Beyond the call of duty: Why customers contribute to firm-hosted commercial online communities

Firm-hosted commercial online communities, in which customers interact to solve each other's service problems, represent a fascinating context to study the motivations of collective action in the form of knowledge contribution to the community. We extend a model of social capital based on Wasko and Faraj (2005) to incorporate and contrast the direct impact of commitment to both the online community and the host firm, as well as reciprocity, on quality and quantity of knowledge contribution. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of three individual attributes that are particularly relevant to the firm-hosted community context: perceived informational value, sportsmanship, and online interaction propensity. We empirically test our framework using self-reported and objective data from 203 members of a firm-hosted technical support community. In addition to several interesting moderating effects, we find that a customer's online interaction propensity, commitment to the community, and the informational value s/he perceives in the community are the strongest drivers of knowledge contribution

Agency theory and performance appraisal: how bad theory damages learning and contributes to bad management practice

Performance appraisal interviews remain central to how employees are scrutinised, rewarded and sometimes penalised by managers. But they are also often castigated as ineffective, or even harmful, to both individuals and organisations. Exploring this paradox, we highlight the influence of agency theory on the (mal)practice of performance appraisal. The performative nature of human resource management increasingly reflects an economic approach within which its practices are aligned with agency theory. Such theory assumes that actors are motivated mainly or only by economic self-interest. Close surveillance is required to eliminate the risk of shirking and other deviant behaviours. It is a pessimistic mind-set about people that undermines the supportive, co-operative and developmental rhetoric with which appraisal interviews are usually accompanied. Consequently, managers often practice appraisal interviews while holding onto two contradictory mind-sets, a state of Orwellian Doublethink that damages individual learning and organisational performance. We encourage researchers to adopt a more radical critique of appraisal practices that foregrounds issues of power, control and conflicted interests between actors beyond the analyses offered to date

Will a Good Citizen Actively Support Organizational Change? Investigation of Psychological Processes Underlying Active Change Support

The present study investigated motivational factors of employees active change support (ACS). It also investigated good citizens response to the change by highlighting convergence and divergence of motivational factors between ACS and traditional extra-role behavior. The findings based on 166 staff responses and 346 supervisor assessments in a hospital that recently implemented a sharedgovernance structure suggest that active change support is a result of an active thinking process that involves perception of potential benefit from change but not necessarily the consequence of conventional predictors of extra-role behaviors (i.e., positive attitudes). The findings also suggest that good citizens are not necessarily the supporters of organizational change and that in actuality they confront motivational dilemma especially when they hold high quality relationship with their employer because they are reluctant to challenge the status quo

The applied psychology of work behavior : a book of readings

ix, 498 p.; 23 cm

Organizational Behavior : An Applied Psychological Approach

Illinoisxiii, 701 p.: illus.; 23 c