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Does voice endorsement by supervisors enhance or constrain voicer’s personal initiative? Countervailing effects via feeling pride and feeling envied.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 open access
While the previous research has examined antecedents of supervisors' voice endorsement, it has generally overlooked its effects on voicers' affective and behavioral reactions, probably because of the underlying assumption that supervisors' voice endorsement is inherently beneficial and likely to encourage more proactive behaviors in the future. In this research, we offer a theoretical model of the double-edged effects of supervisors' voice endorsement on voicers' subsequent personal initiative. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory and related research, we proposed that supervisors' voice endorsement prompts two different cognitive appraisal processes in voicers that evoke two distinct emotional experiences-feeling pride and feeling envied-with countervailing effects on voicers' subsequent personal initiative. Specifically, voice endorsement results in voicers not only feeling pride, which enhances their subsequent personal initiative, but also in their feeling envied, which reduces their later personal initiative. Moreover, we extend the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion from a social constructionist approach by incorporating coworker support-an important relational context-as a contingent factor shaping the effects of voice endorsement on feeling pride and feeling envied and on voicers' subsequent personal initiative. The results from two field studies-a weekly experience sampling study with 574 observations from 119 employees and an event-based daily experience sampling study with 787 observations from 180 employees-largely support our theoretical model. This research suggests the importance of considering the perspectives of all the stakeholders in the proactivity triad (i.e., the focal employee, the supervisor, and coworkers) in order to sustain employee proactivity. (PsycInfo Database Record

Personality and leadership: Meta-analytic review of cross-cultural moderation, behavioral mediation, and honesty-humility.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024
= 42,487) to extend Judge et al.'s (2002) classic meta-analysis of Big Five personality and leadership. By testing novel hypotheses rooted in culturally endorsed implicit leadership theory and socioanalytic theory, we offer three unique insights. First, in collectivist societies (cultures that value interdependence with one's group), the five factor model traits-and leader Extraversion and Agreeableness in particular-are stronger predictors of leader effectiveness, consistent with the theorized need for enhanced social coordination in such cultures. Second, a theoretical model is proposed to specify that leader Big Five trait effects are mediated by leader behavior (confirming that Consideration mediates Extraversion and Agreeableness, whereas Initiating Structure mediates Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Openness). Third, trait Honesty-Humility robustly predicts leader effectiveness beyond the Big Five traits, expanding the trait approach. New implications for understanding when and why personality traits predict leadership are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record

Personality profiles of 263 occupations.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 open access
While personality trait assessments are widely used in candidate selection, coaching, and occupational counseling, little published research has systematically compared occupations in personality traits. Using a comprehensive personality assessment, we mapped 263 occupations in self-reported Big Five domains and various personality nuances in a sample of 68,540 individuals and cross-validated the findings in informant ratings of 19,989 individuals. Controlling for age and gender, occupations accounted for 2%-7% of Big Five variance in both self-reports and informant reports. Most occupations' average Big Five levels were intuitive, replicated across rating methods, and were consistent with those previously obtained with a brief assessment in a different sociocultural context. Often, they also tracked the Occupational Information Network database's work style ratings and clustered along the International Standard Classification of Occupation's hierarchical framework. Finally, occupations with higher average levels of the personality domains typically linked to better job performance tended to be more homogeneous in these domains, suggesting that jobs with higher performing incumbents are often more selective for personality traits. Several personality nuances had intuitive occupational differences that were larger than those of the Big Five domains (explaining up to 12% variance) and replicated well across rating methods, providing more detailed insights into how job incumbents vary in personality. We provide an interactive application for exploring the results (https://apps.psych.ut.ee/JobProfiles/) and discuss the findings' theoretical and practical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record

Does competitive action intensity influence team performance via leader bottom-line mentality? A social information processing perspective.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 open access
Leader bottom-line mentality (LBLM) exists when leaders solely focus on securing bottom-line outcomes to the exclusion of alternative considerations. Our research examines why leaders adopt LBLMs and the implications of this focused leadership strategy on team sales performance and pro-environmental behavior. Utilizing social information processing theory, we examine LBLM as a mediator and contend that competitive action intensity in the work environment provokes LBLM, which then signals to teams the importance of raising sales performance and reducing pro-environmental behavior. We also suggest that leader performance reward expectancy (i.e., perceptions that rewards are directly tied to high performance) serves as a first-stage moderator and team performance reward expectancy serves as a second-stage moderator, with higher (vs. lower) levels of each strengthening the indirect effects of competitive action intensity, through LBLM, onto team sales performance and pro-environmental behavior. Utilizing field data from a large pharmaceutical company (Study 1) as well as an experimental causal chain design (Studies 2a and 2b), we found support for our theoretical model. (PsycInfo Database Record

