Research on the backlash effect predominantly investigated penalties men and women incurred when they violate gender norms in the domain of achievement-oriented aggressiveness. We investigated backlash reactions towards female versus male leaders' attempts to manage follower emotions using one of two gender-stereotypic interpersonal emotion management strategies, cognitive change or expression suppression, in a 2x2 vignette experiment in which undergraduate students as participants acted as followers (N = 206). We hypothesized that followers high in explicit or implicit prejudice towards female leadership would be motivated to show backlash in the form of negative attitudes and anger when female leaders use an expression suppression strategy and when male leaders use a cognitive change strategy, violating gender norms. We also explored the role of followers' gender as a boundary condition of backlash reactions towards leaders of the same versus opposite sex. Male participants with negative explicit attitudes towards women leaders in general expressed higher levels of anger towards a female leader who utilized a suppression strategy. Female participants holding implicit stereotypes reported negative attitudes for both female and male leaders who utilized a gender-incongruent emotion management strategy. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and research on the backlash effect.

This paper aims to investigate the role of stereotype threat and the moderating role of gender stigma consciousness on women’s leadership aspiration, leadership career goal, social self-esteem, and negative affect across two experimental studies in Türkiye. We expected the detrimental effects of streotype threat to be experienced by those with high gender stigma consciousness. The first study, involving 130 female undergraduates (Mage = 20.7, SD = 4.4), presented implicit stereotype threat and showed that the threat increased the interest of team membership and women low in stigma consciousness reported higher leadership career goals than those high in stigma consciousness. The second study, conducted with 90 female undergraduates (Mage = 20.6, SD = 1.6), presented explicit stereotype threat and showed that the explicit threat had negative effect on leadership aspiration, and women high in stigma consciousness felt more negative affect and less social self-esteem due to threat than those who were low. The present research contributes to the women’s leadership literature by identifying for the first time the role of stigma consciousness in the motivational and affective consequences of stereotype threat.

The current study utilized trait activation theory (TAT) (Tett & Burnett, 2003; Tett et al., 2013) to explain how the salience of goal-relevant performance-oriented social (i.e., manager's transformational leadership and peer performance norms) and organizational cues (i.e., reward expectancy) release or constrain employees' achievement striving (AS) personality trait and regulate the commitment to assigned difficult work goals. We also examined the effects of discretionary cues (signified by psychological empowerment) as trait activators. Hypotheses were tested using survey data collected from 297 managers employed in six large firms operating under a large Turkish family business group and using a common management-by-objectives system. In line with our predictions, when goals were perceived to be difficult, the associations between situational cues and goal commitment were inverse for employees with high versus low AS. When goal difficulty was high, performance-oriented situational cues were generally positively related to goal commitment for employees with high AS, but the relationships were negative for those with low AS. The results also showed that, for commitment to difficult goals, psychological empowerment activated the expression of high and low AS in a similar manner. Overall, the findings challenge the prevailing universalistic approaches to goal motivation.

Utilizing trait-activation theory, this study examines the interactions between achievement striving personality trait and situational cues on individuals’ level of goal commitment. Commitment to three different goal types (customer, service, and finance) were investigated. Hypotheses were tested using survey data collected from 297 managers employed in six large firms operating under a Turkish family business group and using a common management-by-objectives system. In support of the premises of the demands-trait fit perspective, a match (high-high or low-low) between social (i.e., supervisor’s transformational leadership and peer group norms), organizational (i.e., reward expectancy), and discretionary (i.e., psychological empowerment) situational cues lead to larger increases in goal commitment than a mismatch (high-low or low-high). These findings indicated that employees are more likely to express achievement striving personality trait in the context of difficult assigned goals when these high task demands are commensurate with leadership behaviors, group norms, and reward systems. Also, having high goal difficulty with low achievement striving is linked with significant decreases in goal commitment, which can be attributed to perceived job strain due to unwelcome job demands. The proposed three-way interaction effects were generally significant for customer and process goals, but not for finance goals, indicating that there are motivational differences across goals depending on content.

