Time-lagged Field Study Research Articles

Founder personality and harmful social exchanges within new venture teams

Though scholars have explored how the personality composition of a new venture team relates to critical firm-level outcomes, research has not yet accounted for the impact of the lead founder, whose personality likely exerts a unique influence on team processes due to their elevated role. This is particularly critical in light of recent research highlighting the prevalence of the Dark Triad in entrepreneurship. We draw on social exchange theory to theorize and test how lead founder Dark Triad personality traits influence three intra-team processes: autonomy, innovation, and relationship conflict. In a time-lagged field study of nascent founders and their new venture teams (N = 102 intact teams), we found that lead founders who score high on Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy differentially effect these socially motivated team processes. By focusing on the influence that a single individual – the lead founder – can have within a new venture team, our findings offer balance to the literature, which predominantly focuses on team composition.

Spoiled Rotten? LMXSC Motivates Greater Supervisor-Directed Deviance in Individuals Who Were Overindulged as Children

AbstractRecent work has demonstrated that perceiving oneself as being treated better by one’s leader compared to one’s coworkers’ treatment by the same leader (i.e., leader-member exchange social comparison; LMXSC) can motivate aggressive behavior towards one’s colleagues. Extending these findings, the current paper argues that high LMXSC employees can also be motivated to show aggressive behavior towards their leader, depending on their early experiences with authority figures (i.e., parents/guardians). Using both experimental and time-lagged field study designs, this study demonstrates that LMXSC elicits hubristic pride which, in turn, motivates supervisor-directed deviance in subordinates who were overindulged by their parents/guardians as children. These findings challenge the assumption that high LMXSC employees reciprocate their leaders’ positive treatment by revealing when and why they can be motivated to demonstrate aggressive and deviant leader-directed behavior.

Artificial intelligence-based virtual assistant and employee engagement: an empirical investigation

PurposeScholars have highlighted personal interactions between employees and their leaders in an increasingly distributed and hybrid work environment as an essential mechanism that engages employees toward organizational goals. Enhanced employee engagement significantly contributes to sustained organizational performance and growth. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in the HR domain are increasing, research to understand the implication of AI-based virtual assistants on enabling trust and managing human resources is, at best, limited.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the social response theory and the social exchange theory, and based on a multi-source, time-lagged field study spanning over ten months, we investigated the impact of AI-based virtual assistants on employee attitudes, namely perception of fairness and employee engagement.FindingsThe usage of AI-based virtual assistants is associated directly with employee engagement and indirectly through employees’ perceptions of fairness. While employees’ past performance moderates the relationship between perceived fairness and employee engagement, the interaction effect becomes non-significant with AI-based virtual assistants.Research limitations/implicationsOur study contributes to the emerging literature on AI-based virtual assistants in HRM and employee engagement. The virtual assistants’ use to enhance employee engagement emerges as an opportunity for task substitution and augmentation. Our study demonstrates that AI-based virtual assistants can enhance employee engagement and help build perceptions of fairness among employees.Originality/valueWith the emerging importance of AI, there is an increasing interest in explaining human-computer interactions and their effect on employee engagement. Our study is among the early empirical studies examining the implications of AI-based virtual assistants on employee outcomes.

Fulfilling moral duty or prioritizing moral image? The moral self-regulatory consequences of ethical voice.

Previous research on the consequences of ethical voice has largely focused on the performance or social relational consequences of ethical voice on multiple organizational stakeholders. The present research provides an important extension to the ethical voice literature by investigating the distinct intrapersonal and interpersonal moral self-regulatory processes that shape ethical voicers' own psychological experiences and their subsequent purposeful efforts to maintain a positive sense of moral self. On one hand, we argue that ethical voice heightens voicers' sense of responsibility over ethical matters at work (i.e., moral ownership), which motivates them to refrain from violating moral norms (i.e., disengaging from unethical behaviors). On the contrary, we argue that ethical voice generates psychological pressure for voicers as they become anxious about preserving their moral social image (i.e., moral reputation maintenance concerns), which motivates them to signal their moral character to others through symbolic acts (i.e., engaging in moral symbolization behaviors). Further, we expect gender differences in the moral consequences of ethical voice. Across two studies that varied in temporal focus (a multisource, time-lagged field study and a within-person weekly experience sampling study), we found support for most of our predictions. The results suggest that while potentially psychologically uplifting (for both men and women), ethical voice also generates psychological pressure for the voicer to preserve their favorable moral social image and thus motivates them (more so in the case of women voicers at the between-person level) to explicitly symbolize their moral character in the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How and when team-member exchange influences knowledge hiding behaviors: A moderated dual-pathway model

