Knowledge that Transforms

Dynamic predictors of job-search intensity over time are examined in a large 10-wave longitudinal study of unemployed individuals. Two sets of variables relevant to the examination of job search from a dynamic, self-regulatory perspective--core self-evaluations (T. A. Judge, A. Erez, & J. E. Bono, 1998) and the theory of planned behavior (I. Ajzen, 1991)--were used to guide our examination. Results suggest core self-evaluation is related to average levels of job-search intensity over time. Job-search intentions mediated the relationship between subjective norms and job-search self-efficacy in the prediction of job-search intensity in the following 2 weeks. Both Time 1 and cumulative job-search intensity predict reemployment. This repeated-measures study contributes to research on job search that has been primarily cross-sectional or included few time waves.

Halfway through a 3-hour experiment in which 64 3-person teams needed to make a series of decisions, a communications channel began to deteriorate, and teams needed to adapt their system of roles in order to perform effectively. Consistent with previous research, team composition with respect to members' cognitive ability was positively associated with adaptation. Adaptation was also influenced by interactions of team goal difficulty and team composition with respect to team members' goal orientation. Teams with difficult goals and staffed with high-performance orientation members were especially unlikely to adapt. Teams with difficult goals and staffed with high-learning orientation members were especially likely to adapt. Supplemental analyses provided insight into the observed effects in that the difficulty of team goals and members' goal orientation predicted interpersonal, transition, and action processes, all of which predicted team adaptation.

Workforce population trends have increased the numbers and kinds of culturally diverse people who work together. Researchers in organizational behavior have often examined culture through values; however, cultural values can be based on collections of people other than traditional nation states. A cultural mosaic is presented as a framework to identify demographic, geographic, and associative features underlying culture. An individual's unique collage of multiple cultural identities yields a complex picture of the cultural influences on that person. Developments in chaos and complexity theories are proposed as a theoretical base for study on the complexity of culture at the individual level. Additional developments in network theory serve as a theoretical base for cultural research at the group level. The cultural mosaic is described as a complex system with localized structures, linking cultural tiles in ordered and chaotic ways. Research propositions examining multiple cultural identities at individual and group levels are discussed.

The authors examined how networks of teams integrate their efforts to succeed collectively. They proposed that integration processes used to align efforts among multiple teams are important predictors of multiteam performance. The authors used a multiteam system (MTS) simulation to assess how both cross-team and within-team processes relate to MTS performance over multiple performance episodes that differed in terms of required interdependence levels. They found that cross-team processes predicted MTS performance beyond that accounted for by within-team processes. Further, cross-team processes were more important for MTS effectiveness when there were high cross-team interdependence demands as compared with situations in which teams could work more independently. Results are discussed in terms of extending theory and applications from teams to multiteam systems.

The authors examined the moderating effects of coping tactics on the relationship between negative emotion and work performance. Findings indicate an adverse effect of emotion on performance; however, this effect is moderated by coping tactics. Venting (expressing one's negative feelings to others) amplified the adverse effects of negative emotion. Self-control had mixed effects: On one hand, it buffered the adverse effects of negative emotion, yet on the other hand, it had a negative direct effect on outcomes. Task focus had a positive direct effect on performance but no buffering (moderating) effect. Implications of these findings for understanding the effects of negative emotion and coping in the workplace are discussed.

This study is an attempt to replicate and extend research on employment discrimination by A. P. Brief and colleagues (A. P. Brief, J. Dietz, R. R. Cohen, S. D. Pugh, & J. B. Vaslow, 2000). More specifically, the authors attempted (a) to constructively replicate the prior finding that an explicit measure of modern racism would interact with a corporate climate for racial bias to predict discrimination in a hiring context and (b) to extend this finding through the measurement of implicit racist attitudes and motivation to control prejudice. Although the authors were unable to replicate the earlier interaction, they did illustrate that implicit racist attitudes interacted with a climate for racial bias to predict discrimination. Further, results partially illustrate that motivation to control prejudice moderates the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes. Taken together, the findings illustrate the differences between implicit and explicit racial attitudes in predicting discriminatory behavior.

The authors examined whether commitment to emotional display rules is a necessary condition for emotional display rules to affect behavior at work. Results using structural equation modeling revealed that display rule commitment moderated the relationships of emotional display rule perceptions with surface acting, deep acting, and positive affective delivery at work, such that the relationships were strong and positive when commitment to display rules was high and weak when commitment to display rules was low. These findings suggest that motivation plays a role in the emotional labor process in that individuals must be committed to display rules for these rules to affect behavior.

In 3 experimental studies, the authors explored how ambiguity about the source of a successful joint performance outcome promotes attributional rationalization, negatively affecting evaluations of women. Participants read descriptions of a mixed-sex dyad's work and were asked to evaluate its male and female members. Results indicated that unless the ambiguity about individual contribution to the dyad's successful joint outcome was constrained by providing feedback about individual team member performance (Study 1) or by the way in which the task was said to have been structured (Study 2) or unless the negative expectations about women's performance were challenged by clear evidence of prior work competence (Study 3), female members were devalued as compared with their male counterparts-they were rated as being less competent, less influential, and less likely to have played a leadership role in work on the task. Implications of these results, both theoretical and practical, are discussed.

This article attends to a broad range of practically significant employee motivations and provides insight into how to enhance individual-level performance by examining individual-level state goal orientation emergence in organizational work groups. Leadership and multilevel climate processes are theorized to parallel each dimension of state goal orientation to cue and ultimately induce the corresponding achievement focus among individual work group members. It is argued that the patterns of leader behavior, which elucidate the leader's achievement priority, shape group members' psychological and work group climate to embody this priority. Resulting multilevel climate perceptions signal and compel group members to adopt the ascribed form of state goal orientation. The quality of the leader-member exchange relationship is viewed as a means to clarify leader messages in the formation of group members' psychological climate and internalize these cues in the emergence of state goal orientation. Considerations for future research and practice are discussed.

The claim that appropriate after-event review might decrease the relative advantage of drawing lessons from failures over drawing lessons from successes was examined in a quasi-field experiment. The results show that performance of soldiers doing successive navigation exercises improved significantly when they were debriefed on their failures and successes after each training day, compared with others who reviewed their failed events only. The findings also show that, before the manipulation, in both groups, learners' mental models of failed events were richer in constructs and links than were their mental models of successful events. This gap closed gradually in subsequent measurements.