Respect in Organizations: Feeling Valued as “We” and “Me”

Research suggests that organizational members highly prize respect but rarely report adequately receiving it. However, there is a lack of theory in organizational behavior regarding what respect actually is and why members prize it. We argue that there are two distinct types of respect: generalized respect is the sense that “we” are all valued in this organization, and particularized respect is the sense that the organization values “me” for particular attributes, behaviors, and achievements. We build a theoretical model of respect, positing antecedents of generalized respect from the sender’s perspective (prestige of social category, climate for generalized respect) and proposed criteria for the evaluation of particularized respect (role, organizational member, and character prototypicality), which is then enacted by the sender and perceived by the receiver. We also articulate how these two types of respect fulfill the receiver’s needs for belonging and status, which facilitates the self-related outcomes of organization-based self-esteem, organizational and role identification, and psychological safety. Finally, we consider generalized and personalized respect jointly and present four combinations of the two types of respect. We argue that the discrepancy between organizational members’ desired and received respect is partially attributable to the challenge of simultaneously enacting or receiving respect for both the “we” and the “me.

“I Identify with Her,” “I Identify with Him”: Unpacking the Dynamics of Personal Identification in Organizations

Despite recognizing the importance of personal identification in organizations, researchers have rarely explored its dynamics. We define personal identification as perceived oneness with another individual, where one defines oneself in terms of the other. While many scholars have found that personal identification is associated with helpful effects, others have found it harmful. To resolve this contradiction, we distinguish between three paths to personal identification—threat-focused, opportunity-focused, and closeness-focused paths—and articulate a model that includes each. We examine the contextual features, how individuals’ identities are constructed, and the likely outcomes that follow in the three paths. We conclude with a discussion of how the threat-, opportunity-, and closeness-focused personal identification processes potentially blend, as well as implications for future research and practice

Seeing More than Orange: Organizational Respect and Positive Identity Transformation in a Prison Context

This paper develops grounded theory on how receiving respect at work enables individuals to engage in positive identity transformation and the resulting personal and work-related outcomes. A company that employs inmates at a state prison to perform professional business-to-business marketing services provided a unique context for data collection. Our data indicate that inmates experienced respect in two distinct ways, generalized and particularized, which initiated an identity decoupling process that allowed them to distinguish between their inmate identity and their desired future selves and to construct transitional identities that facilitated positive change. The social context of the organization provided opportunities for personal and social identities to be claimed, respected, and granted, producing social validation and enabling individuals to feel secure in their transitional identities. We find that security in personal identities produces primarily performance-related outcomes, whereas security in the company identity produces primarily well-being-related outcomes. Further, these two types of security together foster an integration of seemingly incompatible identities—”identity holism”—as employees progress toward becoming their desired selves. Our work suggests that organizations can play a generative role in improving the lives of their members through respect-based processes

The Interface of Work to Family Conflict and Racioethnic Identification: An Analysis of Hispanic Business Professionals

This article examines work to family conflict for Hispanic Business Professionals with varied levels of Hispanic identity. Based on this study of 971 Hispanics from across the United States, results show that level of Hispanic identity moderates the relationship between work to family conflict and job satisfaction. The authors posit that identification with a culture of collectivism may attenuate the negative impact of work to family conflict on job satisfaction, enabling Hispanic professionals to view work as a way of supporting the family and contributing to the greater good of the groups to which they belong

Quitting the Boss? The Role of Manager Influence Tactics and Employee Emotional Engagement in Voluntary Turnover

Employees commonly cite their managers’ behavior as the primary reason for quitting their jobs. We sought to extend turnover research by investigating whether two commonly used influence tactics by managers affect their employees’ voluntary turnover and whether employees’ emotional engagement and job satisfaction mediate this relationship. We tested our hypotheses using survey data collected at two time points from a sample of financial services directors and objective lagged turnover data. Using multilevel path modeling, we found that managers’ use of pressure and inspirational appeals had opposite effects on employee voluntary turnover and that employees’ emotional engagement was a significant and unique mediating mechanism even when job satisfaction, the traditional attitudinal predictor of turnover, was also included in the path model. Our findings contribute to turnover research by demonstrating a relationship between specific managerial behaviors and employee turnover and shed light on a key mediating mechanism that explains these effects

Ambivalence in Organizations: A Multilevel Approach

The experience of simultaneously positive and negative orientations toward a person, goal, task, idea, and such appears to be quite common in organizations, but it is poorly understood. We develop a multilevel perspective on ambivalence in organizations that demonstrates how this phenomenon is integral to certain cognitive and emotional processes and important outcomes. Specifically, we discuss the organizational triggers of ambivalence and the cognitive and emotional mechanisms through which ambivalence diffuses between the individual and collective levels of analysis. We offer an integrative framework of major responses to highly intense ambivalence (avoidance, domination, compromise, and holism) that is applicable to actors at the individual and collective levels. The positive and negative outcomes associated with each response, and the conditions under which each is most effective, are explored. Although ambivalence is uncomfortable for actors, it has the potential to foster growth in the actor as well as highly adaptive and effective behavior