Multiple strands of service research have examined the mutually reinforcing relationships between service employees and their customers on the organizational frontline. However, recent technological innovations and employment trends are raising questions related to continued centrality of frontline employees in the management of services; and scholars are suggesting a more complex view of what takes place on the frontlines of contemporary service organizations. This paper symposium aims to pull together the distinct strands of literature dealing with the evolving nature of frontline service work and provide directions for future multidisciplinary research. We aim to accomplish this task of integration and reflection utilizing five papers, rooted in multiple disciplines, presenting insights on the current and evolving role of frontline service employees in relation to their customers. Further, utilizing the unique scholarly perspectives of our two discussants, distinct insights from all five papers will be integrated to propose a way forward for researchers interested in service-related phenomena. Interpersonal Interactions on the Frontline: Review and Recommendations Presenter: Anya Madeleine Johnson; U. Of Sydney Presenter: Markus Groth; UNSW Sydney Presenter: Yu Wu; UNSW Sydney Presenter: Helena Nguyen; U. Of Sydney Customer Mistreatment and Frontline Employee Retaliation Presenter: Mahmut Bayazit; Sabanci U. Presenter: Danielle Van Jaarsveld; U. of British Columbia Presenter: Pascale Fricke; U. of British Columbia Does Frontline Employee Engagement Influence Customer Engagement?: A Meta-Analysis Presenter: Eric J. Michel; Northern Illinois U. Presenter: Kristina Lindsey Hall; Louisiana State U. Presenter: Sven Kepes; Virginia Commonwealth U. Presenter: Matthew Leon; U. of North Florida Presenter: Ji Qi; Grand Valley State U. Presenter: Laurence Weinzimmer; Bradley U. Presenter: Anthony R. Wheeler; West Chester U. of Pennsylvania Delivering Compassionate Services in Health Care Presenter: Timothy J. Vogus; Vanderbilt U. Presenter: Laura McClelland; Virginia Commonwealth U. Presenter: Yuna Lee; Columbia U. Presenter: Kathleen McFadden; Northern Illinois U. Presenter: Xinyu Hu; Northern Illinois U. Positioning Frontline Employees for the Delivery of Hospitable Services Presenter: David Solnet; U. of Queensland Presenter: Mahesh Vaidyanathan Subramony; Northern Illinois U. Presenter: Robert C. Ford; UCF & Roy E. Crummer School of Business, Rollins College Presenter: Maria Golubovskaya; U. of Queensland Presenter: Hee Jung Kan; Virginia Tech Presenter: Murat Hancer; U. of Central Florida

Conducted in the small business retail and service context, the current study examines how shop manager’s and firm owner’s transformational and transactional leadership styles interact with firms’ use of high performance work system (HPWS) practices and impact both psychological and organizational service climates. Cross-level tests of moderation are conducted using multi-level and multi-respondent survey data from shop employees and managers. The results indicate that shop manager’s transformational leadership style has a substitutive interactive effect on climate, such that its positive influence on climate level decreases as higher levels of HPWS are adopted. Furthermore, the positive influence of shop manager’s transformational leadership style is boosted when the owner also exhibits a high level of transformational leadership. The findings also suggest that the effects of both shop manager’s and firm owner’s transactional leadership on climate are enhanced by the adoption of high levels of HPWS. In the case of firm owners, HPWS plays a critical role of negating the negative influence of transactional leadership on organizational service climate. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.

Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are becoming common in emerging economies, though it is not clear if and how employees benefit from them in terms of their work-family balance and well-being. In contrast to previous work that used structural-functional explanations, we argue that FWA implementation should be depicted within its socio-political and socio-cultural context. We used survey data collected from 213 professionals in Istanbul, Turkey to examine the roles of flexibility i-deals and perceived family-supportive culture in the relationship between FWA availability and these employee outcomes. Results supported the hypothesis that i-deals mediate the relationship between FWAs and work-to-family conflict. Furthermore, perceived family supportive cultures predicted both work-to-family and family-to-work conflict and moderated the relationship between i-deals and family-to-work conflict. Finally work-to-family conflict mediated the relationship of flexibility i-deals and family supportive cultures with perceived general health. These finding are discussed for their implications for employees who are trying to balance their work and family lives and for organizations who are considering implementing FWAs.

The present study takes a dynamic approach to investigate the presence and extent of change in implicit prejudice toward female leadership of municipality employees following exposure to a female leader. Longitudinal data (three phase, three month time interval) were collected from 307 civil servants of metropolitan district municipalities which had either a female mayor for the first time in their history (n = 133) or a male municipality mayor (n = 170) following March 2015 municipality elections in Turkey. We tested two hypotheses, the first based on the APE model (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006) and the second based on role incongruity theory and backlash effect (Rudman & Glick, 1999): 1) exposure will reduce implicit prejudice when followers have high quality interaction (i.e., LMX, interactional justice) with a female leader and 2) exposure will increase implicit prejudice when followers perceive female leader to have masculine characteristics. Latent growth modeling analyses, controlling for quantity of interaction, demonstrated a marginally significant negative interaction effect of exposure to a female leader and perceived interactional justice for male followers and significant negative interaction effect of exposure and LMX quality (both affect and professional respect dimensions) for female followers. The results for exposure and masculinity as a leader characteristic were not significant for either gender. We discuss the implications of this study for diverging theoretical explanations on the malleability of implicit prejudice toward female leadership as well as dynamic approaches to role incongruity theory and implicit leadership theories.

