ABSTRACT Integrating self‐perception theory with the dual perspectives of work meaningfulness, this study positions managers as a distinct stakeholder category in sustainable HRM and investigates the impact of empowering leadership on managers' own sense of work meaningfulness. We argue that due to the ambiguities surrounding and challenges in sustaining work meaningfulness, managers are likely to reflect on their leadership behaviors to make sense of the meanings of their work. In particular, as empowering leadership—characterized by the distribution of power, autonomy, and support to followers—focuses on promoting intrinsic values and growth for employees, we hypothesize that it can enhance managers' work meaningfulness via managers' increased self‐concordance and perceived social impact. We further propose that managers' self‐reflection amplifies the positive effects of empowering leadership on their self‐concordance, perceived social impact, and, consequently, work meaningfulness. A multi‐wave field survey study with 79 managers (and their 415 followers) in China provides evidence for the effect of empowering leadership on managers' work meaningfulness via self‐concordance and perceived social impact and the moderating role of managers' self‐reflection. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for managers' well‐being, development, and retention.

People increasingly rely on photographs shared by others when deciding where to travel. Although human presence in such images is prevalent and often assumed to enhance place appeal, little research has examined whether it might also produce unintended drawbacks. Drawing on the theoretical perspective of groundedness, this research proposes that depicting people in place photographs can undermine viewers' sense of being psychologically anchored to the place, thereby reducing perceived attractiveness. Across one field study and three controlled experiments, we find consistent evidence that human presence lowers place attractiveness by diminishing feelings of groundedness. This effect emerges in cultural but not natural landscapes and cannot be explained by alternative mechanisms such as psychological ownership. By introducing groundedness as a novel psychological mechanism, this research advances understanding of how human presence in imagery shapes individuals' affective and evaluative responses to destinations.

In this study, we examine the relationships between perceived experience and newcomer adjustment outcomes. Drawing from Feedback Seeking Behavior theory, we challenge the assumption that greater perceived experience is universally beneficial during organizational entry. We propose that greater perceived experience could impair adjustment outcomes (i.e., job performance, work stress, and social disconnectedness) through two mechanisms: increased self-reliance beliefs and perceived risk of information seeking. In a field study of 243 new hires, we found evidence consistent with several of our predictions. Additionally, we found that openness to experience significantly weakened the relationships between perceived experience and self-reliance beliefs and risk of information seeking, as well as to subsequent adjustment outcomes (i.e., moderated mediation). Our research highlights the potential liabilities of starting a new job with greater perceived experience, turning attention to the factors that might inhibit proactive socialization efforts, while also examining openness as a key moderator of these effects.

Perceived overqualification (POQ) has traditionally been seen as an undesirable employment situation associated with negative outcomes. However, recent research suggests that POQ may have positive implications for both employees and organizations. Despite the growing literature on this topic, scholars have offered numerous explanatory mechanisms for linking POQ with its work outcomes, and inconsistent findings have been reported, highlighting the need for a comprehensive understanding of why, where, and for whom POQ is beneficial or detrimental. In the present study, we developed an integrative theoretical framework that depicts the consequences, mechanisms, and moderators of POQ. We then conducted a meta-analytical review of the POQ literature, analyzing 704 effect sizes from 251 independent samples (N = 87,229). By organizing the dominant mechanisms in POQ research within a unified framework of work motivation, we elucidate the distinct pathways by which POQ induces differential work consequences. We further consider the role of key cultural, economic, sociodemographic, and methodological characteristics as boundary conditions. Overall, our findings provide support for our predictions and provide novel insights into the work-related consequences of POQ. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are thoroughly discussed.

Past research suggests that personal Internet usage (PIU) at work can carry both costs and benefits for employees, but offers no explanation for these mixed results. In this research, we argue that the competing findings might be due to the existence of different types of PIU. We take a daily approach and propose that hedonic PIU (HPIU, i.e. relaxing oneself) benefits employees' end-of-workday well-being and work engagement while utilitarian PIU (UPIU, i.e. solving others' problems) hinders their well-being and work engagement. We test our theorizing using three studies. In Study 1, we summarized previous PIU studies and relied on machine learning methods to classify the 618 PIU activities identified in prior studies. We found that prior research mixed HPIU and UPIU and might reach different conclusions. In Study 2, we condensed the PIU activity list in Study 1 and developed measurement scales of HPIU and UPIU. In Study 3, we analysed 1063 multi-wave daily inputs from 125 employees and found that on a daily basis, HPIU benefits employees' well-being by fostering a state of recovery, while UPIU impedes well-being and work engagement by inducing a state of depletion. Moreover, supervisor support for employees' personal behaviours strengthens the beneficial effect of HPIU.

