Group Engagement Model Research Articles

The Influence of Group Identification and Morality in Support for Defunding the Police

There is very little research regarding what factors drive support for defunding the police. Using the theoretical framework of the Group Engagement Model and the Moral Foundations Theory, this study explores if and how race, group identification, and morality shape support for defunding the police. Results indicated that increased superordinate identification and binding moral foundations reduced support for defunding the police among White respondents. For Black respondents, increased subordinate identification explains their increased support for defunding the police. Attachment to one’s racial group and concerns for its welfare coupled with moral intuitions driven by care and fairness toward victims of police brutality who are disproportionately Black explains why Blacks Americans began and support calls to defund the police.

Cooperation in common property resource management: A group engagement approach

This study explored motivational cooperative behaviour types as a communal resource in a rural Zimbabwean setting. Using the group engagement model, the study examined motivational cooperative behaviour types in managing in managing water resources. Thirty community residents of Mhondoro-Ngezi District in Zimbabwe participated in the study (female = 13, community leaders = 10). Data were collected through one-on-one interviews. Thematic analysis revealed internal motivations of social altruism in discretionary cooperative behaviours of water conservation and external motivations of sanctions for compliance with customary regulations stipulating use of water sources. Discretionary cooperative behaviours of water conservation were characterised by individual willingness to comply with myths regarding water usage. External motivations of sanctions for compliance with customary regulations were about collective community activities. Motivations for managing a scarce community resource prioritised fair use, access, and sustenance for collective benefit. These findings suggest that voluntariness in cooperation in common property resource management is important for the sustainable use of scarce resources for consideration in community implementation of regulations.

Sympathy for the Devil: Serial Mediation Models for Toxicity, Community, and Retention

Disruptive behaviors in online gaming communities are a growing concern, affecting player experience, retention, and well-being. While previous research has primarily focused on the victims’ experiences, this study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying the attitudinal and behavioral responses to both encountering disruptive behaviors and being flagged for such behaviors, as well as the effects on retention. The study retrieved longitudinal telemetry records of player reporting and gameplay data from the North American server of a popular competitive player vs. player multiplayer online game, coupled with a psychometric survey of a randomly selected sample of 1,217 players. Based on the rejection-disidentification model, this research identifies a shared pathway for both reporting and being reported for disruptive behavior. Our findings support a serial mediation model where both experiences are linked to decreased player engagement. This reduced engagement, reflected in diminished participation in game battles over time, is mediated by perceived discrimination and a reduced sense of community. Moreover, drawing on the concept of procedural justice from the group engagement model, the study delineates unique pathways for the disengagement process for reporters and those reported. Being flagged for disruptive behavior leads to a significant drop in sustained engagement through a decreased sense of community, which is not the case for reporting disruptive behavior. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

The effect of collectivism-oriented human resource management on employee resilience of hospitality employees.

In the face of an increasingly challenging and rapidly evolving business environment, not all the employees exhibit the requisite resilience necessary to recover from adversity. From both the individual and organizational perspectives, enhancing employee resilience emerges as a critical issue not only in the practical and academic fields. In the Chinese culture, this research aims to investigate how and why collectivism-oriented human resource management (C-HRM) fosters employee resilience. Drawing on the group engagement model, we propose a serial mediating effect of perceived overall fairness and three dimensions of social identity between C-HRM and employee resilience. Using a sample of frontline employees in the hospitality industry, we conducted a field survey among 342 employees (study 1) and a two-wave online survey among 294 hospitality employees (study 2). Findings from empirical analysis indicated that C-HRM significantly increases overall fairness perception of hospitality frontline employees and in turn, their identification and respect, which further fertilize employee resilience. In addition, the indirect effect of C-HRM on employee resilience through perceived overall fairness and pride was not statistically significant. These important findings are expected to help employees cope with the workplace pressures caused by ongoing challenges and change, and contribute to sustainable career development.

