This research contributes to understanding why supervisors direct incivility toward some subordinates but not others by examining the contingent role of perceived subordinate performance. Grounded in organizational justice and moral exclusion theory, we conceptualize supervisor incivility as a form of interactional injustice that may arise when supervisors place subordinates perceived as low-performing outside their “scope of justice.” We propose a contingency model in which the relationship between perceived subordinate performance and supervisor incivility depends jointly on supervisor bottom-line mentality (BLM) and moral relativism. BLM represents a results-oriented mindset that prioritizes goal attainment over relational concerns, whereas moral relativism is a flexible moral orientation according to which ethical standards are viewed as context-dependent. We tested this theoretical logic across two complementary studies: a multi-source, time-lagged field study and a scenario experiment. The results were consistent with the proposed three-way interaction. Specifically, incivility toward low-performing subordinates was most pronounced when moral relativism was high, and either supervisor BLM was strong or bottom-line climate cues were salient. These findings highlight the joint role of motivational and moral conditions in shaping when perceived low performance is associated with uncivil supervisory treatment. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
This study examines daily energy trajectories at work from a temporal self-regulation perspective, addressing the paradoxical finding that effort can be both energizing and depleting. Rather than treating daily energy curves as purely descriptive, we distinguish three self-regulatory phases of energetic activation—resource mobilization, resource utilization, and resource retraction—and investigate sleep quality, effort, and absorption as phase-specific regulatory predictors. Using experience sampling data from 106 employees over 10 workdays, comprising four daily self-reports (2552 observations), we applied piecewise growth curve modeling to analyze within-person variations in energy trajectories. Our findings confirm an inverted U-shaped energy trajectory, peaking at midday. Sleep quality emerged as a key driver of the resource mobilization phase, associated with higher baseline energy levels but a flatter energy increase during the first half of the workday. During the resource utilization phase, higher noon effort was associated with a steeper decline in energetic activation over the work episode, independent of noon absorption. During the resource retraction phase, afternoon effort predicted a steeper evening decline, although this association did not persist once absorption was included. Effort and absorption also interacted in predicting evening energy trajectories, such that absorption differentiated evening declines primarily when effort was low, whereas differences were smaller under high effort. These results advance theoretical frameworks on energy regulation by identifying distinct mechanisms across daily phases and by showing that the energetic consequences of effort and absorption are temporally structured rather than uniform, becoming most visible after work.
Although food-related behavior has become a topic of growing interest in organizational research, it is typically studied as a matter of individual choice about food content. In this study, we expand this conceptualization by examining the temporal, structural, and social contexts in which food-related decisions unfold. Based on an inductive analysis of interviews with workers managing type 2 diabetes, we examine how structural and social constraints at work influenced workers’ capacity to make and enact food-related decisions, including what, when, where, and how to eat. Applying tenets of Conservation of Resources (COR) theory in the final stages of our analysis, we show how workplace conditions can function as a resource caravan passageway, shaping workers’ access to several interrelated personal resources (e.g., time, energy, and willpower) critical to making and enacting these decisions. Drawing from participants’ accounts, structural and social constraints at work contributed to recurring cycles of resource loss across the work-home interface, leaving workers increasingly vulnerable to future threats. Beyond broadening the conceptualization of food-related behavior in organizational research, our findings extend work design theory by highlighting the need to account for how workplace conditions affect workers’ capacity to manage personal needs within and around work systems. We also offer an empirical elaboration of COR theory by illustrating how resource loss cycles unfold in everyday experiences across the work and home domains. We conclude by highlighting practical strategies organizations can adopt to support workers’ capacity to make and enact food-related decisions and promote well-being and performance at work.
Existing theory on capitalization (i.e., sharing positive events with others) positions disclosers of positive events as the sole drivers of capitalization, with responders as passive targets of capitalization. However, given that capitalization can in principle only transpire with a responder, it is reasonable to expect that responders also play important upstream roles regarding whether capitalization transpires. Drawing from Emotion as Social Information (EASI) theory, we examine how and when coworker displayed happiness elicits focal employee workplace interpersonal capitalization. Via a preregistered experiment, a three-wave round robin field study, and an experience sampling field study, we found support for our predictions that coworker displayed happiness evokes employee workplace interpersonal capitalization through both an affective reaction mechanism (employees’ own experienced happiness) and an inferential mechanism (anticipated coworker responsiveness). Further, we found support for our hypothesis that the strength of coworker friendship acts as a key social-relational boundary condition that weakens both mediating pathways, suggesting that the affective reaction and inferential mechanisms are more efficacious when coworker friendship is weaker. Overall, we offer a consensus shifting contribution by elucidating how the responder fulfills a much larger role regarding antecedent factors of capitalization than currently constituted.