Over the years, the topic of gender and leadership has aroused considerable interest from organizational scholars, with research finding important gender differences across a range of outcomes relevant to leadership (e.g., Eagly & Karau, 2002; Paustian-Underdahl, Walker, & Woehr, 2014). For example, men and women differ in their propensity to attain positions of power within organizations (Gino, Wilmuth, & Brooks, 2015), with women remaining substantially underrepresented in leadership (Catalyst, 2020). Once a leadership position is attained, important gender differences emerge in how male and female leaders are then perceived by others. For instance, female leaders often suffer significant social penalties for performing traditional male-oriented roles (e.g., Eagly & Karau, 2002; Koenig et al., 2011) and, as a result, experience a greater likelihood of sabotage, criticism, and undermining relative to their male counterparts (e.g., Ely, 1994; Heim, 1990; Rudman et al., 2011). Likewise, scholars have studied potential gender differences in the behavior of leaders, with meta-analytic evidence suggesting that men and women often differ in how they lead and treat their direct subordinates (Eagly et al., 2003; Mackey et al., 2017). Despite these fruitful ?ndings and discussions, there is still much to be known at the intersection between gender and leadership. For example, little is known about how women’s cognitive processes may affect leadership pursuit. Moreover, although research has investigated potential differences in how male versus female leaders are perceived by others, oftentimes such impressions are assessed using a single behavioral indicator (e.g., anger; Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008). Likewise, while studies have shown that there may also exist important differences in the ways in which male and female leaders treat their direct subordinates, much of this work has focused somewhat narrowly on particular behavioral (e.g., transformational leadership) or decision-making (e.g., autocratic versus democratic) styles. Recent scholarship has taken notice of these limitations, and have called for additional insight into how gender effects the ways in which leaders emerge and are perceived, and for further research on the gender differences in “leader behaviors beyond transformational leadership and those that are highly agentic or communal in both intrapersonal and interpersonal leadership processes” (Shen & Joseph, 2021). Thus, it appears we may have only scratched the surface in understanding gender differences in leadership. Accordingly, there are likely important and interesting avenues still waiting to be explored within this area of research, such as the cognitive and structural underpinnings that can inform why men and women differ in their propensity to pursue leadership positions, the complex and evolving impressions formed about men and women once they attain leadership positions, and the potential differences in the ways in which male and females lead, react to, and potentially harm, their direct subordinates. Our symposium aims to tackle these questions and deepen our understanding of gender and leadership by bringing together four papers that explore a broad range of outcomes relevant to leadership. Moreover, the papers included in this symposium will explore a diverse set of contexts, theories, and conditions that further explain why, how and when gender differences in leadership manifest within organizations, thus providing exciting new directions for future research. Women’s Likelihood to Pursue Majority-male Leadership Presenter: Rachael Goodwin; Syracuse U. Whitman School of Management The Effects of Sequences of Female vs. Male Leader Behaviors on Subordinates’ Perceptions of Them Presenter: Jennifer R. Overbeck; Melbourne Business School Presenter: Michael James Zyphur; U. of Melbourne Gender Differences in Supervisor’s Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Subordinate Influence Presenter: Joel B. Carnevale; Syracuse U. Presenter: Lei Huang; Auburn U. Presenter: Lingtao Yu; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Lin Wang; Sun Yat-Sen U. Supervisors’ Gender and Promotion Speed on their Derogation of Subordinates’ Promotability Presenter: Ying Wang; U. of International Business and Economics Presenter: Zhi Liu; Guanghua School of Management, Peking U. Presenter: Siting Wang; Hong Kong Baptist U. Presenter: Mo Wang; U. of Florida

SummaryAlthough research suggests that leader humor shapes followers' perceptions of their leaders' status, questions remain as to whether and how leader humor can shape followers' own acquisition of status at work. Drawing from the approach‐avoidance framework, we provide an important extension to the leader humor literature by developing a serial mediation model that explains how and why two styles of leader humor—aggressive humor and affiliative humor—differentially impact followers' ability to garner and wield social influence in the work environment. We theorize that leader aggressive humor, which constitutes unconstrained execution of power that is invasive and hostile in nature, produces a status‐suppressing effect by activating followers' avoidance system, whereas leader affiliative humor, which constitutes relational connection with restrained superiority, produces a status‐enabling effect by activating followers' approach system. We further propose that leader aggressive (affiliative) humor has a negative (positive) indirect effect on followers' constructive voice and work engagement via their avoidance (approach) orientation and workplace status. We find consistent support for our hypothesized predictions across two survey studies. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this study.