PurposeThis study explored the influence of team member exchange on employees’ knowledge hiding behaviors via job embeddedness and work alienation, with learning goal orientation acting as the boundary condition. Methodology: This study adopted a quantitative multi-study research methodology to validate the proposed hypotheses, combining a time-lagged field study with 459 in-service employees and a scenario-based experiment with 128 university students at a northern university in China. FindingsIn Study 1 (field study), team-member exchange was negatively associated with knowledge hiding, and job embeddedness and work alienation mediated this relationship. Perceptions of learning goal orientation can amplify the effect of team-member exchange on job embeddedness and work alienation, which in turn reduces knowledge hiding behaviors. A subsequent experiment (Study 2) almost replicated and supported these findings, but work alienation did not play a role as an intermediary in the relationship between team member exchange and knowledge hiding behavior. Practical implicationsManagers should stimulate social exchanges among team members to inhibit knowledge hiding behaviors and prioritize individuals exhibiting higher learning goal orientations when deciding whom to hire. OriginalityThis research identifies and rationalizes how (underlying mechanisms) and when (contingencies) team-member exchange can make a difference in employees’ knowledge hiding behaviors, expanding and advancing further research on the knowledge hiding phenomenon from a team perspective.

Linking undergraduates’ future work self and employability: a moderated mediation model

BackgroundThe career intentions of students play a crucial role in shaping the growth of the hospitality and tourism industry. Previous research underlines the significance of future work self in predicting outcomes related to one’s career. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the precise ways, timing, and conditions under which the future work self of undergraduate students can enhance their employability.MethodsThis paper aims to address the existing research gap by employing career construction theory and self-determination theory to propose a moderated mediation model—i.e., career exploration serves as a mediator and job market knowledge functions as a moderator in the relationship between future work self and employability. We conducted two independent studies (i.e., an experimental study and a time-lagged field study) to test the proposed model. Specifically, in Study 1 we employed an experimental research design to recruit 61 students majoring in tourism management to participate. They were randomly assigned to two scenarios (future work self: high vs. low), and we manipulated different levels of future work self by means of scenario descriptions. In Study 2, we used the time-lagged research design to collect data via submitting questionnaires among 253 Chinese undergraduates who majored in hospitality and tourism at a university in the middle area of China.ResultsThe results indicate a positive correlation between undergraduates’ future work self and their employability. Furthermore, this relationship is mediated by a mediator of career exploration. It is important to note that this mediating relationship is also contingent upon the moderator variable of undergraduates’ job market knowledge when considering the impact of career exploration on employability.ConclusionThe findings contribute to enriching the current understanding of the positive effects of future work self on undergraduates’ desirable outcomes in employability.

The innovative power of actual–desired misfit in task identity: The mediating role of job crafting

A degree of task completeness—a consequence of the division of labor and job specialization—might play an important role in employees’ motivation to be creative/innovative. While there is no consensus on whether having well-rounded or task-specialized work is optimal for employees’ innovative work behavior (IWB), we entertain the possibility that the preferred amount of this job attribute may condition individual reactions to a particular task structure. Moving beyond a traditional fit/misfit perspective of perceiving individuals as passive respondents, we expect that task-identity discrepancy (actual vs desired) triggers an employee to respond proactively by exhibiting job crafting, resulting in more frequent IWB. We test our hypotheses with mediated polynomial regression analyses based on a multi-source time-lagged field study of 184 professionals in a European bank and an experimental study with 81 students at an EU-based university. The results indicate that task-identity incongruence indirectly drives IWBs more than congruence. Specifically, both task-identity overfit (actual > desired) and task-identity underfit (desired > actual) are positively predicting IWB through job crafting as a coping mechanism for employees to adjust their work and unleash the innovative power from the experienced incongruence.

How Can Women Take Advantage of the High-Tech Era to be Perceived as Effective Leaders? Being Tech-Savvy Helps

Given the increasing use of intelligent technologies and the resulting requirement for leaders to be tech-savvy, an important question that emerges is whether perceptions of leadership effectiveness are changing too? Drawing from gender role theory and expectation violation theory, we propose and test a model of whether and how females can benefit from being tech-savvy. To explore whether women may stand to gain from the changing nature of the workforce or not, we ran a series of studies. Our data sources included a cross-sectional time-lagged field study and experimental studies with students and online adults. We found that a definitive skill of the current technological era, tech-savviness, changes perceptions and evaluations of female leaders in a much more positive way than it does for male leaders, as such allowing female leaders to be more likely to be perceived as effective leaders. The reason for the effect that tech-savvy women were more likely to be perceived as effective leaders was driven by the fact that tech-savvy women are seen as more competent and hence, attributed more social status. Our research goes beyond merely focusing on the negative effects of gender stereotypes by providing an actionable solution—that comes from promoting tech knowledge and savviness—for women to counter gender stereotypes that undermine them from being viewed as effective leaders.

