When Job Performance is All Relative: How Family Motivation Energizes Effort and Compensates for Intrinsic Motivation

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Academy of Management via the DOI in this record.Supporting one’s family is a major reason why many people work, yet surprisingly little research has examined the implications of family motivation. Drawing on theories of prosocial motivation and action identification, we propose that family motivation increases job performance by enhancing energy and reducing stress, and it is especially important when intrinsic motivation is lacking. Survey and diary data collected across multiple time points in a Mexican maquiladora generally support our model. Specifically, we find that family motivation enhances job performance when intrinsic motivation is low—in part by providing energy, but not by reducing stress. We conclude that supporting a family provides a powerful source of motivation that can boost performance in the workplace, offering meaningful implications for research on motivation and the dynamics of work and family engagement

Group emotions: Cutting the Gordian knots concerning terms, levels-of-analysis, and processes

Research has established that groups are pervaded by feelings. But group emotion research within organizational science has suffered in recent years from a lack of terminological clarity, from a narrow focus on small groups, and from an overemphasis on micro-processes of emotion transmission. We address those problems by reviewing and systematically integrating relevant work conducted not only in organizational science, but also in psychology and sociology. We offer a definition of group emotions and sort the conceptual space along four dimensions: group emotion responses, recognition, regulation, and reiteration. We provide evidence that group emotions occur at all levels of analysis, including levels beyond small work groups. The accounts of group emotion emergence at higher levels of analysis differ substantially between organizational science, psychology and sociology. We review these accounts – emergence through inclination, interaction, institutionalization, or identification – and then synthesize them into one parsimonious model. The consequences of different group emotions are reviewed and further constructs (including emotional aperture, group emotional intelligence, emotional culture and emotional climate) are discussed. We end with a call for future research on several neglected group emotion topics including the study of discrete shared emotions, emotions at multiple levels, the effects of social network patterns, and effects on group functioning

Group Emotions: Cutting the Gordion Knots Concerning Terms, Levels-of-Analysis, and Processes

Research has established that groups are pervaded by feelings. But group emotion research within organizational science has suffered in recent years from a lack of terminological clarity, from a narrow focus on small groups, and from an overemphasis on micro-processes of emotion transmission. We address those problems by reviewing and systematically integrating relevant work conducted not only in organizational science, but also in psychology and sociology. We offer a definition of group emotions and sort the conceptual space along four dimensions: group emotion responses, recognition, regulation, and reiteration. We provide evidence that group emotions occur at all levels of analysis, including levels beyond small work groups. The accounts of group emotion emergence at higher levels of analysis differ substantially between organizational science, psychology and sociology. We review these accounts – emergence through inclination, interaction, institutionalization, or identification – and then synthesize them into one parsimonious model. The consequences of different group emotions are reviewed and further constructs (including emotional aperture, group emotional intelligence, emotional culture and emotional climate) are discussed. We end with a call for future research on several neglected group emotion topics including the study of discrete shared emotions, emotions at multiple levels, the effects of social network patterns, and effects on group functioning

The micro foundations of organizational social networks: A review and an agenda for future research.

This paper focuses on an emergent debate about the micro-foundations of organizational social networks. We consider three theoretical positions: an individual agency perspective suggesting that people, through their individual characteristics and cognitions, shape networks; a network patterning perspective suggesting that networks, through their structural configuration, form people; and a co-evolution perspective suggesting that people in their idiosyncrasies and networks in their differentiated structures co-evolve. We come to the conclusion that individual attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes cannot be fully understood without considering the structuring of organizational contexts in which people are embedded, and that social network structuring and change in organizations cannot be fully understood without considering the psychology of purposive individuals. To guide future research, we identify key questions from each of the three theoretical perspectives and, particularly, encourage more research on how individual actions and network structure co-evolve in a dynamic process of reciprocal influence

Predicting individual-level income from Facebook profiles

Information about a person's income can be useful in several business-related contexts, such as personalized advertising or salary negotiations. However, many people consider this information private and are reluctant to share it. In this paper, we show that income is predictable from the digital footprints people leave on Facebook. Applying an established machine learning method to an income-representative sample of 2,623 U.S. Americans, we found that (i) Facebook Likes and Status Updates alone predicted a person's income with an accuracy of up to r = 0.43, and (ii) Facebook Likes and Status Updates added incremental predictive power above and beyond a range of socio-demographic variables (ΔR2 = 6-16%, with a correlation of up to r = 0.49). Our findings highlight both opportunities for businesses and legitimate privacy concerns that such prediction models pose to individuals and society when applied without individual consent

The paradox of agency: feeling powerful reduces brokerage opportunity recognition yet increases willingness to broker