Voice—employees’ discretionary communication of ideas or identification of potential problems—is a key driver of innovation, enhanced productivity, and greater status for voicers. With the benefits of voice well-documented, nascent inquiry has begun to elucidate essential elements of the voice lifecycle—i.e., its emergence, adoption and implementation, and eventual decline into silence. The proposed symposium features four empirical papers that address novel and theoretically interesting aspects of the voice lifecycle. Related to voice emergence, we examine the effects of power dynamics in leader-follower dyads on constructive and destructive forms of voice, as well as the relationship between misfit and voice. Related to the adoption of voice, we consider the effects of the perceived novelty and usefulness of creative ideas on their perceived cost and adoption by managers. Related to the decline of voice into silence, we consider the potentially detrimental effect of silence on employees’ ruminative thinking and subsequent negative behavior. Taken together, our symposium offers an expanded view of the voice lifecycle. When Voice Takes Constructive Rather Than Destructive Forms in Leader-Follower Dyads Presenter: Jing Wu; BI Norwegian Business School Presenter: Subrahmaniam Tangirala; U. of Maryland Presenter: Pengcheng Zhang; School of Management, Huazhong U. of Science and Technology Here’s to the Misfits: Investigating Whether Misfit Magnifies or Mutes Employee Voice Presenter: Nathan Black; U. of Iowa Presenter: Stephen Reid; U. of Iowa Presenter: Jennifer Nahrgang; U. of Iowa Presenter: Daniel Newton; U. of Iowa The Paradox of Creative Ideas: How Novelty and Utility Affect Adoption Differently Presenter: Wayne Johnson; Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Presenter: Elizabeth McClean; Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Keep It Unsaid but Can’t Let It Go: A Rumination Perspective on the Daily Effects of Silence Presenter: Junchao Li; Rutgers Business School Presenter: Lin Wang; Sun Yat-Sen U. Presenter: Chengquan Huang; U. of Florida Presenter: Crystal I Chien Farh; U. of Washington

The COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to social and economic problems and pose a threat to most of enterprise. Faced with crisis and challenge, effective leaders and devoted employees are important factors for enterprises to overcome difficulties. We propose a moderated mediation model wherein narcissistic leader predicts subordinate’s followership through leader self-interest behavior perceived by subordinates, with organizational identification of leader acting as the contextual condition. Two-wave data collected from 303 employees in the manufacturing and technology industry in China supported our hypothesized model. We found that narcissistic leader has negative impact on subordinates’ followership due to their perception of leader’s self-interest behavior. Further, organizational identification of leader plays a moderate role in the relationship between narcissistic leader and subordinates’ followership. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. We also offer several promising directions for future research.

We provide a meta-analytic examination of the regulation reactions that employees adopt to cope with perceived overqualification and how these reactions are linked to work behaviors, including job performance, extra-role behavior, and counterproductive work behavior. Drawing from self-regulation theory, we introduce cognitive and affective reactions in responding to perceived overqualification, providing an integrative investigation among both positive and negative effect. In addition, we test how cultural dimensions influence how employee react to perceived overqualification. We conducted an original meta-analysis with 293 effect sizes drawn from 120 samples. We also mata-structural equation method together with full-information bootstrapping technique to test our hypotheses. Our results extended theoretical understanding and practical implications of perceived overqualification.

Studies have shown that narcissistic individuals are more likely to become leaders in uncertain situations, while few studies paid attention to the relational mechanism, linking a narcissistic leader with subordinates and team attitudes and behaviors. Based on the “guanxi” and dominance complementarity theory, we examined the influencing mechanism of narcissistic leaders on subordinates and team followership (TF). Two-wave data collected from 326 employees in the manufacturing and technology industry in China supported our hypothesized model. We have found that narcissistic leaders have a negative impact on followership (F) and TF of subordinates; Supervisor–subordinate guanxi (SSG) and team leadership relationship identity play a partial mediating role between narcissistic leadership and subordinates and team followership. Furthermore, individual and team values play a moderating role in the process of influencing a mechanism. In other words, the higher the individual tradition and team power distance (PD), the less negative impact of leader narcissism on SSG and team leadership relationship identity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. We also offer several promising directions for future research.

