What Can You Expect? The Influence of Gender Diversity in Dyads on Work Goal Expectancies and Subsequent Work Commitment

In an experimental study (N = 60) we showed that gender differences play an important role in the extent to which people expect work goal differences between themselves and their collaborating partner. Participants who interact with a same-sex partner expect this person to pursue the same work goal as the self, whereas those who interact with an opposite-sex partner expect this person to have a different work goal to the self. When these expectancies were confirmed, participants felt relatively little disappointment, developed a clear image of their partner, and felt committed toward future collaboration. However, an expectancy violation caused participants to respond relatively negatively on these measures. These effects are discussed in relation to expectancy violation and congruence theory

FAR Research project:The effects of multiple team memberships on individual auditors’ performance

Auditing involves a process in which an engagement team, consisting of assistants, seniors, managers, and one or more audit partners, applies a series of sequentially performed procedures and decisions with the aim to collect sufficient competent evidence regarding the client's financial reporting process and financial statement assertions (e.g., Trotman, Bauer & Humphreys, 2015; Knechel, Vanstraelen & Zerni, 2015; Francis, 2011; Bik, 2010; Pierce & Sweeney, 2005). Teamwork, or how individuals within engagement teams carry out their work, is therefore of crucial importance for audit quality

Why and when female directors are less engaged in their board duties:An interface perspective

Female representation on boards is perhaps one of the most studied topics in board-governance research. At the same time, much is unknown about female directors' task engagement within boards. Drawing from psychological theory on societal gender beliefs, our study tests whether the impact of director gender on supervisory task engagement hinges on status dynamics in two relational interfaces: the director–board interface and the director–CEO interface. According to this perspective, female directors show less task engagement because gender is a diffuse status cue that creates status differentiation within the director–board interface. Multi-source board survey data (n = 61 boards, n = 315 directors) confirms that, within the confines of the boardroom, female directors do, indeed, receive lower-status ratings than male directors. This effect is weaker when boards have a female chair. Furthermore, lower status explains perceived lower task engagement of female directors, but this link critically hinges on the CEO–director interface. The impact of status differences is more pronounced when directors intersect with a relatively dominant CEO. All in all, the results demonstrate that relational interfaces play a key role for female directors’ task engagement in their board duties

Motives for Crafting Work and Leisure:Focus on Opportunities at Work and Psychological Needs as Drivers of Crafting Efforts

Employees of all ages can proactively shape their behavior to manage modern work–life challenges more effectively and this is known as crafting. Our goal is to better understand employees’ motives for engaging in crafting efforts in different life domains to fulfil their psychological needs. In a survey study with two measurement waves, we examined whether “focus on opportunities at work” (FoO)—the extent to which employees believe in new goals and opportunities in their occupational future—and psychological needs (i.e., approach and avoidance needs)—predicted crafting efforts at work and outside work (i.e., job and off-job crafting). Our hypotheses were largely confirmed in a study on 346 Finnish workers. Greater FoO led to greater approach needs (i.e., mastery, meaning, affiliation), which in turn explained higher engagement in both job and off-job crafting. Avoidance needs (i.e., detachment, relaxation) resulted in increased crafting efforts in both life domains directly. Our findings underline the importance of FoO for crafting efforts across life domains, and explain why this is the case (i.e., it activates approach-oriented psychological needs). By supporting workers in shifting their focus onto their future opportunities (regardless of their age), organizations can create environments conducive to crafting and ultimately sustainable work lives

Managing C-suite conflict:The unique impact of internal and external governance interfaces on top management team reflexivity

The ability of Top Management Teams (TMTs) to reflect critically on their own actions represents an important element of effective TMT decision making and governance effectiveness. This paper therefore examines how the TMT-board interface internal to the organization, as well as the TMT interface with the external supervisory authority, shape TMT reflexivity. Drawing from governance and psychological theories, we posit that cognitive conflict at the TMT-board interface can escalate by increasing levels of affective TMT-board conflict, and hereby, harm TMT reflexivity if not managed well. This proposition was tested in a multisource team-level data set collected in the field among TMTs (N = 111 TMT members) and their supervisory boards (N = 152 board members) of 56 Dutch insurance companies. The findings demonstrate that the link between cognitive and affective TMT-board conflict is mitigated by board membership influx. Yet in cases where conflict escalation does occur, its subsequent impact on TMT reflexivity hinges on the degree to which an external supervisory authority monitored TMT actions. The results illustrate that TMT decision making processes can be effectively influenced by internal and external TMT-governance interfaces, yet at different conflict stages, and through different governance actions

Reaching the Top but not Feeling on Top of the World:Examining Women’s Internalized Power Threats