Looking forward or backward: A temporal lens to disentangle adaptive and maladaptive reactions to daily goal-performance discrepancy.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 109(1), 99-114
The fast-changing work environment has created growing hindrances to employee daily goal pursuits and rendered it not uncommon for employees to leave work with unachieved daily work goals. The significant ramifications of unachieved goals on employee well-being and performance thus call for more research efforts to understand how employees respond to unsatisfactory goal progress (e.g., goal-performance discrepancy [GPD]). Interestingly, two paradoxical theoretical perspectives exist on this matter, with the self-regulation perspective suggesting an adaptive feedback loop (i.e., GPD on a given day eventually reduces next-day GPD), whereas the self-focused cognition perspective suggesting a maladaptive feedback loop (i.e., GPD on a given day eventually exacerbates next-day GPD). Taking a temporal lens to integrate these two perspectives, we conducted a daily diary study to map out the self-regulatory cognition mechanisms (i.e., anticipatory thinking) and self-focused cognition mechanisms (i.e., rumination) underlying the feedback loops, and identify employee temporal focus (future and past focuses) as critical cross-level boundary conditions to explain why some react to daily GPD adaptively, whereas others maladaptively. Based on 485 daily reports from 100 work professionals, we revealed that daily GPD at work resulted in reduced next-day GPD via increased after-work anticipatory thinking. Meanwhile, daily GPD also resulted in aggravated next-day GPD via increased after-work rumination. Moreover, employee future focus mitigated the maladaptive cycle, whereas employee past focus hindered the adaptive cycle. Our study thus provides important theoretical and empirical insights into employee goal-pursuit process. (PsycInfo Database Record

Convergence of collaborative behavior in virtual teams: The role of external crises and implications for performance.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 109(4), 469-489 open access
Organizations have increasingly relied on virtual teams (VTs). For VTs to succeed, the collaborative behavior of team members plays an important role. Drawing from the open systems theory and using a phenomenon-driven approach, we investigate the dynamic pattern of collaborative behavior convergence among members of VTs (i.e., the emergence of collaborative behavior consensus) and its relationship with VT performance. Moreover, we investigate the differential influence of external crises, exemplified by key dynamic facets of the COVID-19 crisis (i.e., COVID-19 health threat and social distance). We used a multilevel approach (i.e., time, individual, and team levels) with the multilevel group-process framework to test our hypotheses. Results from a survey of 3,506 participants nested in 703 teams suggest that collaborative behaviors of VT members tend to converge over time, leading to the emergence of collaborative behavior consensus. Furthermore, a dynamic COVID-19 health threat leads to lower collaborative behavior consensus over time. Moreover, our results show that collaborative behavior consensus is partially positively related to VT performance and is particularly important for VTs with a lower level of collaborative behavior at the end of the collaboration. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record

Meta-analytical estimates of interrater reliability for direct supervisor performance ratings: Optimism under optimal measurement designs.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 109(3), 456-467
Performance appraisal (PA) is used for various organizational purposes and is vital to human resources practices. Despite this, current estimates of PA reliability are low, leading to decades of criticism regarding the use of PA in organizational contexts. In this article, we argue that current meta-analytical interrater reliability (IRR) coefficients are underestimates and do not reflect the reliability of interest to most practitioners and researchers-the reliability of an employee's direct supervisor. To establish the reliability of direct supervisor ratings, those making PA ratings must directly supervise employee job performance instead of nonparallel rater designs (e.g., direct supervisor ratings correlated with ratings from a more senior leader). The current meta-analysis identified 22 independent samples that met this more restrictive study inclusion criterion, finding an average observed IRR of .65. We also report reliability estimates for several important contextual moderators, including whether ratings were completed in operational settings (.60) or for research purposes (.67). In sum, we argue that this study's meta-analytical IRR estimates are the best available estimates of direct supervisor reliability and should be used to guide future research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record

How perceived lack of benevolence harms trust of artificial intelligence management.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2024 109(11), 1794-1816
= 2,350), we find that AI management is perceived as less benevolent than human management. Given that benevolence is an important antecedent of trust in leaders, this perception has a negative effect on trust in AI management, even when controlling for perceived ability and integrity. Employees prefer human management to AI management in high empathy demand contexts, where individuals seek management that can empathize and experience the emotions that they are feeling, as opposed to low empathy demand contexts. These findings deepen our understanding of trust and provide important theoretical and practical insights on the implementation and adoption of AI management. (PsycInfo Database Record