Employee proactive behaviour is critical for organizational adaptation and increasingly expected in today's workplaces. Yet little is known about how perceived leader perfectionism shapes employees' willingness to act proactively. Drawing on the error orientation model, we propose that perceived leader perfectionism has dual effects on proactivity through two error orientations: a learning-from-error orientation that promotes initiative and an error strain orientation that inhibits it. We further examine growth mindset as a boundary condition that may strengthen the learning pathway and reduce the strain pathway. Across a scenario-based experiment with 355 employees and a three-wave field study with 741 logistics employees, perceived leader perfectionism was positively associated with both learning-from-error and error strain orientations, which had opposing implications for proactivity. Growth mindset consistently strengthened the positive pathway through learning from errors, whereas its buffering effect on the strain pathway emerged only in the experiment. These findings reveal when perceived leader perfectionism can both motivate and discourage employee proactivity.
Despite substantial scholarly interest in remote work, research has primarily examined its effects on well-being at a broader, between-person level, overlooking daily fluctuations in employees' experiences across work locations. Drawing on self-determination theory, we investigate fluctuations in psychological need experiences and energy levels as a function of work location, distinguishing between office workdays and remote workdays. Data was collected from 187 employees three times per day over ten workdays, yielding a total of 2,933 diary entries. Results showed that remote working days were positively associated with daily autonomy satisfaction while negatively associated with daily relatedness satisfaction. Working remotely also yielded more stable energy levels throughout the day. Autonomy satisfaction was linked to lower energy decline, while autonomy and competence satisfaction also flattened the afternoon drop. Remote working days predicted higher energy in the afternoon and evening through autonomy satisfaction. While autonomy frustration increased energy depletion across the day, need frustration was unrelated to work location. This study advances understanding of hybrid work's nuanced effects on daily well-being, emphasizing the particular importance of autonomy satisfaction in energy maintenance.
Extreme contexts characterized by heightened mortality salience (e.g. pandemics, disasters) significantly disrupt individual and organizational functioning. Previous research has largely focused on how to minimize damage caused by such disruption while paying little attention to how employees may draw on these experiences to cultivate new capabilities. This study draws on mortality awareness theories to examine the often-overlooked yet potentially constructive role of Death Reflection. Using four-wave time-lagged survey data (N = 246) collected in China during COVID-19 pandemic, we find that perceived mortality-crisis strength (PMCS) is associated not only with increased Death Anxiety but also with greater Death Reflection. Furthermore, PMCS relates to In-Role Performance through the sequential mediation of Death Reflection and Achievement Motivation, and to organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) through Death Reflection and Prosocial Motivation. Job resources further amplify the positive link between PMCS and Death Reflection, as well as these indirect effects. Our research provides insights into the mechanisms through which employees engage in Death Reflection and respond to crises involving mortality threats with resilient behaviours. Moreover, it offers practical implications for managing mortality reflection and generative responses in extreme contexts.
This study examines the extent to which, how, and when task conflict is associated with employees' day-to-day idea generation. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory, we hypothesized a nonlinear within-person association between task conflict and idea generation, mediated by daily job crafting and moderated by regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions at work. We tested our hypotheses using a 31-day diary study of 142 employees who completed a baseline questionnaire assessing self-efficacy beliefs and end-of-day surveys measuring task conflict, job crafting, and idea generation. Daily task conflict was nonlinearly associated with short-term idea generation through daily job crafting, contingent on self-efficacy beliefs. Employees with high regulatory emotional self-efficacy were especially likely to engage in job crafting and generate new ideas on days characterized by high (rather than low or moderate) task conflict, reflecting an accelerating increase in these behaviours as conflict intensified. This study identifies job crafting as a behavioural mechanism that helps explain how task conflict is associated with idea generation at the within-person level and clarifies the personal boundary conditions of this relationship. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights into how organizations may support employee idea generation amid day-to-day task conflict.
