Knowledge that Transforms

We investigated the relationship between deep acting, automatic regulation and customer tips with 2 different study designs. The first study was a daily diary study using a sample of Dutch waiters and taxi-drivers and assessed the link of employees' daily self-reported levels of deep acting and automatic regulation with the amount of tips provided by customers (N = 166 measurement occasions nested in 34 persons). Whereas deep acting refers to deliberate attempts to modify felt emotions and involves conscious effort, automatic regulation refers to automated emotion regulatory processes that result in the natural experience of desired emotions and do not involve deliberate control and effort. Multilevel analyses revealed that both types of emotion regulation were positively associated with customer tips. The second study was an experimental field study using a sample of German hairdressers (N = 41). Emotion regulation in terms of both deep acting and automatic regulation was manipulated using a brief self-training intervention and daily instructions to use cognitive change and attentional deployment. Results revealed that participants in the intervention group received significantly more tips than participants in the control group.

Sleepiness, the biological drive to sleep, is an important construct for the organizational sciences. This physiological phenomenon has received very little attention in the organizational science literature in spite of the fact that it influences a wide variety of workplace behaviors. In this article, we develop a framework through which sleepiness can be fruitfully studied. We describe (a) what sleepiness is and how it can be differentiated conceptually from related concepts such as fatigue, (b) the physiological basis of sleepiness, (c) cognitive and affective mechanisms that transmit the effects of sleepiness, and (d) the behavioral manifestations of sleepiness in the workplace. We also describe (e) job demand characteristics that are antecedents of sleepiness and (f) individual differences that moderate the aforementioned relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record

Integrating leader-member exchange (LMX) research with role engagement theory (Kahn, 1990) and role system theory (Katz & Kahn, 1978), we propose a multilevel, dual process model to understand the mechanisms through which LMX quality at the individual level and LMX differentiation at the team level simultaneously affect individual and team performance. With regard to LMX differentiation, we introduce a new configural approach focusing on the pattern of LMX differentiation to complement the traditional approach focusing on the degree of LMX differentiation. Results based on multiphase, multisource data from 375 employees of 82 teams revealed that, at the individual level, LMX quality positively contributed to customer-rated employee performance through enhancing employee role engagement. At the team level, LMX differentiation exerted negative influence on teams' financial performance through disrupting team coordination. In particular, teams with the bimodal form of LMX configuration (i.e., teams that split into 2 LMX-based subgroups with comparable size) suffered most in team performance because they experienced greatest difficulty in coordinating members' activities. Furthermore, LMX differentiation strengthened the relationship between LMX quality and role engagement, and team coordination strengthened the relationship between role engagement and employee performance. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Daily emotional labor can impair psychological well-being, especially when emotions have to be displayed that are not truly felt. To explain these deleterious effects of emotional labor, scholars have theorized that emotional labor can put high demands on self-control and diminishes limited regulatory resources. On the basis of this notion, we examined 2 moderators of the daily emotional labor process, namely day-specific sleep quality and individual self-control capacity. In particular, in 2 diary studies (NTOTAL = 171), we tested whether sleep quality moderates the influence of emotional dissonance (the perceived discrepancy between felt and required emotions) on daily psychological well-being (ego depletion, need for recovery, and work engagement). In addition, we examined 3-way interactions of self-control capacity, sleep quality, and emotional dissonance on indicators of day-specific psychological well-being (Study 2). Our results indicate that the negative relations of day-specific emotional dissonance to all day-specific indicators of well-being are attenuated as a function of increasing day-specific sleep quality and that self-control capacity moderates this interaction. Specifically, compared with low self-control capacity, the day-specific interaction of emotional dissonance and sleep quality was more pronounced when trait self-control was high. For those with low trait self-control, day-specific sleep quality did not attenuate the negative relations of emotional dissonance to day-specific well-being. Implications for research on emotional labor and for intervention programs are discussed.

While making early career decisions in which pursuing what one loves and earning a secure living are at odds with one another, when and why will the intrinsic considerations prevail over the extrinsic considerations? We posit that a key factor in resolving this dilemma in favor of the intrinsic side of the career is the sense of calling, a consuming, meaningful passion people experience toward the domain. We test the connection between early callings (in adolescence) and later career pursuit (in adulthood) and the mediating role of perceived and actual abilities (in young adulthood) in a career context in which the intrinsic and extrinsic sides of a career can clash: the path to become a professional musician. In an 11-year 5-wave longitudinal study of 450 amateur high school musicians progressing from adolescence to adulthood, we found that regardless of their actual musical ability, people with stronger early callings were likely to perceive their abilities more favorably, which led them to pursue music professionally. Our findings thus indicate an intriguing pattern in which the experience of stronger early callings led to greater perceived ability that was not reflected in greater actual ability. Perceived ability, rather than objective ability as assessed by awards won in music competitions, led to subsequent career pursuit. We discuss implications for theory and research on the nature and consequences of calling, as well as for career decision making, both in general and in challenging career contexts in particular.