Research suggests positions of brokerage in organizational networks provide many benefits, but studies tend to assume everyone is equally able to perceive and willing to act on brokerage opportunities. Here we challenge these assumptions in a direct investigation of whether people can perceive brokerage opportunities and are willing to broker. We propose that the psychological experience of power diminishes individuals’ ability to perceive opportunities to broker between people who are not directly connected in their networks, yet enhances their willingness to broker. In Study 1, we find that employees in a marketing and media agency who had a high sense of power were likely to see fewer brokerage opportunities in their advice networks. In Study 2, we provide causal evidence for this claim in an experiment where the psychological experience of power is manipulated. Those who felt powerful, relative to those who felt little power, tended to see fewer brokerage opportunities than actually existed, yet were more willing to broker, irrespective of whether there was a brokerage opportunity present. Collectively, these findings present a paradox of agency: Individuals who experience power are likely to underperceive the very brokerage opportunities for which their sense of agency is suited. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved

It Works Without Words: A Nonlinguistic Ability Test of Perceiving Emotions with Job-Related Consequences

This is the final version. Available on open access from Hogrefe via the DOI in this recordEmotion recognition ability of emotions expressed by other people (ERA-O) can be important for job performance, leadership, bargaining, and career success. Traditional personnel assessment tools of this ability, however, are contaminated by linguistic skills. In a time of global work migration, more and more people speak a language at work that is not their mother tongue. Consequently, we developed and validated the Face-Based Emotion Matching Test (FEMT), a nonlinguistic objective test of ERA-O in gainfully employed adults. We demonstrate the FEMT’s validity with psychological constructs (cognitive and emotional intelligence, Big Five personality traits) and its criterion validity and interethnic fit

Highly engaged but burned-out: intra-individual profiles in the US workforce

Purpose: This study used the job demands-resources model to investigate intraindividual engagement–burnout profiles, and demands–resources profiles. Methodology: A representative sample of the U.S. workforce was surveyed online. Latent profile analysis (LPA) and configural frequency analysis examined intra-individual profiles and their inter-relations. Findings: A negative inter-individual correlation between engagement and burnout suggested that burnout tends to be lower when engagement is high, but intra-individual analyses identified both aligned engagement–burnout profiles (high, moderate, and low on both variables), and discrepant profiles (high engagement–low burnout; high burnout–low engagement). High engagement and burnout co-occurred in 18.8% of workers. These workers reported strong mixed (positive and negative) emotions and intended to leave their organization. Another LPA identified three demands–resources profiles: (1) low demands–low resources, but moderate self-efficacy, (2) low workload and bureaucracy demands but moderate information processing demands–high resources, and (3) high demands–high resources. Workers with high engagement–high burnout profiles often reported high demands– high resources profiles. In contrast, workers with high engagement–low burnout profiles often reported profiles of high resources, moderate information processing demands, and low other demands. Originality/value: This study examined the intersection of intra-individual engagement–burnout profiles and demands–resources profiles. Previous studies examined only one of these sides or relied on inter-individual analyses. Interestingly, many employees appear to be optimally engaged while they are burned-out and considering to leave their job

Temporal Dissection of K-rasG12D Mutant In Vitro and In Vivo Using a Regulatable K-rasG12D Mouse Allele

Animal models which allow the temporal regulation of gene activities are valuable for dissecting gene function in tumorigenesis. Here we have constructed a conditional inducible estrogen receptor-K-rasG12D (ER-K-rasG12D) knock-in mice allele that allows us to temporally switch on or off the activity of K-ras oncogenic mutant through tamoxifen administration. In vitro studies using mice embryonic fibroblast (MEF) showed that a dose of tamoxifen at 0.05 µM works optimally for activation of ER-K-rasG12D independent of the gender status. Furthermore, tamoxifen-inducible activation of K-rasG12D promotes cell proliferation, anchor-independent growth, transformation as well as invasion, potentially via activation of downstream MAPK pathway and cell cycle progression. Continuous activation of K-rasG12D in vivo by tamoxifen treatment is sufficient to drive the neoplastic transformation of normal lung epithelial cells in mice. Tamoxifen withdrawal after the tumor formation results in apoptosis and tumor regression in mouse lungs. Taken together, these data have convincingly demonstrated that K-ras mutant is essential for neoplastic transformation and this animal model may provide an ideal platform for further detailed characterization of the role of K-ras oncogenic mutant during different stages of lung tumorigenesis

PRL1 modulates root stem cell niche activity and meristem size through WOX5 and PLTs in Arabidopsis

The stem cell niche in the root meristem maintains pluripotent stem cells to ensure a constant supply of cells for root growth. Despite extensive progress, the molecular mechanisms through which root stem cell fates and stem cell niche activity are determined remain largely unknown. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the Pleiotropic Regulatory Locus 1 (PRL1) encodes a WD40-repeat protein subunit of the spliceosome-activating Nineteen Complex (NTC) that plays a role in multiple stress, hormone and developmental signaling pathways. Here, we show that PRL1 is involved in the control of root meristem size and root stem cell niche activity. PRL1 is strongly expressed in the root meristem and its loss of function mutation results in disorganization of the quiescent center (QC), premature stem cell differentiation, aberrant cell division, and reduced root meristem size. Our genetic studies indicate that PRL1 is required for confined expression of the homeodomain transcription factor WOX5 in the QC and acts upstream of the transcription factor PLETHORA (PLT) in modulating stem cell niche activity and root meristem size. These findings define a role for PRL1 as an important determinant of PLT signaling that modulates maintenance of the stem cell niche and root meristem size