In today's competitive world, organizations may value leaders who strive to outperform others. Yet, past research shows that such leaders can also harm the organization through their own harmful attitudes and behaviours. In this paper, we contend that the detrimental effects highlighted in past research may reflect only part of the story and that leaders who focus on outperforming others can also indirectly harm the organization by eliciting harmful behaviour in employees. Drawing on Achievement Goal Theory, we propose that leaders with high performance-approach goals (i.e. striving to outperform others) will be more likely to provide their employees with comparative feedback, in which an employee's performance is discussed and evaluated by explicitly comparing it to the performance of other employees. Building on Feedback Intervention Theory, we further argue that receiving comparative feedback from a leader will be positively related to employees' emotional exhaustion, and consequently their counterproductive work behaviour. Data from a three-wave survey design using multi-source reports from 631 employees and 221 corresponding leaders supported our hypotheses. The indirect effect between comparative feedback and counterproductive work behaviour via emotional exhaustion was replicated in a second time-separated survey study among 280 employees.
Masculine job titles in job advertisements, though intended as gender-inclusive, carry a male bias that can induce a perceived lack-of-fit with the position among women. Conversely, job titles that include a feminine form may signal that women are suited, while potentially lowering the job's perceived prestige, as femininity is associated with lower status. In a between-person experiment (N = 506) in German language, we tested how four job title forms intended as gender-inclusive affect women's and men's expected belongingness, perceived job prestige, and job pursuit intentions: the (1) masculine + m/w/d (German: male/female/diverse), (2) word pair (masculine/feminine), (3) feminine + m/w/d, and (4) asterisk form, a newer gender-inclusive option in German (English: wait*ress). Among women, feminine + m/w/d (vs. masculine + m/w/d) job titles increased job pursuit intentions through expected belongingness. Among men, word pairs and masculine + m/w/d (vs. feminine + m/w/d) job titles increased job pursuit intentions through expected belongingness. Prestige ratings for word pair, asterisk, or feminine + m/w/d job titles (vs. masculine + m/w/d) were lower for gender-balanced jobs, but higher for typically feminine jobs. These findings illustrate how language forms in grammatical gender languages, such as German, can affect both applicant interest and perceptions of jobs.
Digital technologies are increasingly introduced at work to improve efficiency and reduce costs, yet failure to integrate them into workflows remains common. This paper analyses a case study of a failed technology integration in a healthcare setting. Drawing on technology acceptance models, socio-technical systems perspectives, and socio-material views, we develop the Dynamic Model of Technology Integration that emphasizes the importance of accounting for workflow disruption, interdependencies, and the active user role. Using a mixed-methods approach, we collected data from 67 clinicians at a public hospital via tool analytics, surveys administered over four timepoints, and 29 interviews. Although perceived ease of use and usefulness predicted initial technology use, adoption declined over time. Interviews revealed that successful integration requires individuals to engage in affordance crafting in which they invest effort to overcome contextual constraints and unlock the potential action opportunities of a technology to embed that technology into their work practices and to align it with their preferences and motives at work. Integration failed when the individual effort investment required to engage in such crafting exceeded a threshold of perceived short-term benefits. This threshold was exacerbated by a high workload environment with complex interdependencies across tasks, technologies, and co-workers.
Vision is a powerful tool for motivating employees to achieve collective goals with a compelling image of a desirable future. It has been extensively studied from diverse perspectives, including leadership, organizational vision, and vision communication. While extant research offers valuable insights into different aspects of leader vision, findings remain fragmented, necessitating effective synthesis. In leadership research, vision is often embedded within broader theories that incorporate additional components (e.g. charismatic leadership and transformational leadership). Meanwhile, the organizational vision and vision communication literature provides a multitude of definitions and foci on vision formation and delivery characteristics, leaving how vision is accepted and drives motivation understudied. Based on a systematic review of 417 literature sources, we developed an integrative model of leader vision, proposed its comprehensive definition, and identified central elements of a strong vision. We introduce three motivational properties of leader vision - transcendence (elevating employees to higher-level meanings and values), efficacy (enhancing employees' subjective and objective performance capacity), and collectivity (strengthening interpersonal relationships within the collective) - that serve as a bridge across the diverse perspectives adopted in prior studies. Furthermore, we provide testable propositions of the proposed integrative model of leader vision to enlighten future research.
