The Interaction between Personality, Social Network Position and Involvement in Innovation Process

Abstract This dissertation proposal investigates how personality and individuals’ social network position affect individuals’ involvement into the innovation process. It posits that people would feel inclined to become involved into the different phases of the innovation process depending on their Big Five personality traits. Additionally, this research elaborates on personality antecedents of social relationships and network structure. Furthermore, it accounts for the dynamic relationship between stages in innovation process and social network structure. Finally, it posits that there is potentially a mismatch between social network structure in different stages of the innovation process, and that this mismatch is caused by individuals’ personality. The suggested conceptual framework contributes to the innovation literature by enriching our understanding of why people create markedly different patterns of social ties in the workplace and how this tie formation process and personality influence innovation process. An empirical study aimed at testing the suggested propositions is suggested

Beyond the three-component model of organizational commitment

This article offers a conceptual critique of the three-component model (TCM) of organizational commitment (Allen & Meyer, 1990) and proposes a reconceptualization based on standard attitude theory. The authors use the attitude-behavior model by Eagly and Chaiken (1993) to demonstrate that the TCM combines fundamentally different attitudinal phenomena. They argue that general organizational commitment can best be understood as an attitude regarding the organization, while normative and continuance commitment are attitudes regarding specific forms of behavior (i.e., staying or leaving). The conceptual analysis shows that the TCM fails to qualify as general model of organizational commitment but instead represents a specific model for predicting turnover. The authors suggest that the use of the TCM be restricted to this purpose and that Eagly and Chaiken's model be adopted as a generic commitment model template from which a range of models for predicting specific organizational behaviors can be extracted. Finally, they discuss the definition and measurement of the organizational commitment attitude. Covering the affective, cognitive, and behavioral facets of this attitude helps to enhance construct validity and to differentiate the construct from other constructs

Generic and Specific Social Learning Mechanisms in Foreign Entry Location Choice

We combine economic and institutional theories of clustering in foreign entry location choice in an overarching social learning conceptualization. Prospective entrants learn about the attractiveness of alternative locations by observing the entry choices of previous investors ('models'). We distinguish two types of learning that differ in observational focus width but can and do operate simultaneously. With assessment learning, firms judge the economic feasibility and agglomeration benefits of entering a location by observing and following a broad set of models. With bandwagon learning, firm-level uncertainty narrows attention to, and prompts the following of, specific models, with recentness of model behavior an important moderator. We find broad support for our conceptualization in an analysis of the entries of 692 Japanese electronics firms into Chinese provinces during 1979-2001

When do procedural fairness and outcome fairness interact to influence employees' work attitudes and behaviors? The moderation effect of uncertainty.

Prior research has shown that procedural fairness interacts with outcome fairness to influence employees¿ work attitudes (e.g., organizational commitment) and behaviors (e.g., job performance, organizational citizenship behavior), such that employees¿ tendencies to respond more positively to higher procedural fairness are stronger when outcome fairness is relatively low. In the present studies, we posited that people¿s uncertainty about their standing as organizational members would have a moderating influence on this interactive relationship between procedural fairness and outcome fairness, in that the interactive relationship was expected to be more pronounced when uncertainty was high. Using different operationalizations of uncertainty of standing (i.e., length of tenure as a proxy, along with self-reports and coworkers¿ reports), we found support for this hypothesis in 4 field studies spanning 3 different countries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved