Mapping the Association of Emotional Contagion to Leaders, Colleagues, and Clients: Implications for Leadership

This article investigates emotional contagion in workplaces by proposing an expanded approach that simultaneously considers contagion both absorbed by (i.e., contagion absorbed) and issued toward (i.e., contagion infected) others, namely, within-individual bidirectional contagion. Furthermore, it explores the differential association of contagion to leaders, colleagues, and clients, namely, a holistic mapping. Participants (N = 694) from six organizations were asked how frequently they both absorbed and transmitted four basic emotions from or to others, and whether the emotional experience occurred with regard to their leaders, colleagues, and clients. The findings reveal that positive and negative emotions considered for within-individual bidirectional contagion were more frequently experienced with colleagues followed by clients, whereas leaders were the least associated with emotional contagion. The relevance of a holistic mapping of emotional contagion in work settings and its implications for leadership are discussed

Measurement invariance of cognitive and affective job insecurity: A cross-national study

Empirical evidence of established measurement invariance of job insecurity measures may enhance the practical utility of job insecurity as a valid predictor when utilised over different cross-national samples. This study investigated the measurement invariance of the nine-item versions of the Job Security Index (a measure of cognitive job insecurity) and the Job Security Satisfaction Scale (a measure of affective job insecurity), across four countries (i.e. the United States, N = 486; China, N = 629; Italy, N = 482 and South Africa, N = 345). Based on a novel bifactor-(S-1) model approach we found evidence for partial metric, partial scalar and partial strict invariance of our substantive bifactor-(S-1) structure. The results extend measurement invariance research on job insecurity with obvious pragmatic implications (e.g. scaling units, measurement bias over cross-national interpretations). Contribution: This research provides evidence to support the applied use of cross-national comparisons of job insecurity scores across the nationalities included in this study. Theoretically, this research advances the debate about the nature of the relationship between cognitive and affective job insecurity, suggesting that in this cross-national dataset, a model where cognitive job insecurity is specified as the reference domain outperforms a model where affective job insecurity is assigned this status. Practically, it demonstrates that it is sensible and necessary to differentiate between cognitive and affective job insecurity and include measures of both constructs in future research on the construct

Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice

La recensione commenta criticamente il testo in lingua inglese "Work motivation: History, theory, research, and practice", di Gary P. Latham e pubblicato nel 2007

Understanding the culture and climate underpinnings of organizational effectiveness.