Exploring the effect of supervisor bottom-line mentality on subordinate work well-being: a self-determination theory perspective

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the effect of supervisor bottom-line mentality (SBLM) on subordinate work well-being using self-determination theory. Furthermore, it examines the mediating role of subordinate harmonious work passion (HWP) and obsessive work passion (OWP), as well as the moderating role of subordinate family motivation on the indirect effect of SBLM on subordinate work well-being.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted two studies, an experiment and a field study, to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, the authors conducted an experimental study using a sample of 127 undergraduate students to examine how family motivation moderates the relationship between SBLM and subordinate work passion. Concurrently, in Study 2, the authors conducted a time-lagged field study involving 261 corporate employees in China to validate the findings derived from Study 1, as well as test the entire conceptual model.FindingsThe authors find in Study 1 that family motivation moderates the effects of SBLM on subordinate HWP and OWP. Nevertheless, Study 2 uncovers a negative association between SBLM and subordinate work well-being, with HWP and OWP mediating this relationship. Besides, family motivation moderates the mediating effect of HWP on the relationship between SBLM and subordinate work well-being.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this study is that the negative effect of SBLM impacts subordinate work well-being, thereby building an accurate and fine-grained knowledge base of the detrimental effects of bottom-line mentality (BLM). Additionally, this study expands the frontiers of knowledge in this area by investigating the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of SBLM on subordinate work well-being, effectively addressing a theoretical gap in BLM research.

New hire performance: identifying critical traits for hospitality industry

PurposeHigh performance of new hires is of imminent interest to organizations in the hospitality sector. Yet, limited studies have focused on the relevant traits of new hires that improve on-job performance. This study aims to identify and understand a few critical traits that predict high performance across multilevel roles within the hospitality sector.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the human capital theory, through a time-lagged field study spanning 16 months, this study used multisource data for 540 active job opportunities and 205 new hires within the hospitality industry. This study used partial least squares-based structural equation modeling and analyzed the various traits that predict high on-job performance.FindingsThis study finds that humility is a significant predictor of job performance and wholly mediates the effect of interpersonal understanding, self-confidence and flexibility on new hires’ performance.Originality/valueThis study enhances talent management research for the hospitality sector by determining the critical traits of new hires that can predict superior on-job performance.

Understanding the impact of transformational leadership on nurse compassion provision through a time-lagged field study.

A large volume of literature identifies positive, rejuvenating benefits associated with giving compassion to others. However, the relationship between giving compassion and feelings of exhaustion remains underexplored. Understanding when giving compassion can potentially lead to feelings of emotional exhaustion is particularly important for nurses who are called upon to provide high levels of compassion to suffering patients in their daily work. We suggest that by engaging in transformational leadership behaviors, frontline supervisors can help nurses realize the positive benefits associated with giving compassion. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of nurses' perceptions of transformational leadership offered by their supervisors on the relationship between the levels of compassionate behaviors nurses report engaging in with patients and feelings of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. A time-lagged field survey was conducted across two waves of 112 full-time employed inpatient nurses within the United States. Providing high levels of compassionate behavior to patients was associated with reduced (increased) perceptions of emotional exhaustion and increased (decreased) job satisfaction when supervisors engaged in higher (lower) levels of transformational leadership. Transformational leadership serves as an important resource to help caregivers such that nurses feel invigorated and satisfied, as opposed to drained or fatigued, when engaging in high levels of compassionate behaviors toward suffering patients. For nurses to fully reap the established positive benefits associated with providing compassion to patients, frontline supervisors should be encouraged to engage in behaviors reflective of transformational leadership.

Servant leadership, ideology-based culture and job outcomes: A multi-level investigation among hospitality workers

Although previous research has linked leadership, culture and work behaviors, scholars and practitioners lack an understanding of how servant leadership affects employees’ work meaningfulness, diversity-valuing behavior and community citizenship behavior by fostering an ideology-based culture within the hospitality sector. This study addressed these gaps by conducting a multi-level time-lagged field study among full-time employees and their supervisors (310 employees nested in 70 supervisors) working in a large hotel chain in Pakistan. The study examined the direct and indirect effects of supervisory-level servant leadership on individual-level meaningfulness, individual-level community citizenship behavior, and group-level diversity-valuing behavior through group-level ideology-based culture. The findings revealed that supervisors’ servant leadership style was positively related to ideology-based culture within each group. In addition, ideology-based culture was positively related to group’s diversity-valuing behavior as well as each member’s meaningfulness and community citizenship behavior. Finally, servant leadership had a positive indirect effect on all outcomes through ideology-based culture.

