Signaling in Secret: Pay-for-Performance and the Incentive and Sorting Effects of Pay Secrecy

Key Findings: Pay secrecy adversely impacts individual task performance because it weakens the perception that an increase in performance will be accompanied by increase in pay; Pay secrecy is associated with a decrease in employee performance and retention in pay-for-performance systems, which measure performance using relative (i.e., peer-ranked) criteria rather than an absolute scale (see Figure 2 on page 5); High performing employees tend to be most sensitive to negative pay-for- performance perceptions; There are many signals embedded within HR policies and practices, which can influence employees’ perception of workplace uncertainty/inequity and impact their performance and turnover intentions; and When pay transparency is impractical, organizations may benefit from introducing partial pay openness to mitigate these effects on employee performance and retention

Using self-definition to predict the influence of procedural justice on organizational, interpersonal, and job/task-oriented citizenship behaviors

An integrative self-definition model is proposed to improve our understanding of how procedural justice affects different outcome modalities in organizational behavior. Specifically, it is examined whether the strength of different levels of self-definition (collective, relational, and individual) each uniquely interact with procedural justice to predict organizational, interpersonal, and job/task-oriented citizenship behaviors, respectively. Results from experimental and (both single and multisource) field data consistently revealed stronger procedural justice effects (1) on organizational-oriented citizenship behavior among those who define themselves strongly in terms of organizational characteristics, (2) on interpersonal-oriented citizenship behavior among those who define themselves strongly in terms of their interpersonal relationships, and (3) on job/task-oriented citizenship behavior among those who define themselves weakly in terms of their distinctiveness or uniqueness. We discuss the relevance of these results with respect to how employees can be motivated most effectively in organizational settings

Thirty Years After Michael E. Porter: What Do We Know About Business Exit?

Although a business exit is an important corporate change initiative, the buyer’s side seems to be more appealing to management researchers than the seller’s because acquisitions imply growth, i.e., success. Yet from an optimistic viewpoint, business exit can effectively create value for the selling company. In this paper we attempt to bring the relevance of the seller’s side back into our consciousness by asking: What do we know about business exit? We start our exploration with Porter (1976), focusing on literature that investigates the antecedents of, barriers to, and outcomes of business exit. We also include studies from related fields such as finance and economics.1 Through this research we determine three clusters of findings: factors promoting business exit, exit barriers, and exit outcomes. Overall, it is the intention of this paper to highlight the importance of business exit for research and practice. Knowing what we know about business exits and their high financial value we should bear in mind that exit need not mean failure but a new beginning for a corporation

Making things happen : a model of proactive motivation

Being proactive is about making things happen, anticipating and preventing problems, and seizing opportunities. It involves self-initiated efforts to bring about change in the work environment and/or oneself to achieve a different future. The authors develop existing perspectives on this topic by identifying proactivity as a goal-driven process involving both the setting of a proactive goal (proactive goal generation) and striving to achieve that proactive goal (proactive goal striving). The authors identify a range of proactive goals that individuals can pursue in organizations. These vary on two dimensions: the future they aim to bring about (achieving a better personal fit within one’s work environment, improving the organization’s internal functioning, or enhancing the organization’s strategic fit with its environment) and whether the self or situation is being changed. The authors then identify “can do,” “reason to,” and “energized to” motivational states that prompt proactive goal generation and sustain goal striving. Can do motivation arises from perceptions of self-efficacy, control, and (low) cost. Reason to motivation relates to why someone is proactive, including reasons flowing from intrinsic, integrated, and identified motivation. Energized to motivation refers to activated positive affective states that prompt proactive goal processes. The authors suggest more distal antecedents, including individual differences (e.g., personality, values, knowledge and ability) as well as contextual variations in leadership, work design, and interpersonal climate, that influence the proactive motivational states and thereby boost or inhibit proactive goal processes. Finally, the authors summarize priorities for future researc

Job insecurity, employee anxiety, and commitment: The moderating role of collective trust in management

This article examines the moderating effect of collective trust in management on the relation between job insecurity (both objective and subjective) and employee outcomes (work-related anxiety and organisational commitment). This is contextualised in the modern British workplace which has seen increased employment insecurity and widespread cynicism. We use matched employer-employee data extracted from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) 2011, which includes over 16,000 employees from more than 1100 organisations. The multilevel analyses confirm that objective job insecurity (loss of important elements of a job such as cuts in pay, overtime, training, and working hours) are significantly correlated with high levels of work-related anxiety and lower levels of organisational commitment. These correlations are partially mediated by subjective job insecurity (perception of possible job loss). More importantly, collective trust in management (a consensus of management being reliable, honest and fair) significantly attenuates the negative impact of objective job insecurity on organisational commitment, and reduces the impact of subjective job insecurity on work-related anxiety. Theoretical and practical implications and limitations of these effects are discussed