In this study, we investigated whether team-level knowledge sharing moderates the effects of individual-level expertise dissimilarity on individual employees' creativity in research and development (R&D) project teams. Expertise dissimilarity--defined as the difference in expertise and knowledge between a focal team member and her or his fellow team members--was operationalized in terms of the research department to which each member belonged. In Study 1, multilevel analyses of data collected from 200 members of 40 R&D project teams in a telecommunications company revealed that a team member with expertise dissimilar to that of her or his teammates was more likely to exhibit creativity when the project team as a whole engaged in higher levels of tacit, rather than explicit, knowledge sharing. In contrast, a member whose expertise was similar to that of her or his teammates was more likely to exhibit creative behavior when the team engaged in higher levels of explicit, rather than tacit, knowledge sharing. These findings were largely replicated in Study 2 using data collected from 82 members of 25 project teams from another telecommunications company.

Although justice scholars often assume that individuals react to injustice in a manner that is distinct from their reactions to justice, few studies have examined this assumption. Indeed, the most widely utilized measures in the literature assess only the adherence to rules of justice--not their violation. We conducted 2 studies to build and test theory about differential reactions to justice and injustice. An inductive study revealed that reactions to the adherence to justice rules reflected different constructs than reactions to the violations of justice rules. In a follow-up field study, we derived hypotheses for those patterns by drawing on the negativity bias and regulatory focus literatures. Specifically, justice rule violation was predicted to be more relevant to prevention-laden outcomes that represent a high level of vigilance and concerns about safety. Justice rule adherence was predicted to be more relevant to promotion-laden outcomes that represent concerns about becoming the ideal self. The field study supported many of those predictions while showing that a full-range justice measure (i.e., one that sampled both justice rule adherence and justice rule violation) explained more variance in outcomes than existing "truncated" justice measures.

Although past research has identified the effects of emotional intelligence on numerous employee outcomes, the relationship between emotional intelligence and creativity has not been well established. We draw upon affective information processing theory to explain how two facets of emotional intelligence-emotion regulation and emotion facilitation-shape employee creativity. Specifically, we propose that emotion regulation ability enables employees to maintain higher positive affect (PA) when faced with unique knowledge processing requirements, while emotion facilitation ability enables employees to use their PA to enhance their creativity. We find support for our hypotheses using a multimethod (ability test, experience sampling, survey) and multisource (archival, self-reported, supervisor-reported) research design of early career managers across a wide range of jobs.

This study theorized and examined the influence of the interaction between Service-Oriented high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and service leadership on collective customer knowledge and service climate. Using a sample of 569 employees and 142 managers in footwear retail stores, we found that Service-Oriented HPWSs and service leadership reduced the influences of one another on collective customer knowledge and service climate, such that the positive influence of service leadership on collective customer knowledge and service climate was stronger when Service-Oriented HPWSs were lower than when they were higher or the positive influence of Service-Oriented HPWSs on collective customer knowledge and service climate was stronger when service leadership was lower than when it was higher. We further proposed and found that collective customer knowledge and service climate were positively related to objective financial outcomes through service performance. Implications for the literature and managerial practices are discussed.

This article develops the argument that team-member exchange (TMX) relationships operate at both between- and within-group levels of analysis to influence an employee's sense of identification with coworkers in the group and their helping organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) directed at coworkers. Specifically, we propose that relatively higher quality TMX relationships of an employee as compared with other members of the group influence an employee's sense of positive uniqueness, whereas higher average level of TMX quality in the group creates a greater sense of belonging. Multilevel modeling analysis of field data from 236 bank managers and their subordinates supports the hypotheses and demonstrates 3 key findings. First, team members identify more with their coworkers when they have high relative TMX quality compared with other group members and are also embedded in groups with higher average TMX. Second, identification with coworkers is positively related to helping OCB directed toward team members. Finally, identification with coworkers mediates the interactive effect of relative TMX quality and group average TMX quality on helping. When TMX group relations allow individuals to feel a valued part of the group, but still unique, they engage in higher levels of helping. Overall moderated mediation analysis demonstrates that the mediated relationship linking relative TMX quality with helping OCB via identification with coworkers is stronger when group average TMX is high, but not present when group average TMX is low. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and recommend future research on multilevel conceptualizations of TMX.