The hidden dark side of empowering leadership: The moderating role of hindrance stressors in explaining when empowering employees can promote moral disengagement and unethical pro-organizational behavior.

The majority of theory and research on empowering leadership to date has focused on how empowering leader behaviors influence employees, portraying those behaviors as almost exclusively beneficial. We depart from this predominant consensus to focus on the potential detriments of empowering leadership for employees. Drawing from the social cognitive theory of morality, we propose that empowering leadership can unintentionally increase employees' unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), and that it does so by increasing their levels of moral disengagement. Specifically, we propose that hindrance stressors create a reversing effect, such that empowering leadership increases (vs. decreases) moral disengagement when hindrance stressors are higher (vs. lower). Ultimately, we argue for a positive or negative indirect effect of empowering leadership on UPB through moral disengagement. We find support for our predictions in both a time-lagged field study (Study 1) and a scenario-based experiment using an anagram cheating task (Study 2). We thus highlight the impact that empowering leadership can have on unethical behavior, providing answers to both why and when the dark side of empowering leadership behavior occurs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of leader dominance on employees' zero-sum mindset and helping behavior.

Leaders strive to encourage helping behaviors among employees, as it positively affects both organizational and team effectiveness. However, the manner in which a leader influences others can unintentionally limit this desired behavior. Drawing on social learning theory, we contend that a leader's tendency to influence others via dominance could decrease employees' interpersonal helping. Dominant leaders, who influence others by being assertive and competitive, shape their subordinates' cognitive schema of success based on zero-sum thinking. Employees with a zero-sum mindset are more likely to believe that they can only make progress at the expense of others. We further propose that this zero-sum mindset results in less interpersonal helping among subordinates. We test our hypotheses by employing different operationalizations of our key variables in eight studies of which four are reported in the manuscript and another four in Supplemental Information across a combined sample of 147,780 observations. These studies include a large archival study, experiments with both laboratory and online samples, and a time-lagged field study with employees from 50 different teams. Overall, this research highlights the unintended consequences that dominant leaders have on their followers' helping behavior by increasing their zero-sum mindset. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Demystifying Benevolence: Why and When Chinese Employees are Willing to Undertake Illegitimate Task

Drawing on the social exchange theory, we examine whether, how and when benevolent leadership stimulates subordinates’ willingness to undertake illegitimate tasks in the Chinese context. A pilot study was conducted to test the internal consistency reliability of the adapted willingness to undertake illegitimate tasks scale. A scenario experimental study (Study 1) and a multiple source, time-lagged field study (Study 2) were conducted to test our hypotheses. Consistent findings were accumulated for the indirect relationship between benevolent leadership and subordinates’ willingness to undertake illegitimate tasks through felt obligation (both Study 1 and 2). Moreover, the results of study 2 showed that disintegration avoidance orientation amplified the positive effects of benevolent leadership on felt obligation, whereas job insecurity amplified the positive effects of felt obligation on subordinates’ willingness to undertake illegitimate tasks. Moreover, disintegration avoidance orientation and job insecurity respectively strengthened the mediating role of felt obligation on subordinates’ willingness to undertake illegitimate tasks.

Paradoxical Effect of Exploitative Leadership on Employee Performance (WITHDRAWN)

Based on paradox theory, this study aims to investigate the paradoxical consequences of exploitative leadership on employee work outcomes. From the perspective of the ‘performing–learning’ lens, we hypothesise that exploitative leaders boost employee task performance, yet inhibit employee creative performance. In a three-wave time-lagged field study with 106 leaders and 249 matched subordinates, the results confirm our hypotheses, and we also find mediating effects of performance pressure and intrinsic motivation, as well as a moderating effect of traditional value. When leaders exert more exploitative behaviours, employees with a high level of traditionality show enhanced task performance via performance pressure, while those low in traditionality display worse creative performance because of their poor intrinsic motivation. These findings contribute to the destructive leadership literature, emphasising the distinct influences of exploitative leadership on different aspects of employee performance, and have implications for management practice.

