Addressing the multilevel phenomenon of abusive supervision from the instrumental and reactive perspectives

Abusive supervision is a dysfunctional workplace behavior that evokes images of tyrannical bosses publicly ridiculing and undermining their subordinates. Naturally, one can imagine the detrimental effects of such abusive behaviors on subordinates' health and productivity. These deleterious consequences on subordinates also translate into organizational costs such as high absenteeism, medical costs arising from employee's poor health and staff turnover. Given such outcomes in the workplace with ramifications for both the affected subordinate and organization, abusive supervision warrants systematic investigation. By using two different studies, this research explored the abusive supervision phenomenon, taking an integrated and multilevel approach to examining the antecedents and outcomes of abusive supervision. Drawing from the aggression literature that distinguishes between instrumental and reactive aggression, the first study adopted an instrumental perspective to explain supervisors' just-world motive as an antecedent to abusive supervision. Results from Study 1 supported the cross-level effects of abusive supervision as an instrumental influence stemming from supervisors' just-world motive to redistribute justice. Such hostile actions, in turn, backfire as the abused subordinates perceive the supervisor as unfair and fail to identify with him or her. Study 2 adopted a reactive perspective to explain supervisors' interactional justice as an antecedent to abusive supervision and examine the outcomes at the group and individual levels. At the group level, results from Study 2 showed that abusive supervision fostered two different climates - a climate of procedural injustice and a climate of silence. At the individual level, the abused subordinate failed to identify with the supervisor therefore reducing his or her in-role performance and choosing to remain silent for self-protection. In addition, the two studies examined the moderating role that one's cultural orientation plays in the abusive supervision phenomenon. Results from Study 1 showed that subordinates' high power distance orientation mitigated the deleterious effects of abusive supervision on subordinates' interactional injustice and personal identification with the supervisor. Conversely, Study 2 showed that a supervisor's high power distance orientation magnified the effects of his or her hostilities toward subordinates when the supervisor experienced unfair treatment from his or her immediate boss. Supervisors' acts of hostilities are common in organizations (Tepper, 2007) and understanding why supervisors engage in such behavior remains a challenge for scholars. This research is the first to adopt a multilevel and integrated perspective in examining the broader social implications of abusive supervision - from the antecedents to their associated outcomes. In this thesis, the theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed and the limitations of the research are also addressed. -- provided by Candidate

Virtual teams are here to stay: how personality traits, virtuality and leader gender impact trust in the leader and team commitment

Teleworking has, today, become a necessity for many organizations, so effective virtual team management is critical. This study analyzes the influence of the personality traits of virtual team workers on team efficiency. To do so we examine the effects of subordinates’ personalities on the trust they give the virtual team leader and the impact of this trust on commitment to the team. We also discuss how the team's degree of virtuality and the leader’s gender influence the relationship between personality and trust. The findings showed that extroversion has a positive effect on trust felt in the leader, and that this trust has a positive effect on commitment felt toward the team. On the other hand, it was observed that neuroticism had a more negative effect on trust in more virtual environments. The leader’s gender had no significant effect. The study offers advice for virtual team management and discusses its limitations and future research directions

Research and Applications of the Processes of Performance Appraisal: A Bibliography of Recent Literature, 1981-1989

[Excerpt] There have been several recent reviews of different subtopics within the general performance appraisal literature. The reader of these reviews will find, however, that the accompanying citations may be of limited utility for one or more reasons. For example, the reference sections of these reviews are usually composed of citations which support a specific theory or practical approach to the evaluation of human performance. Consequently, the citation lists for these reviews are, as they must be, highly selective and do not include works that may have only a peripheral relationship to a given reviewer\u27s target concerns. Another problem is that the citations are out of date. That is, review articles frequently contain many citations that are fifteen or more years old. The generation of new studies and knowledge in this field occurs very rapidly. This creates a need for additional reference information solely devoted to identifying the wealth of new research, ideas, and writing that is changing the field

Moderators of the relationship between the quality of leader-member exchange relationship (LM) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)

There have been many theories that have examined how leaders can be effective within an organization. The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not personality would strengthen or weaken the relationship between the quality of one\u27s relationship with their leader (LMX) and performance outcomes (OCB). Personality did not act as a moderator. In order to test this, 127 participants of both men and women from various organizational and educational backgrounds were surveyed

4.0 Leadership Skills in Hospitality Sector

This paper intends to analyses leadership skills in the hospitality sector in the era of 4.0 industry. The purpose is to explore the role of multiâ€level forms of leadership and the profiles identified by the hospitality professionals. This is a quantitative study based on an online survey applied to two hotels, and the following research question have guided the present study: What are the 4.0 Leadership Skills in the hospitality sector? To answer the research question, the main technique to collect data was a questionnaire allowing to investigate the main issues related to 4.0 leadership skills. The results of the research are the identification of the leadership skills profiles, being this research significant for managers and leaders when developing organizational interactions from a multiâ€level efficacy perspective. The conceptual contribution of the paper is a fresh macroâ€analytical perspective concerning 4.0 leadership skills in the hospitality sector

Three Essays on Diversity-Performance Relationship from a Positive Psychology Lens

