Social Identity and Social Exchange: Identification, Support, and Withdrawal from the Job

Integrating insights from the social exchange perspective and the social identity perspective on the psychological relationship between the individual and the organization, we propose that evaluations of the support received from the organization and its representatives, and organizational identification interact in predicting withdrawal from the job. Specifically, the relationship of support with withdrawal is proposed to be weaker the stronger employees identify with the organization. This prediction was confirmed in two samples focusing on different operationalizations of support and withdrawal. Sample 1 concerned the interaction of organizational support and organizational identification in predicting turnover intentions, Sample 2 concerned the prediction of absenteeism from supervisor support and organizational identification. We conclude that the present study yields promising first evidence that may lay the basis for further integration of social exchange and social identity analyses of organizational behavior.Organizational behavior;Organizational identification;Organizational support;Social identity

Self-esteem and outcome fairness: differential importance of procedural and outcome considerations.

Results of a survey of 222 detainees in Dutch jails and police stations showed that outcome-fairness judgments of individuals with high self-esteem were more strongly related to outcome considerations than to procedural considerations, whereas outcome-fairness judgments of individuals with low self-esteem were more strongly related to procedural considerations than to outcome considerations. It was proposed that these differences were due to the fact that (a) procedures more strongly express a social evaluation than outcomes and (b) individuals with low self-esteem are more concerned with social evaluations than individuals with high self-esteem. The implications of the results for other individual-differences factors and other populations than detainees are discussed

From the Editors: Information, Attention, and Decision Making

More than five decades after the seminal works on how individuals process information and make decisions within organizations were published (Cyert & March, 1963; Simon, 1957), the thesis that individuals, groups, and organizations are bounded in their rationality and ability to attend to information continues to remain salient. Individuals and organizations display cognitive and motivational biases, both in their attention to information and in their decisions based on that information (De Dreu, Nijstad, & van Knippenberg, 2008; Ocasio, 2011; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). The nature and volume of information, and managers\u27 behaviors in seeking and using information, have undergone massive transformation over these past 50 years, which have seen the emergence of electronics, computers, and the Internet. Advances in information technology, mobile communications, and big data collection and storage mean that more people and firms have access to more information than ever before (George, Haas, & Pentland, 2014; Hilbert & Lopez, 2011). Yet, our frameworks of attention and decision making have not seen corresponding radical shifts. Perhaps, the underlying processes of decision making remain the same despite the transformative change in context. Alternatively, it is plausible that our theoretical advances have not matched the speed of change in information contexts confronted by businesses and policymakers alike. The growing ubiquity of information provides unprecedented opportunities—for learning, creativity , and innovation, as well as for performance. Understanding how to leverage these possibilities becomes an important challenge for management research and practice. However, the abundance of information also implies increasing competition for the attention of individuals, groups, and organizations ; increasing potential for information overload to fuel biases in decision making; increasing costs of collecting, storing, and sharing information ; and an increasing risk that all this information becomes a distraction from more relevant information or indeed from the job itself. Thus, a key challenge in the information age is to manage this wealth of available information and channel it to productive ends. In this thematic issue, we explore how management in the information age potentially differs and challenges our existing theoretical frameworks and assumptions. We assembled articles that address the rapidly evolving opportunities and challenges of managing in this new information-rich context. These articles are motivated by emergent themes and trends that set the stage for current and future scholarly research on information, attention, and decision making. We follow a brief analysis of these articles with potential directions for future research and highlight broader pastures where systematic research could further improve our understanding of how we live and work in the information age

Keeping employees safe during health crises:The Effects of Media Exposure, HR Practices, and Age

Occupational health and safety are critical in promoting the wellness of organizations and employees. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most life-threatening viruses encountered in recent history, providing a unique opportunity for research to examine factors that drive employee safety behavior. Drawing from terror management theory, we propose and test a moderated mediation model using data collected from employees working during a peak of the pandemic. We identify two sources of influence — one external (i.e., media exposure), and one internal (i.e., HR practices) to the organization — that shape employees’ mortality salience and safety behaviors. We find that COVID-19 HR practices significantly moderate the relationship between daily COVID-19 media exposure and mortality salience, with media exposure positively associated with mortality salience at lower levels of HR practices but its effects substituted by higher levels of HR practices. Moreover, our results also show that mortality salience spurs safety behaviors, with age moderating this relationship such that younger — but not older — employees are more likely to engage in safety behaviors due to mortality salience. Taken together, we offer theoretical implications for the safety behavior literature and practical implications for organizations faced with health crises or having employees who commonly work in hazardous conditions.</p

In the moral eye of the beholder:the interactive effects of leader and follower moral identity on perceptions of ethical leadership and LMX quality

Previous research indicated that leader moral identity (MI; i.e., leaders’ self-definition in terms of moral attributes) predicts to what extent followers perceive their leader as ethical (i.e., demonstrating and promoting ethical conduct in the organization). Leadership, however, is a relational process that involves leaders and followers. Building on this understanding, we hypothesized that follower and leader MI (a) interact in predicting whether followers will perceive their leaders as ethical and, as a result, (b) influence followers’ perceptions of leader–follower relationship quality. A dyadic field study (N = 101) shows that leader MI is a stronger predictor of followers’ perceptions of ethical leadership for followers who are high (vs. low) in MI. Perceptions of ethical leadership in turn predict how the quality of the relationship will be perceived. Hence, whether leader MI translates to perceptions of ethical leadership and of better relationship quality depends on the MI of followers

Agreement between nursing home caregivers’ observations of residents’ depression, well-being and quality of life

<br/

Slow Late Component in Conditioned Stimulus-Evoked Potentials From the Amygdala After Fear Conditioning in the Rat

Male Wistar rats were subjected to a differential Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure in which one of two tones (6 or 10 kHz) was followed by an electric shock (CS+) and the other was not (CS-). Before and after fear conditioning, we recorded the evoked potentials elicited by CS+ and CS- from electrodes aimed at the lateral nucleus of the amygdala. Before conditioning, a slow, negative component with peak amplitude around 150 ms was present in the evoked potentials. This component was sensitive to habituation. After fear conditioning, both CS+ and CS- elicited the same late component, albeit with a larger amplitude. This enhancement was temporary: decreasing amplitude was observed in the course of CS test presentations under extinction. Prior research revealed a comparable slow component in the amygdala of the cat under similar experimental conditions. The collective results indicate that the large late component in the amygdala is enhanced by fear conditioning, suggesting that such enhancement reflects the anticipation of a biologically significant event

Agreement between nursing home caregivers’ observations of residents’ depression, well-being and quality of life

<br/

Relational considerations in the use of influence tactics.

It is proposed that the existing relationship between the influencing agent and the target of influence plays a central role in the choice of using hard and soft influence tactics. In a field study, 3 key aspects of the relation between agent and target were examined. and the results generally supported our hypotheses. First, the more unfairly people felt they were treated, the more often they wielded influence, especially using harder influence tactics. Second. the better the influencing agent liked the target. the relatively less often he or she used hard tactics. Finally, the more the influencing agent felt dependent upon the target, the fewer influence tactics, both hard and soft, were used. The discussion focuses on both the practical and theoretical implications of these findings