Employees' self-esteem in psychological contract: workplace ostracism and counterproductive behavior

Purpose: Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) has grown into a significant problem in the tourism industry, for both individual employees and organizations. Employees who feel ostracized in their workplace often engage in negative and disruptive behaviors. The purpose of this study is to explore the psychological mechanism between workplace ostracism and CWB among tourism employees. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on psychological contract theory and social cognitive theory, the study proposed a research framework to explain tourism employees' counterproductive behavior. Data were collected from 228 hotel employees at two time points in Huangshan, China. Hierarchical regression and SPSS-PROCESS Macro were used to test all the hypotheses. Findings: Findings show that workplace ostracism significantly increases employee CWB, mediated by psychological contract violation. Workplace ostracism increases perceptions of psychological contract violation when employee self-esteem is higher. The mediating effect of psychological contract violation is also moderated by self-esteem. Orginality/value: Using the framework of psychological contract theory and social cognitive theory, the authors advance the organizational behavior literature in the tourism field. The authors contextualize the uniqueness of Chinese workplace behavior and highlight the need to understand "losing face (mianzi) view" in workplace relationships. This research contributes to better understanding the dark side of tourism workplace behavior by examining the effects of psychological contract violation and employee's self-esteem on workplace ostracism and CWB

A Process Model of Effective Improvisation: Lessons from Tencent’s Product Development

Research on organizational improvisation has gained much momentum in information systems development literature. Although recent studies have started to explore how to conduct improvisation effectively and generated rich findings on the antecedents, the process of effective improvisation remains unknown and the lack of knowledge in this area may account for the difficulties faced by many IS practitioners in engaging in effective improvisation. Based on a case study on Tencent’s software product development, we derive a four-phase process model of effective improvisation, which is a continuous iteration between improvisational search and build. The former consists of simultaneous grounded observation and situated reflection. The latter consists of simultaneous grounded design and situated execution. The findings contribute to both the IS and improvisation literature, and transform into practical implications for IS managers, who are increasing relying on real-time planning and spontaneous execution

A New Polymer-Based Mechanical Metamaterial with Tailorable Large Negative Poisson’s Ratios

Mechanical metamaterials have attracted significant attention due to their programmable internal structure and extraordinary mechanical properties. However, most of them are still in their prototype stage without direct applications. This research developed an easy-to-use mechanical metamaterial with tailorable large negative Poisson’s ratios. This metamaterial was microstructural, with cylindrical-shell-based units and was manufactured by the 3D-printing technique. It was found numerically that the present metamaterial could achieve large negative Poisson’s ratios up to −1.618 under uniaxial tension and −1.657 under uniaxial compression, and the results of the following verification tests agreed with simulation findings. Moreover, stress concentration in this new metamaterial is much smaller than that in most of existing re-entrance metamaterials

The relationships between job insecurity, psychological contract breach and counterproductive workplace behavior: does employment status matter?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of psychological contract breach on the relationship between job insecurity and counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB) and the moderating effect of employment status in this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 212 supervisor–subordinate dyads in a large Chinese state-owned air transportation group. AMOS 17.0 software was used to examine the hypothesized predictions and the theoretical model. Findings – The results showed that psychological contract breach partially mediates the effect of job insecurity on CWB, including organizational counterproductive workplace behavior and interpersonal counterproductive workplace behavior. In addition, the relationships between job insecurity, psychological contract breach and CWB differ significantly between permanent workers and contract workers. Originality/value – The present study provides a new insight into explaining the linkage between job insecurity and negative work behaviors as well as suggestions to managers on minimizing the harmful effects of job insecurity

The Effect of Job Security on Deviant Behaviors in Diverse Employment Workplaces: From the Social Identity Perspective