Workplace diversity is an incessant notion in today’s world. Scholars have examined different aspects of diversity (e.g. demographic, cultural, and informational) in context of varying processes and outcomes (e.g. satisfaction, innovation, creativity, and performance). Diversity has been proposed as a double-edged sword, but the overall effects of diversity have been inconclusive, necessitating the investigation of more contextual variables. Efforts have been made to focus on this paucity of diversity research, however, the emphasis has been on objective variables and the positive characteristics of an individual or a team are neglected. Thus, the purpose of this three-essay dissertation is to address this gap by integrating the positive organizational behavior theme with the diversity literature. I aim to amalgamate positive psychology components in the diversity-performance relation and identify its fruitful effects. As a foundational step, the first essay offers insights on the extant patterns and research trends of diversity research at two levels – individual and team. In this comprehensive literature review, I analyze different variables used to investigate effects of both, relational demography and diversity, on performance. The study highlights theoretical underpinnings, distinguishes the analytical approaches, and offers guidelines for future research. In Essay 2, I theorize a multi-level model highlighting the direct and interaction effects of relational demography and positive psychology traits on individual outcomes. I propose that the detrimental effects of surface- and deep-level diversity on individual team members will be alleviated by the positive effects such as cultural intelligence and psychological empowerment at the individual-level and empowerment and psychological capital at the team-level. A longitudinal investigation of more than 480 participants constituting 139 teams at two major research universities provides evidence for the interesting effects of these positive traits. Results demonstrate that cultural quotient of an individual has a positive significant interaction effect on psychological empowerment and intrinsic motivation. Also, the level of psychological empowerment has a direct positive effect on the sense of thriving at work. In a similar setting, in Essay 3 a team-level model is proposed to identify the effect of surface- and deep-level diversity with social integration and team learning. I investigate the interaction effects of collective psychological capital, team goal orientation, and team empowerment. Further, the direct effect of psychological capital and team processes on team performance is also analyzed. Findings from this study suggest that team goal orientation acts as a positive moderator for both social integration and team learning behavior. Likewise, team psychological capital has a positive interaction effect on the two team processes. Overall, this dissertation highlights the importance of considering the positive psychological capacities of individuals to overcome diversity-related challenges. This research makes a critical contribution by including the unexplored positive psychological traits in the diversity literature and illustrating its virtues. Findings from the studies generate several fruitful implications for theory and practice. Future research directions are suggested

Age and education differences in superior-subordinate dyads: Testing relational norms and attraction similarity influences on role ambiguity, affect, and communication satisfaction

The primary purpose of this study was to examine superior-subordinate dyads which violate relational norms and produce status inconsistency. Specifically, within the context of supervisor age and education, occupational norms suggest that employees expect their supervisor to be older and have a higher level of education. In the face of growing demographic diversity, more emphasis is being placed on superiors to build skills to effectively interact with a heterogeneous set of employees. This study proposed to test whether superior-subordinate dyads which are diverse in terms of age and education, influence employees\u27 attitudes towards their supervisor, the satisfaction with the communication between the dyad members, and employees\u27 perceived clarity of job expectations. 190 participants responded to a paper based survey

Linking authentic leadership to positive employee health, behavioral engagement, and job performance

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the emerging field of positive organizational behavior. The field of Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) has its roots in the concept of positive psychology (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008) but is more narrowly defined as the study and application of positively oriented human resources strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today\u27s workplace (Luthans, 2002, p.698). More and more researchers have begun to emphasize what is right with people rather than focusing on what is wrong with people. Given this opportunity, this dissertation explicitly focuses upon the power of positive psychological states and behaviors, such as psychological safety, job engagement, positive employee health, and proactive behaviors, which may have strong influence on employees\u27 behavior in the organization. A new emerging leadership style, authentic leadership, was employed as an important antecedent to see how leadership can promote these positive states and behaviors. Based on Ryff\u27s (1995) positive human health concepts, this dissertation developed a positive employee health construct which focuses on organizational context and environments. A four dimensional measure was developed for this construct, including leading a purposeful worklife, quality connection to others, positive self-regard and mastery, and perception of negative events. An initial nomological network was tested for the construct validity. In addition to developing a valid measure for positive employee health, another objective of this dissertation is to examine incremental predictive validity of authentic leadership and the relationship between authentic leadership and several previously unexamined outcomes (i.e., positive employee health, job engagement, proactivity, job performance, and workplace deviance behavior). Many scholars believe that the influence of authentic leadership has an important role in modern organization and society because it helps to restore basic confidence, hope, optimism, resiliency, and meaningfulness. This dissertation adopted a positive organizational behavior approach to furthering our understanding of the process by which authentic leadership influences several important positive outcomes. Findings of this dissertation indicated that newly developed positive employee health construct is useful in predicting job satisfaction and life satisfaction. It is significantly related to but also distinguished from other similar construct, such as psychological well-being and vigor. In addition, this dissertation also found that authentic leadership can be used to predict employees\u27 psychological safety, job engagement, positive employee health, knowledge sharing, and workplace deviance behavior. Indirect relationships between authentic leadership and job performance and proactivity through the mediation effect of job engagement were partially supported. Although authentic leadership can be distinguished from transformational leadership, it only showed incremental predict validity over transformational leadership with job engagement as outcome. Results of this study also suggest that need for leadership and perception of organizational politics may work as direct outcomes of authentic leadership rather than moderators as proposed