Participation and organizational commitment during change: From utopist to realist perspectives

Trust has a great potential for furthering our understanding of organizational change and learning. This potential however remains largely untapped. It is argued that two reasons as for why this potential remains unrealized are: (i) A narrow conceptualization of change as implementation and (ii) an emphasis on direct and aggregated effects of individual trust to the exclusion of other effects. It is further suggested that our understanding of the effects of trust on organizational change, should benefit from including effects of trust on the formulation stage. It should also benefit from exploring the structuring effects of trust in organizations. Throughout this chapter, ways to extend current research on trust in organizations are suggested. The chapter also provides examples of relevant contributions where available. In order to capture organizational effects of trust, it is suggested that trust should be studied over longer time intervals, and include several referents of trust, spanning both horizontal and vertical relationships in the organizatio

When Leadership Leads to Loathing: The Effect of Culturally (In)Congruent Leadership on Employee Contempt and Voluntary Work Behaviors

This article suggests that contempt ― a proclivity towards loathing others ― as an emotional response, can arise as a consequence of culturally incongruent leadership, i.e. leader behaviors and actions that do not comply with follower-held, culturally derived expectations and values. Outcomes of contempt were also studied by hypothesizing that contempt, when experienced in response to a situation of culturally incongruent leadership, can cause followers to reduce their display of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) while engaging in deviant behaviors. The model was tested in a sample of 348 follower-level employees using structural equation modeling. Empirical results largely support theoretical hypotheses. Culturally congruent leadership was negatively related to contempt, while contempt was positively related to deviant behaviors and negatively related to OCB. The results contribute to the understudied field of contempt research, and suggest that leaders faced with cultural diversity may be well advised to adapt their behaviors to the local cultural values to stimulate follower OCB rather than deviance

Forskningsbasert viten om motivasjon av kunnskapsarbeidere

Kunnskapsarbeideres verdiskapning er sterkt knyttet til motivasjon. Ulike nivå på verdiskapning observeres og disse forskjellene er antakelig mer en refleksjon av ulik motivasjon enn ulik evne, målt ved intelligens og nivå eller kvalitet på utdanning. Dette betyr at ledere av slike arbeidstakere primært skaper verdi om de makter å påvirke motivasjon på en positiv måte. Tilsvarende så ødelegges verdi om ledere gjennom sin atferd bidrar til å redusere kunnskapsarbeidernes motivasjon. Når motivasjon står så sentralt i verdiskapningsprosessene til slike arbeidstakere, skulle vi vente at den forskningsbaserte kunnskapen om slike forhold var omfattende og velutviklet. I denne artikkelen vises det at så ikke er tilfelle, men at det finnes lite forskning på dette feltet. Denne mangelen på basiskunnskap om motivasjon har ikke hindret ledelsesforskere i å formulere prinsipper for organisering og ledelse av slike arbeidstakere. Disse er imidlertid svakt funderte og mer kunnskap om motivasjon er nødvendig om en skal komme videre i utviklingen av mer sofistikerte, realistiske og effektive konsepter for ledelse i denne sektoren

Knowledge Workers: How Are They Different? (And Why Does It Matter?)

In this study, we integrate research in educational psychology, a field that partly has focused on the global effects of higher education on individuals to conceptualize and test a model that explains how knowledge workers can be thought to differ from other groups of workers. Conceptualizing a common constellation of personality dispositions associated with knowledge workers (i.e., ambiguity tolerance, need for closure, dogmatism, authoritarianism, and cognitive ability), we propose multiple outcome pathways by which individual-level education affects the five personality traits under study. Based on a nest5ed sample of 351 employees across 54 workgroups, the results were consistent with our predictions

Determinants of Preferences for Suppliers in an Industrial Value System: An Interactionist Perspective