Rising powers, UN Security Council reform, and the failure of rhetorical coercion

Despite repeated calls for reform, the UN Security Council has as yet resisted to satisfy the demands of a group of rising powers – Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan (G4) – for a permanent seat. We focus on one strategy of institutional adaptation to power shifts mentioned in the introductory article to this special issue and examine why the G4’s rhetorical coercion strategy has failed to resonate with the Council’s permanent members and the wider UN membership. Looking at the key debate on Security Council reform in the General Assembly in 2005, we examine the justifications the G4 have offered to support their proposal and whether these have been accepted as legitimate by UN member states. We show that the G4’s rhetorical coercion strategy has failed to resonate with the targeted audience because the G4 have justified their demand strongly in terms of how their material contributions would enhance the UN’s performance. In contrast, the G4’s opponents provided justifications predominantly based on fair and democratic procedures, generating higher levels of expressed support. The importance of procedural fairness is consistent with findings in social psychology and challenges the prominent argument that performance is the main path to legitimacy for international institutions

What’s past (and present) is prologue : interactions between justice levels and trajectories predicting behavioral reciprocity

Much of organizational justice research has tended to take a static approach, linking employees’ contemporaneous justice levels to outcomes of interest. In the present study, we tested a dynamic model emphasizing the interactive influences of both justice levels and trajectories for predicting behavioral social exchange outcomes. Specifically, our model posited both main effects and interactions between present justice levels and past justice changes over time in predicting helping behavior and voluntary turnover behavior. Data over four yearly measurement periods from 4,348 employees of a banking organization generally supported the notion that justice trajectories interact with absolute levels to predict both outcomes. Together, the findings highlight how employees invoke present fairness evaluations within the context of past fairness trends—rather than either in isolation—to inform decisions about behaviorally reciprocating at work

A passion for respect: On understanding the role of human needs and morality

In the present paper, we stress the importance of the concept respect in a wide variety of social settings and provide a working definition of this concept by emphasizing how respect relates to the act of communicating full recognition to other people on the dimensions of belongingness and morality. Subsequently, in two separate parts, we discuss why respect is so desired and valued. The first part looks at respect as a means to fulfil important human social concerns (“respect as a means to an end”). The second part looks at the potential moral underpinnings of respect and thus interprets “respect as an end in itself.” Finally, it is suggested that both reasons to value respect explain respect effects as a function of the working selfconcept that is salient (i.e., pragmatic versus idealistic self)

A passion for respect: On understanding the role of human needs and morality

In the present paper, we stress the importance of the concept respect in a wide variety of social settings and provide a working definition of this concept by emphasizing how respect relates to the act of communicating full recognition to other people on the dimensions of belongingness and morality. Subsequently, in two separate parts, we discuss why respect is so desired and valued. The first part looks at respect as a means to fulfil important human social concerns (“respect as a means to an end”). The second part looks at the potential moral underpinnings of respect and thus interprets “respect as an end in itself.” Finally, it is suggested that both reasons to value respect explain respect effects as a function of the working selfconcept that is salient (i.e., pragmatic versus idealistic self)

A relational model of perceived overqualification : the moderating role of interpersonal influence on social acceptance.

Theories of perceived overqualification have tended to focus on employees’ job-related responses to account for effects on performance. We offer an alternative perspective and theorize that perceived overqualification could influence work performance through a relational mechanism. We propose that relational skills, in the form of interpersonal influence of overqualified employees, determine their tendency to experience social acceptance and, thus, engage in positive work-related behaviors. We tested this relational model across two studies using time-lagged, multisource data. In Study 1, the results indicated that for employees high on interpersonal influence, perceived overqualification was positively related to self-reported social acceptance, whereas for employees low on interpersonal influence, the relationship was negative. Social acceptance, in turn, was positively related to in-role job performance, interpersonal altruism, and team member proactivity evaluated by supervisors. In Study 2, we focused on peer-reported social acceptance and found that the indirect relationships between perceived overqualification and supervisor-reported behavioral outcomes via social acceptance were negative when interpersonal influence was low and nonsignificant when interpersonal influence was high. The implications of the general findings are discussed