More and more women are breaking the glass ceiling to obtain positions of power. Yet with this rise, some women experience threats to their power. Here we focus on women’s perceived threats to the stability of their power and the degree to which women feel they do not deserve their power positions, as reflected in their impostor feelings. The present research identifies key workplace characteristics that are associated with these internalized power threats with survey data collected among 185 women in high-power positions. We find that negative workplace experiences (i.e., gender discrimination, denigrating treatment, lack of cultural fit, and lack of mentoring) are associated with a greater sense of power threat, which in turn relates to adverse workplace outcomes (i.e., reduced job satisfaction and increased emotional exhaustion and opting-out intentions). With this unique sample of high-powered women, our findings help illustrate the forces that make women experience power as precarious, thereby shedding light on the disadvantages these women face. We provide suggestions on how to reduce women’s internalized power threats

Informal Hierarchy and Team Creativity:The Moderating Role of Empowering Leadership

Although there is growing evidence that strong informal influence hierarchies can enhance teams' core task performance, recent theorising suggests that such informal hierarchies may, at the same time, stifle team creativity. The current study draws from the Motivated Information Processing in Groups (MIP-G) model to empirically examine this latter notion. Moreover, we build on functional leadership theories to propose that the link between informal hierarchy strength and team creativity hinges on a formal team leader's empowering leadership. Using a sample of 56 organisational work teams comprising 304 individuals from a wide range of industries, we found that stronger informal influence hierarchies related negatively with team creativity when the formal leader exhibited little empowering behaviour. When the formal leader acted in more empowering ways, by contrast, this negative relationship was dampened. These findings provide new knowledge on the role of informal influence hierarchies for team creativity and advance our understanding of how informal hierarchical relations and formal leadership processes can jointly shape important team outcomes

Multiple team membership and job performance:The role of employees' information-sharing networks

Individuals in contemporary work organizations are often involved in multiple teams at the same time. This study uses a social capital perspective to propose that employees' multiple team memberships (MTM) offer the potential for individual performance benefitsanddetriments, depending on the characteristics of an employee's information-sharing network. To test our predictions, we gathered both archival and survey data at an organization for applied research in the Netherlands. We found that individual MTM was indirectly associated with an employee's overall job performance by increasing the size of his or her information-sharing network. As expected, however, this indirect relationship was contingent on the average strength of an employee's network ties (i.e., the frequency of the respective interactions), such that MTM only improved overall performance when network ties were relatively weak. The indirect relationship between MTM and individual job performance was negative, by contrast, when an employee's network ties were relatively strong. Together, these findings advance our understanding of the mechanisms and contingency factors that shape the performance consequences associated with individuals' concurrent membership in multiple teams. Practitioner points An employee's membership in multiple teams at the same time increases the size of his or her information-sharing network within the organization. The performance consequences associated with this increased information-sharing network hinge on the characteristics of an employee's information-sharing network. If the respective information-sharing linkages are based on relatively infrequent interactions with colleagues, an employee's multiple team membership indirectly benefits his or her overall job performance. If the respective information-sharing linkages are based on relatively frequent and intense interactions with colleagues, however, an employee's multiple team membership indirectly diminishes his or her overall job performance

The Effectiveness of a Hybrid Off-Job Crafting Intervention on Employees’ Psychological Needs Satisfaction and Well-Being

Off-job crafting entails deliberate changes people can make in their non-work activities to meet their personal goals and satisfy psychological needs. We conducted a quasi-experimental study with a waitlist control group in three organizations in Finland (N = 86) to evaluate whether participation in a hybrid off-job crafting intervention stimulates employees’ off-job crafting efforts and, in turn, enhances psychological need satisfaction, subjective vitality and work engagement. Intervention group participants took part in an off-job crafting workshop, set a personal crafting goal for the four-week intervention period, received support from a specifically designed smartphone app, and attended a reflection workshop. With a study design consisting of seven measurement occasions in the intervention group and four in the waitlist control group, we examined both the intra-individual and inter-individual effects of the intervention. Contrary to our expectations, intervention group participants did not improve in their off-job crafting efforts, needs satisfaction and well-being over time compared to their own baseline and the waitlist control group. We conducted a detailed process evaluation to shed light on the mechanisms possibly influencing the effectiveness of the intervention. Participants who made less progress with their goal, were less satisfied with the intervention, and participants who did not set a goal focusing on their least satisfied need, experienced a steeper decline in off-job crafting, needs satisfaction and well-being. Interestingly, setting a SMARTer goal and being a more active app user also had a negative effect on the development of one’s off-job crafting, needs satisfaction and well-being over time