Thwarted belongingness and empathy's relation with organizational culture change.

In response to several high-profile cases of senior leaders in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) being accused of various forms of sexual and professional misconduct, the organization has committed to culture change. Drawing on the group engagement model and empirical evidence, we propose that CAF members' experience of thwarted belongingness reduces their capacity to show empathy, which in turn affects their support for culture change. Participants were 139 Naval and Officer Cadets from the Royal Military College of Canada who were predominantly male (61%), between 18 and 21 years old (80%), and not members of a visible minority group (68%). Data was collected via an online self-report survey assessing thwarted belongingness, empathy, and attitudes toward culture change. Whether participants experienced thwarted belongingness was not directly related to their level of support for culture change. Individuals' thwarted belongingness was indirectly and negatively associated with support for culture change, through its impact on empathy. Taken together, the results demonstrate that cadets' experience of belongingness contributed to their level of empathy, which together predicted their support for culture change initiatives. Efforts to change the culture of the CAF may need to consider improving members' levels of belongingness and, by extension, their levels of empathy. Implications for inclusion efforts are discussed.

The influence of organizational fairness on organizational identification: the regulatory role of moral identity and the mediating role of organization-based self-esteem

Based on the Group Engagement Model and Self-consistent Theory, this paper explores the mechanism of the influence of organizational fairness on organizational identification based on a moral fairness perspective, with organization-based self-esteem as the mediator and moral identity as the moderator, based on a moderated mediator model. Through 533 questionnaires, the findings show that: (1) organizational fairness positively influences organizational identification and organization-based self-esteem mediates between the two; (2) moral identity positively moderates the influence of organizational fairness on organizational identification, i.e. when employees' moral identity is stronger, the stronger the positive relationship between organizational fairness and organizational identification; (3) moral identity positively moderates the effect of organization-based self-esteem in the influence of organizational fairness on organizational identification, showing a mediating effect of being moderated in a mediating pattern, i.e. the stronger the employee's moral identity, the stronger the aforementioned mediating effect. These findings have important implications for enterprises to improve employees' organizational identification.

Green CSR Communication to Internal Audiences: The Persuasive Power of Normative Appeals to Employees’ Green Behaviors

Given the increasing attention being paid to companies’ microlevel green efforts, this study aims to provide insights into green corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication targeting internal audiences (i.e., employees). Building on the social identity theory and group engagement model, this research examines the persuasive power of two types of social norms—descriptive and injunctive—in green CSR messages. Also, it investigates the underlying mechanism of individuals’ green behavioral decision making at work. Across two studies, results demonstrate that a descriptive norm message is more effective than a standard or injunctive norm message to enhance employees’ intentions to adopt green actions, engage in the company’s green programs, and help their colleagues to perform green behaviors. Additionally, a descriptive norm message advances three antecedents of motivation—expectancy, instrumentality, and valence—which in turn positively influence green behavioral decisions. This research contributes to developing the literature stream of green message framing by targeting a specific internal audience group and provides empirical implications for practitioners.

Why do children cooperate with police? The nexus of the authority relations and cognitive developmental perspectives

Police must rely on the public’s cooperation; however, youths’ views of police are historically low. To understand the dynamics of these intergroup relations, this study integrates two theoretical perspectives: the cognitive developmental perspective, which posits that age-graded cognitive enhancements enable children to begin critically evaluating police; and the group engagement model, which suggests that views of police impact law-related behavior. Utilizing a sample of 424 community youth (37.97% Hispanic/Latinx, 19.81% Native American), this study tested four novel hypotheses: H1: Age is negatively associated with youths’ willingness to cooperate (WTC) with police; H2: Age is negatively associated with normative alignment with police; H3: Normative alignment is positively associated with WTC; and H4: Normative alignment is more strongly associated with older youths’ WTC. All four hypotheses were supported. The article discusses the implications of both the integration of these theoretical perspectives and the findings for understanding the effects of these intergroup dynamics.