This study investigates how leader narcissism and follower behaviour interact to shape abusive supervision intentions. Drawing on the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept (NARC), we differentiated between narcissistic admiration and rivalry hypothesizing that leaders' narcissistic admiration is unrelated to, and leaders' narcissistic rivalry is positively related to, abusive supervision intentions. We also assumed that leader's narcissistic rivalry relates more strongly to abusive supervision intentions when followers engage in unsolicited ways (i.e. counterproductive work behaviour and organizational citizenship behaviour) - compared to solicited ways (i.e. task performance). We conducted two experimental vignette studies with leaders (N = 120 in Study 1; N = 174 in Study 2), manipulating follower behaviour. Analyses were conducted using a Bayesian approach, which allows testing null hypotheses. In both studies, leaders' narcissistic admiration was unrelated to abusive supervision intentions. In contrast, leaders' narcissistic rivalry was positively related to abusive supervision intentions, and this effect was stronger when followers behaved in unsolicited compared to solicited ways. Our results support the assumption that narcissistic rivalry is the antagonistic narcissism dimension in the context of leadership and abusive supervision is triggered in social interactions with followers.
This paper investigates interpersonal regulation at work across two complementary studies integrating Affective Events Theory (AET) with cognitivist accountability accounts and a content-based perspective on moralization. Study 1 used an intensive repeated-measures dyadic design with 125 German full-time employees reporting 777 weekly interactions with specific colleagues over five weeks. Colleague-perpetrated immorality appraisals were associated with anger towards the offending colleague and punitive regulation, whereas self-perpetrated immorality appraisals were associated with guilt towards the harmed colleague and penitent regulation. Examining moral-content cues via the CAD framework, injustice was the only cue that reliably predicted immorality appraisals across perpetrator loci, with irresponsibility additionally predicting self-perpetrated appraisals. Study 2 replicated the appraisal - emotion - regulation sequence in an experimental vignette study with 302 British full-time employees and provided controlled evidence for the injustice pathway by manipulating injustice as a pre-appraisal cue. Across both studies, moralized workplace events were organized by immorality appraisals that elicited accountability-contingent moral emotions (anger vs. guilt), which in turn related to distinct regulatory responses (punitive vs. penitent). These findings clarify how workplace interactions become moralized and regulated in ongoing dyadic relationships and inform efforts to reduce injustice and support accountability and repair.
Employees in hybrid work arrangements face blurred work-home boundaries when working from home, which can hinder recovery from work-related stress. To manage this challenge, employees use boundary tactics (temporal, physical, communicative, technological). Previous quantitative studies have primarily examined these tactics in isolation. Using a person-centred approach, we examined combinations of boundary tactics and explored their associations with antecedents (colleagues' and supervisors' segmentation norms, segmentation preference) and recovery indicators as outcomes (psychological detachment, mastery, control, relaxation, exhaustion). We conducted a two-wave study with measurement points four weeks apart. Latent profile analysis revealed four quantitatively and qualitatively distinct boundary tactic profiles at Time 1 (nT1 = 413). Two profiles (Uniform Moderate and Uniform Strong Boundary Managers) used all boundary tactics to the same extent, whereas two other profiles (Selective Moderate and Selective Strong Boundary Managers) showed reduced use of communicative and technological tactics. Segmentation preference and segmentation norms differentially predicted profile membership. Furthermore, we found distinct associations between boundary tactic profiles and recovery indicators at Time 2 (nT2 = 270). In summary, Uniform Strong Boundary Managers demonstrated the most favourable recovery experiences.
The topic of phubbing in the workplace context has garnered significant attention in academic studies since the early 2020s; however, due to its inherently interdisciplinary scope, research remains fragmented and lacks cohesion, resulting in unresolved questions. A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to examine the association between phubbing behaviours in the workplace and key organizational variables, and to explore their relationship with individuals' psychological outcomes. All studies using quantitative designs of phubbing in the workplace context were included. A total of 21 studies met the inclusion criteria (n = 8485 employees). The results of the systematic review employed two perspectives to analyse and integrate core concepts pertaining to workplace phubbing behaviours: perceived phubbing and its associated variables, as well as enacted phubbing and its related variables. Results from the random-effects meta-analysis indicated that the weighted average correlation between higher levels of perceived phubbing and organizational and psychological outcomes, such as positive leadership dimensions and engagement, was statistically significant. This approach provides a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature and sheds light on complexities inherent in fragmented theoretical frameworks regarding workplace phubbing. Furthermore, this study proposes a research agenda to advance inquiry in this field and discusses the practical implications.
