intended to lead their own goal-directed activities. The purpose of this paper is to explore the boundary conditions of the effect of regulatory focus on employee self-leadership behaviors.Design/methodology/approachConsidering the contextual influence, cross-level moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between the promotion (prevention) focus and self-leadership has been examined. The research data were collected from 441 employees of 65 work teams from three software companies located in Northern Taiwan. A time-lagged design by implementing three time surveys was applied to minimize potential problems of cross-sectional design. At Time 1, employees completed the measures of promotion focus, prevention focus, empowering leadership, and individual-level control variables. At Time 2, employees reported the extent of their self-leadership at work. In the final survey, team leaders assessed the individual employee creativity.FindingsThis study concludes several findings. When self-leading behavior-focused strategies are considered as mediators, the indirect relationships that promotion focus and prevention focus had with individual creativity were confirmed. As an influential team-level indicator, empowering leadership could moderate the relatedness between employees promotion-focused strategies and behavior-focused strategies that positively influenced on individual creativity.Originality/valueIn this study, responding to the call by De Stobbeleir et al. (2011) to examine how employees actively manage their creative performance, the author zoomed in on self-leadership strategies and how these strategies relate to actual creative performance.

The "Wallpaper Effect" Revisited: Divergent Findings on the Effects of Intergroup Contact on Attitudes in Diverse Versus Nondiverse Contexts.

This article reexamines the so-called "wallpaper effect" of intergroup contact, which contends that for minority group members living in areas more densely populated by majority group members, intergroup contact fails to reduce prejudice. We tested this claim in five studies, using data from five countries, two types of contexts, a range of measures, and involving different minority versus majority groups. Using multilevel cross-level interaction models, we considered whether effects of contact on outgroup attitudes were moderated by relative outgroup size. Results failed to replicate the previously reported findings, revealing, by and large, nonsignificant cross-level moderation effects; instead, we witnessed consistent positive contact effects on attitudes. Findings are discussed against the backdrop of recent research on the consequences of diversity, as well as context-based considerations regarding minority versus majority constellations. We also discuss some exceptions to our findings that emerged for some respondent groups and contexts across the five studies.

A multilevel investigation of antecedents of employee positive affective displays: the roles of customer negative affective displays and employee perceived supervisory support

ABSTRACTMuch past research on employee positive affective displays have explored their antecedents using a single level of analysis. The present study extends previous research by capturing the complex phenomenon of employee affective displays from a multilevel perspective. We used an event-sampling methodology to address a gap in the literature by examining affective displays at the intra-individual level and inter-individual level. Results based on 67 postal clerks completing 420 transactions in post offices in Taiwan show that customer negative affective displays were negatively correlated with employee positive affective displays. Moreover, employee perceived instrumental supervisory support had a cross-level moderating effect on the within-individual relationship between customer-displayed negative emotions and employee-displayed positive emotions. Specifically, those with perceived higher levels of instrumental supervisory support tended to express friendlier emotions while interacting with unhappy or angry customers than those with perceived lower levels of instrumental supervisory support. At the inter-individual level, results show that employee perceived emotional supervisory support was positively related to their affective displays at the aggregated employee level.

Daily work characteristics and daily creativity

The current research aimed to investigate the relationship between daily changing work characteristics and daily creativity at work. More specifically, we focused on the separate effects of daily interpersonal support from supervisor and daily-perceived time pressure on creativity. In addition, we investigated the cross-level moderating effect of individual’s attitude toward job in the relation between daily time pressure and daily creativity. In order to perform within-person and cross-level analyses, we used daily diary method and collected responses from 39 full-time workers for 5 working days. Hierarchical Linear Modeling analyses yielded a positive relationship between daily interpersonal support from supervisor and daily creativity, as well as a positive relationship between daily time pressure, the challenge stressor, and daily creativity. Moreover, there was a significant moderating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between time pressure and creativity. Specifically, for those who are highly satisfied with job, the relationship between daily time pressure and daily creativity was positive while it was not so for those with low job satisfaction. Based on the above findings, we discussed the relationships among daily work characteristics and daily creativity as well as implications, limitations and possible future research issues.

Disentangling the roles of safety climate and safety culture: Multi-level effects on the relationship between supervisor enforcement and safety compliance

Despite increasing attention to contextual effects on the relationship between supervisor enforcement and employee safety compliance, no study has yet explored the conjoint influence exerted simultaneously by organizational safety climate and safety culture. The present study seeks to address this literature shortcoming. We first begin by briefly discussing the theoretical distinctions between safety climate and culture and the rationale for examining these together. Next, using survey data collected from 1342 employees in 32 Italian organizations, we found that employee-level supervisor enforcement, organizational-level safety climate, and autocratic, bureaucratic, and technocratic safety culture dimensions all predicted individual-level safety compliance behaviors. However, the cross-level moderating effect of safety climate was bounded by certain safety culture dimensions, such that safety climate moderated the supervisor enforcement-compliance relationship only under the clan-patronage culture dimension. Additionally, the autocratic and bureaucratic culture dimensions attenuated the relationship between supervisor enforcement and compliance. Finally, when testing the effects of technocratic safety culture and cooperative safety culture, neither safety culture nor climate moderated the relationship between supervisor enforcement and safety compliance. The results suggest a complex relationship between organizational safety culture and safety climate, indicating that organizations with particular safety cultures may be more likely to develop more (or less) positive safety climates. Moreover, employee safety compliance is a function of supervisor safety leadership, as well as the safety climate and safety culture dimensions prevalent within the organization.