Ideas endorsed, credit claimed: Managerial credit claiming weakens the benefits of voice endorsement on future voice behavior through respect and work group identification

Does endorsement of employees’ constructive voice always result in more voice behavior in the future? Although it is often assumed that endorsement is a critical predictor of future voice behavior, we argue that this effect is contingent on whether managers claim credit for their employees’ voice. Drawing from the group engagement model, we first predict that endorsement will be positively associated with voicing employees’ perceived respect within the group, while managers’ credit-claiming behaviors will be negatively associated with such respect. We then further predict that credit-claiming behaviors serve as a boundary condition to the positive association between endorsement and respect, such that when levels of credit claiming by managers are higher, the positive association between endorsement and respect will be weakened. Higher levels of respect, in turn, are associated with higher levels of work group identification and then higher levels of future voice behavior. Results from a multi-wave survey field study in China and a scenario experiment in the United States offer support for our model. Our findings suggest an important but neglected form of managerial response to voice – credit claiming – and highlight its detrimental effect on motivating future voice behavior despite voice endorsement.

The role of fairness perceptions in patient and employee health: A multilevel, multisource investigation.

This research extends the group engagement model (GEM) to examine how fairness judgments implicate both organizational-level and individual-level outcomes, including patient health and satisfaction (i.e., patient health outcomes) and employee health. Based on the social identity arguments of the GEM, we argue that fair career advancement procedures at the organizational level and experiences of discrimination at the individual level are indicators of identity-based evaluations of fairness. Utilizing annual staff survey data from the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K. (n = 147 hospitals with n = 60,602 employees), we observe that organizational fairness of career advancement procedures significantly relates to patient health through the hospital-level mediator, employee voice. Individual fairness of an employee's personal experience with discrimination significantly relates to employee health through the individual-level mediator, psychological safety. Results support the three-stage indirect effect from organizational-level fairness to employee health via individual-level fairness and individual-level psychological safety. In supplemental studies, measurement limitations are addressed through multitrait multimethod matrix and content validation approaches. These results indicate that the archival NHS measures sufficiently operationalize the constructs of interest providing further support for the hypothesized model. The theoretical and practical implications of this work for multilevel conceptualizations of fairness and healthcare organizations are presented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Teachers’ compassionate love, teachers’ esteem and students’ attitudes towards the justice system: The mediating role of school belonging

ABSTRACT Adolescents with positive attitudes towards the legal authorities are unlikely to adopt delinquent behaviours. To examine the role school can play in shaping such attitudes, we questioned 465 middle school students to assess how their emotional relationships with teachers (teachers’ compassionate love, teachers’ esteem) relate to their attitudes towards authority (trust in the justice system, positive evaluation of the law). We also assessed whether these associations were mediated by school belonging. Results showed that teachers’ compassionate love and teachers’ esteem were (respectively) directly and indirectly linked to students’ attitudes towards authority. In both cases, school belonging acted as either a partial or a total mediator. This is consistent with the group engagement model and suggests that students’ attitudes towards legal authorities are linked to their affective relationships with teachers, partly because their positive perceptions of teacher-student relationships strengthen their feelings of school membership.

Perceived organizational support and outcomes: A view through the lens of the group engagement model, the role of identification, pride and respect

According to the group engagement model, identity is a multidimensional concept, which incorporates not only the cognitive component of organizational identification but also the evaluative component of pride and respect (Blader & Tyler, 2009). In this study, we adopt the perspective of the group engagement model and the multidimensional conceptualization of social identity in order to examine the effects of perceived organizational support (POS) and two key employee outcomes, willingness to support the organization and intent to quit. More specifically, we examine whether the three aspects of social identity (identification, pride, and respect) can explain the relationship between POS and its outcomes. By doing so, we gain insight into the unique power of these components to explain the POS-outcome relationship and we contribute to a better understanding of the outcomes of POS (Kurtessis et al., 2017). Trying to provide generalizable findings with high external validity, we conducted a quantitative field study including a sample of 579 employees. Our findings indicate that identification partially explains the relationship between POS and willingness to support the organization, while identification and pride are able to partially mediate the POS-intent to quit the relationship. These findings have significant practical implications providing managers useful insight into how employees interpret and respond to perceptions of support