Organizational scholars concur that job security can attach employees to a workplace and improve their job quality. The relationship between job security and employees’ deviant behaviors in the workplace, such as counterproductive work behavior (CWB), lacks insights into how or why this occurs, especially in a diversified employment context. To address these limitations, we developed a theoretical model of job security impact on employees’ CWB from the perspective of social identity. Analysis of employees (N = 208) and their supervisors in a China state-owned company were used to test the hypothesis. Results confirmed the negative relationship between job security and CWB; organizational identification partly mediates the relationship between job security and CWB. Moderated mediation analyses further indicate that the indirect effect of job security on CWB via organizational identification are stronger for temporary employees than for permanent employees. This article contributes to the understanding of job security’s impact on employees’ deviant behavior, practical implications and research aspects are discussed

The Bias in PPP-B2b Real-Time Clock Offset and the Strategy to Reduce It

Precise point positioning can provide accurate coordinates to users without reference stations, and the high-precision real-time clock offset product is necessary for real-time precise point positioning application. As an integral part of the third generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, Precision Point Positioning Service provides dual systems (BDS-3 and GPS) real-time PPP services with centimeter- and decimeter-level accuracy for static and kinematic positioning users around China, respectively. However, there exist inconsistent biases in the clock offset of Precision Point Positioning Service, which will negatively affect the positioning and timing performance of the service. By comparing with the post-processing clock offset, this paper verifies that the broadcast clock offset has smaller and more stable biases in the long term and proposes a regional clock offset estimation strategy using broadcast clock offset for a priori constraint. The results show that the new algorithm can effectively reduce the bias in PPP-B2b clock offset. The new clock offset product could improve convergence speed by 25% and 10% in the horizontal and vertical directions. For positioning accuracy, the improvement is 22% and 17%. The absolute error of timing can also be reduced by 60%

The Bias in PPP-B2b Real-Time Clock Offset and the Strategy to Reduce It

Precise point positioning can provide accurate coordinates to users without reference stations, and the high-precision real-time clock offset product is necessary for real-time precise point positioning application. As an integral part of the third generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, Precision Point Positioning Service provides dual systems (BDS-3 and GPS) real-time PPP services with centimeter- and decimeter-level accuracy for static and kinematic positioning users around China, respectively. However, there exist inconsistent biases in the clock offset of Precision Point Positioning Service, which will negatively affect the positioning and timing performance of the service. By comparing with the post-processing clock offset, this paper verifies that the broadcast clock offset has smaller and more stable biases in the long term and proposes a regional clock offset estimation strategy using broadcast clock offset for a priori constraint. The results show that the new algorithm can effectively reduce the bias in PPP-B2b clock offset. The new clock offset product could improve convergence speed by 25% and 10% in the horizontal and vertical directions. For positioning accuracy, the improvement is 22% and 17%. The absolute error of timing can also be reduced by 60%

Orbit determination and prediction for Beidou GEO satellites at the time of the spring/autumn equinox

Geostationary (GEO) satellites form an indispensable component of the constellation of Beidou navigation system (BDS). The ephemerides, or predicted orbits of these GEO satellites(GEOs), are broadcast to positioning, navigation, and timing users. User equivalent ranging error (UERE) based on broadcast message is better than 1.5 m (root formal errors: RMS) for GEO satellites. However, monitoring of UERE indicates that the orbital prediction precision is significantly degraded when the Sun is close to the Earth's equatorial plane (or near spring or autumn Equinox). Error source analysis shows that the complicated solar radiation pressure on satellite buses and the simple box-wing model maybe the major contributor to the deterioration of orbital precision. With the aid of BDS' two-way frequency and time transfer between the GEOs and Beidou time (BDT, that is maintained at the master control station), we propose a new orbit determination strategy, namely three-step approach of the multi-satellite precise orbit determination (MPOD). Pseudo-range (carrier phase) data are transformed to geometric range (biased geometric range) data without clock offsets; and reasonable empirical acceleration parameters are estimated along with orbital elements to account for the error in solar radiation pressure modeling. Experiments with Beidou data show that using the proposed approach, the GEOs' UERE when near the autumn Equinox of 2012 can be improved to 1.3 m from 2.5 m (RMS), and the probability of user equivalent range error (UERE)<2.0 m can be improved from 50% to above 85%