A positive organizational psychosocial safety climate (PSC - the climate for employee psychological health and safety) could prevent workplace mistreatment (bullying and harassment). However, the origins of PSC and the pathways through which it operates remain insufficiently understood. Our values-driven systems approach proposes that senior management (SM) pro-human values and priorities, shape supervisors' positive perceptions of PSC and, in turn, reduce the likelihood of worker mistreatment. Study 1 used a multilevel conceptualization of organizations, combining structure and work-role functions, across 33 public sector agencies and 413 nested work units. At the organizational level, SM values and priorities (n = 1341) related to supervisors' PSC (n = 5341) and in turn the mistreatment of workers (n = 21996); at the work unit level, supervisor support further reduced mistreatment, when organizational PSC (a cross-level moderator) was high. Study 2 used three-wave multisource organizational-level data across 117 agencies: SM values and priorities Time 1 (T1; n = 2332) predicted supervisor PSC T2 (n = 4718) and in turn bullying of workers T3 (n = 26112). Challenging SM values and priorities is likely an efficient lever, to improve PSC at scale, bolster effective supervisor support in work units, and prevent mistreatment of workers.
Notwithstanding mounting attention for humility and other relationally relevant leadership behaviours, and their impact on follower outcomes, the literature shows an incomplete understanding of how both parties' mutual humility perceptions shape their perceptions of relationship quality and fairness. This gap is concerning, considering that several features of work relationships can complicate relational dynamics (e.g. hierarchy, role expectations). Given these complicated dynamics, mutual perceptions of humility may drive relationship-quality and fairness. Drawing on the Dynamic Perception Model of Interpersonal Relations, we posit that humility has actor (social perception) and partner (behaviour elicitation) effects on perceived relationship quality in leader-follower dyads. Moreover, we argue that congruence in humility perceptions between leaders and their followers fosters the quality of leader-follower exchanges, ultimately shaping perceptions of leader fairness. Results from a five-wave, multi-source study among 259 leader-follower dyads, with 132 to 153 matched dyads included per analysis, indicate that both follower and leader humility are associated with high levels of perceived LMX. Additionally, high-level humility alignment (dyadic partner congruence) is associated with higher levels of LMX and perceived fairness than low-level alignment. Results also support the notion that LMX is the mechanism via which leader humility leads to followers' perceived leader fairness.
Using the lens of activity-based workspace design, we develop a model of the hybrid workspace (i.e. the organizational and home settings in which hybrid work occurs) which proposes that each setting has three core activity-supportive characteristics: interaction-supportive, concentration-supportive and recovery-supportive. Drawing on a two-wave data set collected from office-based employees in an engineering organization, we test and find support for our hypotheses that activity-supportive workspace characteristics (in oth organizational/office and home settings) foster employee outcomes, i.e. task performance, engagement and workspace satisfaction. Specifically, we find that office recovery-supportive characteristics increased task performance, office interaction-supportive characteristics increased satisfaction with the office workspace, and that home concentration-supportive workspace characteristics increased employee engagement. Conclusions are drawn for our understanding of workspace design and hybrid working.
The combination of low HEXACO honesty-humility and high extraversion is associated with negative workplace outcomes, yet individuals with this profile appear to be overrepresented in higher-level positions. We propose that advancement motivation may function as an explanatory mechanism for the advancement of employees with this personality profile. We first examined the relations between HEXACO personality traits and advancement motivation, as well as the interactive effect of honesty-humility and extraversion on advancement motivation, in a student sample and two working adult samples. We then explored a moderated mediation model in the two working adult samples, wherein honesty-humility and extraversion interact to predict advancement motivation, and advancement motivation, in turn, mediates the interactive effect on hierarchical level. Results indicate that advancement motivation was consistently negatively related to honesty-humility and positively related to extraversion. Extraversion attenuated the negative relationship between honesty-humility and advancement motivation. However, advancement motivation did not mediate the interactive effect of honesty-humility and extraversion on hierarchical level, likely due to low statistical power. Despite this, the study underscores the importance of supplementing assessments of advancement motivation with complementary tools - such as multi-source personality measures, integrity tests, and structured interviews - to support sound promotion decisions.