How is the State Perceived as Fair? A Literature Review of Social Identity-Based Procedural Justice in the National Context

Justice is relevant in various domains of life, including the state. The social identity-based procedural justice theories (Group Value Model and Group Engagement Model) emphasize the importance of procedural justice from the authority in signaling the group’s inclusion and respect, thus increasing individuals’ cooperation and compliance. This article aims to critically review published literature using the two models in a national context, of which there were inconsistent findings regarding the role of group identification. Three issues are underlying this inconsistency. First, both models could be applied when national identity was salient, such as legal compliance (to taxation and traffic law). Second, perceived police legitimacy is a better mediator when the national identity was not salient (e. g. cooperation in counter-terrorism and crowd policing). Third, the effect of procedural justice depends on the motivation to secure identity (which is generally higher among minority/marginalized groups). As both models are strongly bound by context, the author suggests controlling police-national identity prototypicality on studies about police procedural justice, attitude toward outgroup and relational identification with the police on studies involving intergroup conflict, and uncertainty about membership status on studies toward minority groups. Hopefully, this article could contribute references and encourage related studies in Indonesia.

What are They Talking About: Exploring the Effects of Linguistic Ostracism on Proactive Behavior

Economic globalization increases opportunities for people speaking different languages to work together, making linguistic ostracism almost inevitable in the workplace. However, research offers only limited insight into its mechanisms. To help address this research gap, we draw on group engagement model, and apply an analysis of multi-source, multi-wave data from different samples to demonstrate a negative relationship between linguistic ostracism and employee proactive behavior. Findings also indicate that belongingness need satisfaction mediates the negative relationship between linguistic ostracism and employee proactive behavior, which explains how the internal mechanisms of linguistic ostracism result in low employee proactive behavior. In addition, findings show that employees with high trait social standing uncertainty will likely experience less belongingness need satisfaction and less likely to participate in proactive behavior when experiencing linguistic ostracism.

Procedural (In)Justice as Inclusivity and Marginalization: Evidence from a Longitudinal Sample of Mexican-American Adolescents

Objectives: Treatment by law enforcement officers, as representatives of the state that interact with individual citizens, may signal to individuals their political and social inclusion within society. Hispanics, as the largest minority group in the country that oftentimes must navigate two cultural identities, may be especially sensitive to the treatment of police. We test the group engagement model’s implication that procedural justice—or lack thereof—may promote or hinder attachment to the United States and/or Mexico among Latino/a adolescents and young adults. Methods: Using a fixed effects panel design with a subsample of Mexican Americans from the Pathways to Desistance Study, we examine whether changes in subjective procedural justice evaluations of the police are related to changes in National identification. Results: Changes in procedural justice perceptions are significantly related to changes in Mexican identification, whereas procedural justice is not related to changes in Anglo identification. Although, consistent with segmented assimilation theory, the relationships between changes in procedural justice and Mexican/Anglo identification may be stronger among participants born in the United States. Conclusions: The findings are generally consistent with the group engagement model of procedural justice and suggest procedural injustice may alienate Hispanics.

