Emirati Identity as an antecedent of fairness perceptions and behavior

The unprecedented ease of global mobility allows individuals to transcend national boundaries and develop intimate understanding of cultures other than their own. Anecdotally, those individuals might be expatriates on international assignments, citizens who are minorities in their own countries (e.g., United Arab Emirates), or colloquial third culture kids – perpetual global nomads who might ascribe little value to their identity as citizens of their own passport country. Academically, those individuals can be termed as bicultural or cultural hybrids, nomenclature which brings attention to this fusion of multiple identities. The resulting internalization of values, attitudes, and perceptions emerging from dynamic cultural mixing has been attributed to increased coexistence of multiple identities or self-perceptions among such individuals (Hermans & Kempen, 1998; Tweed, Conway, & Ryder, 1999; Gurin, Hurtado, & Peng, 1994; Phinney, 1990, 1991; Sellers, Smith, Shelton, Rowley, & Chavous, 1998; Brewer, 1991; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987)

Antecedents of Employee Thriving at Work: The Roles of Formalization, Ethical Leadership and Interpersonal Justice

In this paper, we examine whether the presence of a mechanistic structure (i.e., formalization) hinders or facilitates employee thriving at work. In doing so, we examine formalization as an antecedent of employee thriving at work. Specifically, we examine why and when formalization, as an important contextual factor, may facilitate employee thriving at work. We hypothesize that the positive relation between formalization and employees’ thriving at work is mediated by their interpersonal justice perceptions. Further, we hypothesize that ethical leadership moderates the indirect relationship between formalization and employee thriving at work via interpersonal justice. As such, this relationship is stronger in the presence of relatively high (rather than relatively low) levels of ethical leadership. Results from a two‐wave field study provide support for our hypotheses. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research directions for our findings

Does Change Incite Abusive Supervision? The Role of Transformational Change and Hindrance Stress

To remain competitive, organizations tend to change their established ways of working, their strategy, the core values, and the organizational structure. Such thorough changes are referred to as transformational change. Unfortunately, transformational change is often unsuccessful because organizational members do not always welcome the change. Although organizations often expect their supervisors to be successful role-models and change-agents during the transformational change process, we argue that initiating transformational change could increase supervisors\u27 hindrance stress levels, which may result in abusive behaviors towards employees. More specifically, in a multi-source survey and an experimental study, we find evidence that transformational change is associated with supervisors\u27 experienced hindrance stress, which subsequently led to more abusive behaviors towards employees

Enhancing Employees’ Duty Orientation and Moral Potency: Dual Mechanisms Linking Ethical Psychological Climate to Ethically‐Focused Proactive Behaviors

Based on social cognitive theory (SCT), we develop and test a model that links ethical psychological climate to ethically‐focused proactive behavior (i.e., ethical voice and ethical taking charge) via two distinct mechanisms (i.e., duty orientation and moral potency). Results from multi‐wave field studies conducted in the United States, Turkey, France, Vietnam, and India demonstrate that an ethical psychological climate indirectly influences employees’ ethical voice and ethical taking charge behaviors through the dual mechanisms of duty orientation and moral potency. Additionally, we find that individuals’ moral attentiveness strengthened these mediating processes. Together, these findings suggest that ethical psychological climate is an important antecedent of ethically‐focused proactive behavior by stimulating individuals’ sense of duty and enhancing their moral potency, particularly when employees are already highly attuned to moral issues

Followers' role in the emergence and maintenance of self-serving leadership

Traditionally, leadership research focused on effective and successful leadership. In this view, leaders are expected to be fair and responsible. However, organizational scandals showed that such expectations are overly optimistic and that leaders do not always act for the best of the collective interest. Indeed, leaders sometimes act self-servingly, for example, by misusing company resources for personal gain. Despite the serious consequences of self-serving leadership, this kind of behavior has not received much attention in the management and psychological literature. Therefore, in this dissertation, I will focus on self-serving leadership which is defined as followers perceptions of the extent to which leaders place their own well-being and interests above both their followers needs and the goals of the organization. Generally, followers react in a negative way to self-serving leadership. For example, self-serving forms of leadership have been found to be negatively related to followers trust and affective commitment towards their leader, followers organizational citizenship behavior, and their job performance. Self-serving forms of leadership are also linked to a range of negative consequences, such as followers desire for retaliation and their supervisor-directed deviance. However, recent research also shows that followers do not necessarily react negative to leaders who behave self-servingly. In this dissertation, I argue that followers play a crucial role in the emergence and maintenance of self-serving leadership. More specifically, when followers react less severely to leaders self-serving behavior, this might lead to the continued existence of this behavior. Moreover, I will argue that despite the devastating consequences for the organization (e.g., Tyco s former CEO Dennis Kozlowski) followers reactions depend on the specific context in which the self-serving behavior takes place. Therefore, the first three empirical chapters of this dissertation aim to address boundary conditions for followers reactions to self-serving leaders at the individual, work group, and organizational level. More specifically, I will focus on followers perceptions of distributive justice at the individual level, on budget policies at the organizational level, and on the ethical climate at the work group level. Chapter 2 starts with a validation of a scale designed to measure followers perceptions of self-serving leadership. Next, I explore whether followers perceptions of distributive fairness will protect followers with regard to their feelings of harm and their negative emotions when they are confronted with a self-serving leader. I also examine the process underlying these relationships as I propose that self-serving leadership will increase the extent to which followers experience uncertainty. In Chapter 3, I focus on the organization s budget policy. Commonly, organizations apply one of two types of budget policies: carry-forward vs. use-it-or-lose-it policies, which differ with regard to whether allocations not spent by the end of the fiscal year flow back to the company or not. I argue that use-it-or-lose-it policies set a norm to spend the available resources, and therefore followers will react less negatively to self-serving leaders in such a policy than in a carry-forward policy. In Chapter 4, I hypothesize that the ethical climate influences followers reactions to self-serving leaders. I argue that in a high ethical climate, a self-serving leader s behavior violates the norms of the organization, and thereby violates followers trust, resulting in negative follower reactions such as desire for retaliation and supervisor-directed deviance. In Chapter 5, I aim to show that followers play a crucial role in the emergence of self-serving leadership. More specifically, I hypothesize that followers lack of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) towards their fellow colleagues will result in more self-serving leadership. I also propose that when followers refrain from OCB, this will elevate the leader s hindrance stress, and that hindrance stress explains the relation between employees' OCB and leaders self-serving behavior.In sum, this dissertation contributes to the leadership literature as it extends the existing knowledge on self-serving behavior. Moreover, this dissertation provides a novel perspective by highlighting the influence followers have in both the emergence and maintenance of their leader s self-serving behavior.nrpages: 173status: publishe

The Mediating Role of LMX Between Abusive Supervision and Work Behaviors: A Replication and Extension

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When Employees Retaliate Against Self‑Serving Leaders: The Influence of the Ethical Climate

Leaders have been shown to sometimes act self-servingly. Yet, leaders do not act in isolation and the perceptions of the ethical climate in which leaders operate is expected to contribute to employees taking counteractive measures against their leader (that is, employees’ desire for retaliation, and supervisor-directed deviance). We contend that in an ethical climate employees feel better equipped to stand up and take retaliation measures. Moreover, we argue that this is explained by employees’ feelings of trust. In two studies using different methods (an experimental study and a multi-source study), we predict and find evidence that the relationship between self-serving leader behavior and employees’ desire for retaliation and supervisor-directed deviance is stronger when the ethical climate is high rather than low. Moreover, we show that trust in the leader mediates these relationships.status: Published onlin