Leader’s humor expression to follower is a powerful way of interaction in organizations. Though previous research has showed the positive effect of leader humor on many team outcomes such as performance, very little is known about why team leader express humor or not, especially why team leader express humor more to some followers but less to others. Drawing upon relational demography and similarity-attraction theory, this research examined the effect of leader-follower age congruence on leader humor expression, as well as the indirect effect on follower’s performance. We posit that (a) leader’s humor to follower will be more frequent when leader age and follower age are aligned, as opposed to not aligned; (b) leader humor to follower will be more frequent when the leader is older than the follower, as opposed to when the follower is older than the leader; and (c) leader-follower age congruence has a positive indirect effect on follower performance via leader’s humor to follower. We conducted a multi-wave multi-source field study and used cross-level polynomial regression as well as response surface technology to test the proposed hypotheses, and the results supported our argument. Theoretical and practical implications are well discussed.

To protect workers' safety while gradually resuming on-site operations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations are offering employees the flexibility to decide their work location on a daily basis (i.e., whether to work from home or to work in the office on a particular day). However, little is known about what factors drive employees' daily decisions to work from home versus office during the pandemic. Taking a social ecological perspective, we conceptualize employees' daily choice of work location (home vs. office) as a way to cope with stressors they have encountered on the previous day, and conducted a daily diary study to examine how five categories of work-related and COVID-related stressors during the pandemic (identified through a pilot interview study) may jointly predict employees' next-day work location. We collected data over five workdays from 127 participants working in a Chinese IT company which allowed employees to choose their work location on a daily basis amid the pandemic. We found that experiencing more work-family boundary stressors and work coordination stressors on a certain day were associated with a greater likelihood of working in the office (vs. at home) on the next day, while experiencing more workload stressors prompted employees to work at home (vs. in the office) on the next day. Furthermore, we found that COVID-19 infection-related stressors moderated the effects of technology stressors and workload stressors on next-day work location. Our research findings offer implications for understanding the driving factors of daily work location choices during and beyond the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Drawing on moral disengagement theory, we developed and tested a dual-stage moderated mediation model to explore the spillover effect of workplace deviance as well as the boundary conditions of the spillover. A two-wave survey was conducted on 231 supervisor-subordinate dyads. Results showed that (a) employee deviance increased abusive supervision, which triggered supervisor-directed aggression; (b) supervisor’s organizational embodiment strengthened the positive relationship between employee deviance and abusive supervision; (c) subordinate’s perspective taking weakened the positive relationship between abusive supervision and supervisor-directed aggression; (d) the indirect effect of employee deviance on supervisor-directed aggression through abusive supervision is most pronounced when supervisor’s organizational embodiment is high and subordinate’s perspective taking is low. The findings suggest how organizational embodiment and perspective taking may influence the spillover effect among different forms of workplace deviance. Implications for how to handle the spillover effect of workplace deviance are also discussed. Key words: employee deviance; abusive supervision; organizational embodiment; perspective taking; spillover effect

The novel coronavirus disease that emerged at the end of 2019 began threatening the health and lives of millions of people after a few weeks. However, social and economic problems derived from COVID-19 have changed the development of individuals and the whole country. This study examines the work conditions of Taiwanese versus mainland China employees, and evaluates the relationship between support mechanisms and subjective wellbeing from a social cognitive career theory perspective. In this study, a total of 623 Taiwanese questionnaires and 513 mainland China questionnaires were collected to compare the two sample groups in terms of the development of employees’ subjective wellbeing. The results show that the Taiwanese sample had more significant development paths compared to mainland China employees in terms of prior knowledge, perceived organizational support, self-efficacy, employee employability, subjective wellbeing, and job performance. Finally, based on the conclusions, this study proposes some specific suggestions on theoretical mode for future studies.

Prior research suggests that the broader social environment in which employees develop, refine, and share their ideas is crucial in promoting creativity. But employees might not always be willing to interact with their coworkers in ways conducive to the development of creative outcomes, particularly if they become overly concerned about establishing and preserving others' perceptions of their creative ability. Using both field and experimental studies, we integrate the impression management framework and the creativity-relevant helping literatures to investigate the psychological pressures and calculative interpersonal behaviors that stem from employees' engagement in creative work. Results across three studies provide converging evidence that, due to the arousal of creative reputation maintenance concerns (CRMC), creative individuals (relative to their less creative counterparts) engage in less creativity help-seeking and more creativity help-giving, and these effects are strengthened when individuals have previously received help from others. We discuss the implications and limitations of this work and provide future research directions.