Promises from afar: A model of international student psychological contract in business education

Despite their significant presence in western business schools, the needs and experiences of international students have not been adequately reflected in the business education literature. We draw upon psychological contract theory - used to understand e

Measuring Ward-Based Multidisciplinary Healthcare Team Functioning: A Validation Study of the Team Functioning Assessment Tool (TFAT)

The team functioning assessment tool (TFAT) has been shown to be a reliable behavioral marker tool for assessing nontechnical skills that are critical to the success of ward-based healthcare teams. This paper aims to refine and shorten the length of the TFAT to improve usability, and establish its reliability and construct validity. Psychometric testing based on 110 multidisciplinary healthcare teams demonstrated that the TFAT is a reliable and valid tool for measuring team members' nontechnical skills in regards to Clinical Planning, Executive Tasks, and Team Functioning. Providing support for concurrent validity, high TFAT ratings were predicted by low levels of organizational constraints and high levels of group potency. There was also partial support for the negative relationships between time pressure, leadership ambiguity, and TFAT ratings. The paper provides a discussion on the applicability of the tool for assessing multidisciplinary healthcare team functioning in the context of improving team effectiveness and patient safety for ward-based hospital teams

Does anger expression help or harm leader effectiveness? The role of competence-based versus integrity-based violations and abusive supervision

The question of how leaders’ expressions of anger influence their effectiveness has long intrigued researchers and practitioners. Drawing on emotions as social information theory, we suggest the effects of leaders’ expressions of anger depend on both the type of violation about which anger is expressed and the type of leader who expresses it. We test this in a series of studies using experimental and field methods. Study 1 shows that a leader’s anger expression in response to followers’ integrity-based violations enhances observers’ perceptions of leader effectiveness, whereas anger in response to followers’ competence-based violations diminishes observers’ perceptions of leader effectiveness. Study 2 shows that these divergent effects occur because anger in response to integrity-based violations elicits beneficial inferential reactions among followers who observed the anger, whereas anger in response to competence-based violations provokes harmful affective reactions. Study 3 demonstrates that the negative effects of anger expressed toward competence-based violations are exacerbated, and positive effects of anger expressed toward integrity-based violations weakened, when a leader is perceived as abusive. These findings help reconcile divergent perspectives on the effects of leader anger expression, suggesting that anger can enhance perceived leader effectiveness when expressed in the right situation and by the right person

Too many firms ignore their abusive boss problem

Some think that abuse and employee fear and silence are recipes for success, argue Christian Kiewitz, Simon Lloyd D. Restubog, Mindy Shoss, Patrick Raymund James M. Garcia and Robert L. Tan

Suffering in Silence: Investigating the Role of Fear in the Relationship Between Abusive Supervision and Defensive Silence

Drawing from an approach-avoidance perspective, we examine the relationships between subordinates’ perceptions of abusive supervision, fear, defensive silence, and ultimately abusive supervision at a later time point. We also account for the effects of subordinates’ assertiveness and individual perceptions of a climate of fear on these predicted mediated relationships. We test this moderated mediation model with data from three studies involving different sources collected across various measurement periods. Results corroborated our predictions by showing (a) a significant association between abusive supervision and subordinates’ fear, (b) second-stage moderation effects of subordinates’ assertiveness and their individual perceptions of a climate of fear in the abusive supervision–fear– defensive silence relationship (with lower assertiveness and higher levels of climate-of-fear perceptions exacerbating the detrimental effects of fear resulting from abusive supervision), and (c) first-stage moderation effects of subordinates’ assertiveness and climate-of-fear perceptions in a model linking fear to defensive silence and abusive supervision at a later time. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: A Functional-Identity Perspective

The impact of the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) on workers’ experiences remains underexamined. Although AI-enhanced processes can benefit workers (e.g., by assisting with exhausting or dangerous tasks), they can also elicit psychological harm (e.g., by causing job loss or degrading work quality). Given AI’s uniqueness among other technologies, resulting from its expanding capabilities and capacity for autonomous learning, we propose a functional-identity framework to examine AI’s effects on people’s work-related self-understandings and the social environment at work. We argue that the conditions for AI to either enhance or threaten workers’ sense of identity derived from their work depends on how the technology is functionally deployed (by complementing tasks, replacing tasks, and/or generating new tasks) and how it affects the social fabric of work. Also, how AI is implemented and the broader social-validation context play a role. We conclude by outlining future research directions and potential application of the proposed framework to organizational practice

Why do employees’ perceptions of their organization's change history matter? The role of change appraisals

In this article, we identify employees’ change history in an organization as a key antecedent of their appraisals about organizational change (i.e., threat, harm, and challenge). We argue that these change appraisals are associated with psychological contract violation, which in turn is associated with intentions to leave the organization, and, ultimately, with voluntary employee turnover. In 2009, we collected data over three measurement periods from 252 full-time, permanent employees from a manufacturing organization in the Philippines that was just about to undergo an organizational-wide restructuring. At Time 1 (T1, the change announcement), employees completed a survey assessing their change history in the organization and change appraisals. At Time 2 (T2, six months after the announcement), employees completed a survey assessing psychological contract violation and turnover intentions. Two years later (Time 3, T3), we collected data on voluntary employee turnover. Results suggest that a poor change history in an organization was negatively associated with challenge appraisals and was positively associated with threat and harm appraisals. Challenge and harm appraisals were significantly associated with psychological contract violation. These appraisals, in turn, were associated with turnover intentions and, ultimately, with voluntary employee turnover. In addition, T1 threat appraisals were directly positively associated with T3 voluntary turnover. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.This study was supported by an Australian Research Council Grant DP0984209 awarded to the authors

The Impact of Change Process and context on change Reactions and Turnover During a Merger

The authors examined relationships among two measures of the change process adopted by a firm and a measure of the change context and employees' reactions to a merger. A longitudinal study was conducted. An employee's perception that he or she had a poo