Research in organizational ecology of product and investment markets finds that socially constructed understandings of organizational identities constrain organizational behavior, and widespread conformity on the part of organizations to audience expectations in turn leads to the replication of identity categories. These effects illustrate what is known as the ‘duality of niche and form’: niches define forms and forms define niches (Hannan and Freeman, 1986). We predict that this duality also holds in labor markets. Using card sorting techniques in in-depth interviews, we find considerable consensus on organizational identity categories among participants in the Turkish banking labor market. We show that these labor market identity categories correspond to niches that banks occupy in resource space and to sets of structural equivalence in a network of employee mobility. Moreover, identity categories shape labor market participants’ preferences for firms. Distinctiveness of identity categories accentuates the appeal of firms to workers employed by firms in the same identity category.

We investigated the effects of leaders’ emotional regulation request (suppression or cognitive reappraisal) on follower’s felt and expressed anger and attitudes, as well as the effect of follower’s expressed anger on leaders’ attitudes toward followers. Study 1 using a 2x3 experimental design, examined the role of a hypothetical female/male leader’s suppression/cognitive-reappraisal request following the delivery of bad news on followers’ (229 undergraduates) felt/expressed anger and attitudes toward the leader. Results indicated that leader’s reappraisal request was more successful in decreasing felt anger compared to a control condition as well as decreasing expressed anger compared to both suppression request and control condition. Female leaders who requested suppression were evaluated less favorably than male leaders when followers held stereotypical attitudes towards female leadership. Study 2 showed that leaders’ (n = 32 executives) are more likely to perceive the expressed anger of followers’ and develop negative attitudes towards them following a suppression versus a reappraisal request. We found that regardless of followers’ gender, leaders’ attitudes were more positive when perceived follower anger was low.

We know that there are cross-cultural differences in psychological variables, such as individualism/collectivism. But it has not been clear which of these variables show relatively the greatest differences. The Survey of World Views project operated from the premise that such issues are best addressed in a diverse sampling of countries representing a majority of the world’s population, with a very large range of item-content. Data were collected online from 8,883 individuals (almost entirely college students based on local publicizing efforts) in 33 countries that constitute more than two third of the world’s population, using items drawn from measures of nearly 50 variables. This report focuses on the broadest patterns evident in item data. The largest differences were not in those contents most frequently emphasized in cross-cultural psychology (e.g., values, social axioms, cultural tightness), but instead in contents involving religion, regularity-norm behaviors, family roles and living arrangements, and ethnonationalism. Content not often studied cross-culturally (e.g., materialism, Machiavellianism, isms dimensions, moral foundations) demonstrated moderate-magnitude differences. Further studies are needed to refine such conclusions, but indications are that cross-cultural psychology may benefit from casting a wider net in terms of the psychological variables of focus.

Using a 2X2 experimental design we investigated the effects of leader’s emotional regulation requests following bad news on follower felt anger, expressed anger and attitudes toward the leader, in light of leaders gender, follower’s chronic emotion regulation strategies, and implicit prejudice toward female leadership. Participants assumed the role of an intern who was expecting a job offer, but rejected by the leader with an email and who requested them to suppress or reappraise their emotions. Participants responded to the bad news with a reply email which they did or did not express their anger as well as reported their felt anger and their attitudes towards the leader. Results indicated that suppression request by the leader had a negative effect on felt anger, expressed anger and attitudes towards the leader. The effect of emotional regulation request on expressed anger was mediated by follower felt anger and the effect on attitudes were mediated by both felt and expressed anger. Furthermore, a match between requested reappraisal strategy and chronically used reappraisal strategy was more successful in buffering expressed anger. Finally, female leaders were preferred more when they used reappraisal rather than suppression when followers were prejudiced towards female leadership.

We adopted Bowen and Ostroff's () HRM system strength concept so as to test it within the context of a management by objectives (MBO) system, which was utilized by six independent firms owned by a large, diversified family business group in Turkey. For this purpose, we surveyed the middle managers to measure 10 context‐specific metafeatures of the MBO system. By using aggregated scores at the functional group level (N = 47), we captured the distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus dimensions of this HRM practice. We tested and compared three alternative theoretical models of HRM strength where the three dimensions have compensatory, additive, and distinctiveness mediated effects on climate quality and strength. Results support the compensatory model and indicate that the strength of the MBO system (as a reflective latent variable representing the shared variance of the system's distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus) is positively related to business units’ quality and strength of goal climate. In addition, distinctiveness—but not consistency and consensus—of the MBO system appears to be particularly critical for the emergence of a strong and high‐quality goal climate. Lastly, implications and limitations of the study as well as possible future research directions are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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