It is widely recognized that organizational culture and climate play a central role in strategic choices made by the management that can result in competitive advantage (e.g., see Barney, 1986; Lim, 1995; Schein, 2004). It is therefore important to understand the dynamics of multilevel and cross-cultural factors that contribute to the emergence of strong culture and climate. While a good deal of attention has been paid to the role of leadership and managerial practices, researchers are increasingly developing more expanded and context related models of organizational effectiveness that create a unique gestalt for employees that specific organizational strategies are valued (e. g., see Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Trevino, 2010; Schneider, White, & Paul,1998). The objective of this symposium is to examine theoretical and empirical advances aimed at understanding the importance of dynamic internal (i.e., culture, climate, structure, strategic leadership, work practices) and external (i.e., regional characteristics; cross-cultural differences; market business) organizational factors, and their linkages in shaping organizational effectiveness. In the first presentation, Mark G. Ehrhart, Benjamin Schneider, and William S. Macey propose an advanced concept of strategic organizational climate that may offer organizations a useful perspective for the creation of competitive advantage. Drawing on Barney’s (1991) resource-based conception of competitive advantage, the authors demonstrate how strategic climate emerges via a host of practices that are bundled together in a coordinated mutually reinforcing ways. Ehrhart and his coauthors maintain that, in order to have strategic climate resulting in competitive advantage, the key attributes are: (a) value (i.e., strategic climates have strong relationships with their respective strategic outcomes, such as customer satisfaction, safety outcomes); (b) rarity (i.e., built through the particular balance of resources and the combination of multiple actions (multiple policies, practices, and procedures) that create a gestalt for employees that a particular strategy is valued by and a priority for management); (c) and inimitability (i.e., resulting from multiple factors that are difficult to mimic by competitors. Amy Y. Ou, Chad A. Hartnell, Angelo Kinicki, and Elizabeth Karam will present next, continuing the theme of organizational effectiveness. These authors propose an expanded model of the antecedents and outcomes of organizational culture designed to address tha lack of “linkage” research among multiple factors (Kish-Gephart, Harrison, & Trevino, 2010). Drawing upon literature on the relationship between culture and organizational performance (Lim, 1995; Siehl & Martin, 1990; Wilderom, Glunk, & Maslowski, 2000), the authors conducted a meta-analytic and holistic examination of a conceptual framework in which (1) senior leaders’ transformational leadership leads to both clan and market cultures, and (2) high-performance work practices mediate the relationship between organizational culture and organizational performance. The third presentation, by Daniel Denison and Katnerine Xin, enlarges the multilevel perspective on organizational effectiveness by shifting the investigation to a cross-national level; focusing on the relationship between culture and organizational successful outcomes in global markets. Their contribution highlights several new perspectives for application of theories of culture to Western (American, European) and Eastern (Chinese) organizations. Denison and Xin contrast the similarities and differences between these three sets of firms, and find that Eastern firms are far more influenced by their founders and their founding conditions, regional characteristics, the dynamics of their industry, and the strategic choices that they have made, hence contributing to understanding the unique cultural factors that are associated with their growing business influence. In the final presentation, Laura Petitta, Claudio Barbaranelli, and Tahira Probst address the relevance of capturing organizational culture complexity for effective managerial action and intervention. They present findings of a cross-cultural validation of a new combined typing and profiling measure of organizational culture, the Intensity & Strength Organizational Culture Questionnaire. This measure was developed in line with (a) Schein’s (1985) organizational culture theory; (b) Enriquez’s (1970) typology of organizational cultures; (c) Payne’s (2000) multidimensional model of cultural intensity and strength. Results support the validity and reliability of the ISOCQ, as well as the hypothesized invariance of the factorial structure across the Italian and United States samples. Furthermore, the different levels of intensity allow researchers and practitioners to determine the consistency between members’ actual behaviours and espoused values. Finally, because the ISOCQ appears to function equivalently across the two cultures, this allows for future investigations of relational equivalence in different national contexts and strengthens the generalizability of extant research findings. The symposium will conclude with a discussion led by Neal M. Ashkanasy from the University of Queensland, Australia. Dr. Ashkanasy is a renowned organizational culture and climate scholar and a co-editor of the first and second editions of Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate

Emotional contagion at work and organizational culture

Our symposium begins with a paper by Petitta that takes a very broad perspective, looking at eight dimensions of organizational culture that she believed would influence emotional contagion from both the receiver (i.e., individuals “catch” emotions from others) and the sender (i.e., individuals try to “infect” others with specific emotions) perspectives. Utilizing a sample of Italian hospital employees, Petitta demonstrates that aspects of the culture predict not only the emotions exchanged, but also the emotions received. For example, organizational cultures that were oriented towards exchange (i.e., openness between employees) positively predicted the level of sadness absorbed by others in addition to predicting joy, sadness, and fear issued towards others. Thus, culture can greatly influences the emotional exchange process

Job burnout, absenteeism, and extra role behaviors

The study aimed at (a) examining objective measures of both absenteeism and extra role behaviours as correlates of burnout, (b) investigating the three components of the most recent conceptualization of burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 1999) in a setting either than the health care services, namely a productive setting, and (c) assessing an integrated model that simultaneously considered self-efficacy, social support and work load as predictors of burnout, which in turn was positively associated with absenteeism and negatively associated to extra role behaviours. Results support a JD-R based approach to burnout development with regard to the investigation of both resources (social support) and demands (work load) in the aetiology of the syndrome. The current research rejected the alternative model (Hobfol & Shirom,1993; Bolino & Turnley, 2006) that included absence and extra role behaviours as a coping stage that predicts employees’ burnout, thus providing further support to the role of burnout components in explaining both positive (i.e., extra role behaviours) and negative (i.e., absenteeism) organizational outcomes. Furthermore, self-efficacious employees who better adjust to their work requirements are more likely to engage in extra-time, perform beyond the formal obligations, and less likely to withdraw from challenging work conditions. Recommendations to promote workplace health include guided mastery and coaching programs aimed at enhancing self-efficacy beliefs in mastering highly demanding job requirements that protect employees from burning out, thus increasing the likelihood of their engagement in extra-time dedication while containing the risk of absenteeism