Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe purpose of this dissertation is to introduce a new aspect of employee voice, namely voice contagion. Voice contagion is a process in which employee voice spreads from a speaker to his or her coworkers. While previous research has done much to elucidate the conditions necessary to enable employees to express voice and the affect such expressions can have on targets of voice, we know surprisingly little about how expressions of voice influence third-party observers. Drawing upon the findings of an inductive study conducted in the hospital setting and previous research on employee voice and behavioral contagion, I develop a grounded model of the voice contagion process. I then implement an experimental design to test one of the emergent voice contagion pathways. More specifically, I test for the influence a speaker’s social status has on observers’ voice behavior. I conclude the dissertation by discussing the theoretical contributions this research makes to the employee voice, social influence, and citizenship behavior literatures, respectively

Creating Silence: How Managerial Narcissism Decreases Employee Voice

Narcissism in organizations is becoming increasingly prevalent, as evidenced by the growing number of CEOs that seek acclaim and dominance, often at the expense of others (Chatterjee, 2017). Narcissism is defined as “individuals for whom enhancing the positivity of the self (specifically, to achieve status and esteem) is overwhelmingly important” (Campbell, 2004), and most often wields a detrimental influence on organizations. In the management literature, efficacy is defined as “a person’s estimate that a given behavior will lead to certain outcomes” (Bandura, 1977), and employees who hold a stronger sense of personal self-efficacy will display more active efforts to improve their organization (Bandura, 1977). Using a sample of 257 full-time employees, we explore the relationship between narcissism and efficacy in terms of promotive voice, which is focused on proactively pointing out opportunities for improvement (Liang, 2012). Additionally, we explore how this relationship is altered by voice setting, seeing as how the social setting in which voice occurs can affect managerial reactions to it (Isaakyan, 2018). Results confirm our hypothesis that employee voice behavior will be negatively correlated to managerial narcissism, and this relationship is mediated by efficacy, and moderated by voice setting

Pivoting at the Midpoint: How Midpoint Course Adjustments Influence Student Engagement

In higher education, instructors must often pivot to new methods, approaches, and exercises to help students achieve learning objectives in a particular course. These course pivots can be challenging to navigate; however, they are often the difference between a successful course and an unsuccessful one. Research on the punctuated equilibrium model of group development provides important insights for instructors on managing and navigating course pivots. This article reviews research on midpoint transitions and discusses the benefits of implementing midpoint pivots. It then introduces an example of a midpoint course pivot: The Stop-Start-Continue exercise. It concludes with a discussion of the implications this exercise has for instructors and students alike

Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico)

Margarita de Sossa’s freedom journey was defiant and entrepreneurial. In her early twenties, still enslaved in Portugal, she took possession of her body; after refusing to endure her owner’s sexual demands, he sold her, and she was transported to Mexico. There, she purchased her freedom with money earned as a healer and then conducted an enviable business as an innkeeper. Sossa’s biography provides striking insights into how she conceptualized freedom in terms that included – but was not limited to – legal manumission. Her transatlantic biography offers a rare insight into the life of a free black woman (and former slave) in late sixteenth-century Puebla, who sought to establish various degrees of freedom for herself. Whether she was refusing to acquiesce to an abusive owner, embracing entrepreneurship, marrying, purchasing her own slave property, or later using the courts to petition for divorce. Sossa continued to advocate on her own behalf. Her biography shows that obtaining legal manumission was not always equivalent to independence and autonomy, particularly if married to an abusive husband, or if financial successes inspired the envy of neighbors

Different Drivers: Exploring employee involvement in corporate philanthropy

Corporate Philanthropy (CP) is multi-dimensional, differs between sectors and involves both individual and organizational decision-making to achieve business and social goals. However, the CP literature characteristically focuses on strategic decisions made by business leaders and ignores the role of employees, especially those in lower status and lower paid positions. To redress this imbalance, we conducted a qualitative study of employees’ involvement in CP processes in ten workplaces in the South East of England to identify whether and how they are involved in CP decision-making and to capture their perspective on the nature of CP and the benefits generated by such activities. We specifically chose to study workplaces where employees are involved in the actual execution of the CP strategy, prioritising companies with a visible presence on the high street. The results illustrate the benefits of involving employees in CP decision-making, which we argue derives in part from the ‘liminal-like states’ that typify CP activities organised by shop floor staff, involving the temporary overturning of hierarchies, humanising of workplaces and opportunities for lower-level staff to prioritise their personal philanthropic preferences and signal their charitable identity to colleagues and customers. Whilst the data also suggests that CP decision-making remains predominantly top-down and driven by profit-oriented goals, we conclude that employees should be involved in choosing charitable causes as well as in designing and implementing workplace fundraising, in order to maximise the advantages of CP for the company and for wider society

Breaching Experiments: Crossing the Boundaries of the Classroom and the Real World

Instructors seeking to illustrate the everyday relevance of the topics they teach sometimes ask students to conduct breaching experiments in the campus or local community. Students are expected to tweak or flout social norms in public and report their own and observers\u27 responses. The archetypal example is facing the rear while riding an elevator. While breaching exercises provide an engaging educational experience, they do come with risks. Issues of privacy, anxiety, physical safety, and reputational damage are all concerns a faculty member must take into consideration. IRB-like protocols should be thought through and followed in an effort to retain the viability of such activities in the future. The risk analysis must encompass a broad range of stakeholders, from the student to the institution to the broader community. In this presentation, we will provide examples of breaching experiments we have used and give participants an opportunity to discuss their own breaching assignments. We will provide instructors a template for designing their own breaching assignments providing guidance for alignment with teaching goals, assignment instructions, evaluating results, and reducing risks

Meeting Load Paradox: Balancing the Benefits and Burdens of Work Meetings

Work meetings are a significant part of individuals’ professional lives and have increasingly become a vehicle for organizations to get work accomplished. Recently virtual meetings have become a more prominent feature of employees’ work lives, and scholarly attention to the changing nature of work meeting dynamics has increased in parallel. Not surprisingly, these circumstances have increased the number of meetings individuals participate in each day and the number of mediums through which these meetings occur. In this paper, we introduce the meeting load paradox: increasing the number of meetings employees participate in provides an important avenue for them to contribute more to their organizations while at the same time, consuming more of their personal resources. In this way, an increased meeting load is only effective up to a certain threshold. To demonstrate this empirically, we conducted a field study with 199 full time employees, providing initial evidence of one manifestation of the meeting load paradox—meeting participation, engagement, and creative performance increase as meeting load increases curvilinearly, creating an inverted-U-shaped effect. Furthermore, we find that a virtual medium increases the curvilinear effect while employee conscientiousness flattens the curvilinear effect. We discuss the important implications of these findings and ways employees and managers can navigate the meeting load paradox to ensure they can thrive amid the proliferation of workplace meetings