In this paper, we use an interactionist perspective to study inter-industry variation in buying behavior. We argue that individual purchasers’ preferences for suppliers depend on three broad classes of variables: (1) The structure of the value chain stage in which the firm competes, (2) the firm’s competitive strategy and (3) individual level work experience from the fisheries and other sectors. Structure is related to preferences because a highly transparent market with many homogeneous suppliers forces buyers to emphasize prize over other supplier selection criteria. Competitive strategy is believed to exert influence on preferences because strategy defines areas in which the firm has to outperform its competitors. As competitive advantage partly stems from an adaptation of suppliers, strategically important areas translate into criteria for supplier selection. A purchaser’s experience from work within or outside this sector is partly stored as cognitive structures that are used for making decisions and interpretation of information in complex and ambiguous environments. Present use of criteria for selecting suppliers, thus, partly reflects such experiences, in particular what has led to goal achievement in the past. A set of supplier selection criteria was identified based on a literature review and a qualitative prestudy. A set of theory-driven hypotheses are tested using data from a sample of respondents from UK, Spain and France (n = 99). Data were obtained from both traditional coast based importers-wholesalers and regionally based wholesalers. A conjoint approach was used in order to measure relative importance of supplier selection criteria at the individual purchaser level. Substantial support was found for a relationship between the three sets of variables and perceived relative importance of supplier selection criteria

The causal effects of referential vs ideological justification of change

Purpose: This paper details an experimental study (n=197) that explores how different types of managerial change justifications affect employees’ reactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of managerial justification of a controversial decision in referential terms, ideological terms or a combination of the two. Design/methodology/approach: A randomized controlled experiment was used applying case-based video clips to ensure vividness and realism in the experimental manipulation. Findings: The results show that referential justification caused a drop in the perceived trustworthiness of management, such that it reduced employees’ perceptions of the manager’s integrity. The effect was most pronounced in participants having elevated levels of dispositional resistance to change. The drop in perceived integrity was indirectly associated with reduced intention to support the change together with adverse affective and cognitive reactions to change. Originality/value: A robust test of different change justifications in a randomized, controlled setting, which also highlights the psychological mechanisms through which referential change justifications reduce follower trust. This result should help managers more readily understand the components of successful communication in organizational change

Can mindfulness be helpful in team decision-making? A framework for understanding how to mitigate false consensus

Mindfulness has recently attracted a great deal of interest in the field of management. However, even though mindfulness - broadly viewed as a state of active awareness - has been described mainly at the individual level, it may also have important effects at aggregated levels. In this article, we adopt a team-based conceptualization of mindfulness, and develop a framework that represents the powerful effect of team mindfulness on facilitating effective decision-making. We further discuss how a conceptualization of team mindfulness may mitigate the process of false consensus by interacting positively with the following five central team processes: open-mindedness, participation, empowerment, conflict management, and value and ambiguity tolerance. A false consensus constitutes a cognitive bias, leading to the perception of a consensus that does not exist. In essence, we argue that, although a conceptualization of team mindfulness does not guarantee effective decision-making in itself, it may successfully reduce false consensus when coupled with these five team processes. Accordingly, this article contributes to the theory and practice of team decision-making by demonstrating how a conceptualization of team mindfulness can be helpful in the increasingly complex and ambiguous situations faced by contemporary teams

The production of trust during organizational change

This paper investigates the relationships between organizational change and trust in management. It is argued that organizational change represents a critical episode for the production and destruction of trust in management. Although trust in management is seen as a semi stable psychological state, changes in organizations make trust issues salient and organizational members attend to and process trust relevant information resulting in a reassessment of their trust in management. The direction and magnitude of change in trust is dependent on a set of change dimensions that reflect trust relevant experiences and information. We distinguish between dimensions related to trust relevant consequences of the change and trust relevant aspects of how the change process is performed. Empirical results indicate that increases in post change emotional stress and the use of referential accounts for justifying change are both negatively related to post change trust in management. The use of ideological accounts and participation were found to be positively related to post change trust in management, so was perceived decision quality. Findings also indicate that the effects of change on trust are negatively moderated by tenure