How and When Does Visionary Leadership Promote Followers' Taking Charge? The Roles of Inclusion of Leader in Self and Future Orientation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between visionary leadership and taking charge. The authors also aim to test the mediating effects of employee inclusion of leader in self and the moderating effects of future orientation.MethodsThis paper tests the theoretical model across a multisource, time-lagged field study with 234 leader-follower dyads as data. SPSS 25.0, PROCESS 3.4 macro and Mplus8.3 were used to test the theoretical hypotheses.ResultsWe found that visionary leadership stimulates followers to include leaders in self, which in turn enhances their taking charge. Additionally, the relationship between visionary leadership and follower include of leader in self is strengthened by followers’ future orientation. Furthermore, the mediation effect of follower include leader in self between visionary leadership and followers’ taking charge is established only when followers’ future orientation is high.ConclusionBased on self-expansion theory, this study explained how and when the effectiveness of visionary leadership may be optimized from a follower-centric perspective. These results contribute to the visionary leadership and self-expansion literature by introducing inclusion of leader in self as an underlying mechanism and future orientation as a boundary condition.

Gossip at work: a model of narcissism, core self-evaluation and perceived organizational politics

PurposeAlthough many probable consequences of workplace gossip have been featured prominently in the organizational behavior literature, existing research lags in identifying the possible causes behind it. In the present research, the authors aim to examine self-focused personality traits such as narcissism and core self-evaluation (CSE) as predictors of negative (NWG) and positive workplace gossip (PWG). In addition, the study tests the moderating influence of perceived organizational politics (POP) on the aforementioned relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a time lagged field study on a sample of 616 employees from various organizations across India. The proposed theoretical model was tested using structural equation modeling procedures in AMOS.FindingsNarcissism was found to relate significantly with NWG as well as PWG. CSE, on the other hand, showed significant association with NWG only. Further, POP was found to moderate the relationship between narcissism and PWG.Practical implicationsPresent study makes practitioners aware of the ubiquity of the phenomenon of gossip and encourages them to design and implement policies that cater to the needs of communication of employees. It also advises managers to carefully examine political scenario in the organization, and understand how it can be moulded for the betterment of employees as well as the organization.Originality/valueFirst, using social comparison theory, the authors introduce personality traits as predictors of NWG and PWG. Second, by exploring POP as the boundary condition, the authors take into account the most common yet unexplored factor that affects gossip behavior in the organizations.

Supervisor bottom line mentality, self-regulation impairment and unethical pro-organizational behavior: investigating the moderating effect of perceived employability

PurposeUnethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) is one of the major reasons behind high-profile financial frauds in the recent past. This study aims to explore how an exclusive focus on financial outcomes, i.e. supervisor bottom-line mentality (BLM) leads to UPB among employees and highlights the critical role of self-regulation impairment and perceived employability in the process. Drawing on self-regulation theory, this study examines how BLM and perceived employability interactively impact self-regulatory strength, which ultimately influences UPB.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical model is tested through a time-lagged field study of 171 employees and hypothesis testing in SPSS PROCESS Macros.FindingsResults suggest that self-regulation impairment mediates a positive relationship between supervisor BLM and employee UPB and perceived employability moderates this indirect association between BLM and UPB, wherein the indirect positive relationship is stronger when perceived employability is low (than high).Originality/valueThis study contributes to the BLM and UPB literature by identifying the critical role of perceived employability and suggesting that UPB is an impulsive action rather than an intentional move.

Does an Employee-Experienced Crisis Help or Hinder Creativity? An Integration of Threat-Rigidity and Implicit Theories

Although a crisis provides room for creativity, organizations often suffer from creativity deficits in such a situation. Indeed, threat-rigidity theory suggests that an employee-experienced crisis may hinder employee creativity. An interesting but unresolved question is thus, “When does an employee-experienced crisis stifle or stimulate creativity, and how?” Embedding our study in a person-in-situation creativity research stream, we introduce employee-experienced crisis, defined as the impact an employee experiences from crisis event(s) in a team, and examine its interaction with implicit theories (i.e., a fixed vs. a growth mindset) in employee creativity. We hypothesize that an employee-experienced crisis stifles employee creativity via increased job anxiety when the individual possesses a strong fixed mindset. In contrast, the same phenomenon stimulates creativity via enhanced creative process engagement when the individual has a strong growth mindset. In Study 1, we collected multisource, time-lagged field data from 506 employees working in 107 research and development (R&D) teams. The results supported our hypotheses. To further explore how the moderating effects of mindsets occur, we conducted Study 2, another multisource, time-lagged field study of 260 employees in 40 R&D teams. We found that the moderating effects of implicit theories are mediated by goal orientations (i.e., implicit theories are more distal moderators, and goal orientations are more proximal moderators). Overall, we provide an integrative account of when and how an employee-experienced crisis hinders or helps employee creativity.