What Happens to a Black Sheep? Exploring How Multilevel Leader–Member Exchange Differentiation Shapes the Organizational Altruism Behaviors of Low Leader–Member Exchange Minority

Our study focused on the low leader–member exchange (LMX) minority under the LMX differentiation context. Specifically, based on the group engagement model, we proposed that high LMX relational separation (LMXRS) impairs subordinates’ organizational altruism behaviors through undermining their procedural justice perception; furthermore, such an effect is stronger for low-LMX members in low overall LMX differentiation groups. Using data collected from 4 companies in China that included 49 teams and 273 employees, we demonstrated that high LMXRS entails a lower procedural justice perception and fewer follow-up altruism behaviors, especially for low-LMX members. Moreover, the three-way interaction result showed that the detrimental effect of high LMXRS on low-LMX members’ procedural justice perception and follow-up organizational altruism behaviors is stronger when the group-level LMX differentiation is low. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

In self-defense: Reappraisal buffers the negative impact of low procedural fairness on performance.

Contrary to an often-found result in the organizational justice literature, we suggest that there may be circumstances under which organization members will not perform poorly in response to being on the receiving end of low procedural fairness. To explain the theoretical mechanism, we integrate the group engagement model of justice with the emotion regulation perspective. Specifically, we argue that the detrimental effect of lower procedural fairness on performance is attenuated when individuals engage in reappraisal. Moreover, this is the case because reappraisal makes lower procedural fairness less likely to undermine self-perceived standing in the organization. Three experiments and a multisource survey among employees reveal support for these predictions. This research contributes to the organizational justice literature by showing that reappraisal can help maintain performance when people have experienced low procedural fairness, extending the typical finding that low procedural fairness undermines performance. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Does procedural justice climate increase the identification and engagement of migrant workers? A group engagement model perspective

PurposeMigrant workers often suffer from social exclusion in the workplace and therefore identify less with their organization and engage less with their work. To address this issue, the authors integrate research on migrant workers with research on the group engagement model to create a model for understanding and enhancing migrant worker engagement. This allows us to provide insight into how organizations can design their human resource management systems and practices to increase the work engagement of migrant workers.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a survey study with over 4,000 employees from more than 500 workplaces in Australia to test the model.FindingsThe results of the multilevel analysis indicate that a procedurally fair work environment increases organizational identification, which in turn is associated with higher work engagement. The results also indicate that procedural justice climate is more important for migrant workers and increases their organizational identification and engagement.Originality/valueTo increase work engagement of migrant workers, organizations can establish a procedurally fair work environment in which cultural minorities experience unbiased policies and procedures, are able to express their opinions and participate in decision-making.

The Interaction Effect of Supervisor Justice and Coworker Justice on Task Performance via OBSE

Recent research on organizational justice demonstrated that employees do not only react to fair treatment from authorities (i.e., supervisor and organization) but also that from peer relationships (i.e., coworker). Nevertheless, little attention has been drawn to whether and how justice from authorities and justice from peers can affect employees jointly. Drawing on group engagement model (Tyler & Blader, 2000, 2003), I hypothesize that supervisor justice and coworker justice interact to influence employees’ organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), such that the positive effect of supervisor justice on OBSE is stronger when coworker justice is higher. OBSE is further hypothesized to transmit the interaction effect of supervisor justice and coworker justice to employees’ task performance. The hypotheses were supported by a time-lagged survey study conducted with nurses in China. Implications for group engagement model and the organizational justice literature are discussed.

Abusive supervision, thwarted belongingness, and workplace safety: A group engagement perspective.

Drawing from the group engagement model of justice, we examine how and when higher abusive supervision relates to fewer safety behaviors and worse safety performance. In Study 1, a 2-wave survey study of 468 manufacturing technicians, we found that belongingness need satisfaction mediated the negative relationship between abusive supervision and safety behavior. In Study 2, a multiwave survey study of 589 airline pilots, we found that safety behavior mediated the adverse relationship between abusive supervision and downstream objective safety performance. Higher trait social standing uncertainty was associated with a stronger adverse relationship between abusive supervision and safety. Indirect relationships of abusive supervision with safety behavior (Study 1) and safety performance (Study 2) were stronger among individuals with higher social standing uncertainty. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for managing abusive supervision and safety at work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).