Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons^™

The Impact Of Positivity And Transparency On Trust In Leaders And Their Perceived Effectiveness, Steven M. Norman, Bruce Avolio, Fred Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

A critical challenge facing today’s organizational leaders is gaining their followers’ trust and having them view leaders as effective in addressing turmoil and change. Using a downsizing scenario as the context, this field experiment examined how a leader’s positivity and transparency impacted followers’ perceived trust, defined in terms of willingness to be vulnerable, and effectiveness of their leader. To test the hypotheses, 304 participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions of high (low) leader positivity × high (low) leader transparency. Results of our mixed methods study indicated both the leader’s level of positivity and transparency impacted followers’ …

Exploring Social Constructions Of Followership: A Qualitative Study, Melissa K. Carsten, Mary Uhl-Bien, Bradley J. West, Jaime L. Patera, Rob Mcgregor

Leadership Institute: Faculty Publications

This study adopts a qualitative approach to deconstruct the meaning of followership. Interviews were conducted with employees in various industries to examine how individuals socially construct their roles as followers and to explore followership schemas and contextual influences that relate to these constructions. Results suggest that while some individuals socially construct definitions around passivity, deference and obedience, others emphasize the importance of constructively questioning and challenging their leaders. With regard to personal qualities that are thought to make followers effective, major themes such as obedience, expressing opinions, and taking initiative were found to be most disparate across different groups of …

Managing Bpo Service Workers In India: Examining Hope On Performance Outcomes, Gwendolyn M. Combs, Rachel Clapp-Smith, Sucheta Nadkarni

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Much attention has been given to the explosion in business process outsourcing (BPO) operations in India. Little concern, however, has been paid to the performance of Indian service workers in these fast-paced and sometimes turbulent environments. Using a sample of 160 service workers from a privately held BPO firm in India, we examine the relationship between Indian service workers’ hope and their performance outcomes. Regression and structural equation model analyses indicated a significant positive relationship between Indian service workers’ levels of hope and their performance. These promising results highlight the importance of measuring and managing employee hope to maximize employee …

Team Identification, Trust, And Conflict: A Mediation Model, Guohong (Helen) Han, Peter D. Harms

Leadership Institute: Faculty Publications

Purpose — The current study aims to address the relationship between trust, team identification, and team conflict. Specifically, it aims to examine whether trust in peers mediates the relationship between team identification and team conflict.
Design/methodology/approach — This is an empirical paper based on two field studies. In Study 1, 241 employees in a US Fortune 500 company distributed in various and mostly R&D teams were surveyed. In Study 2,205 employees in a health care organization in the Midwest were surveyed.
Findings — Team identification was related to lower levels of both task conflict and relationship conflict. This relationship, however, …

Emotional Intelligence And Transformational And Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis, Peter D. Harms, Marcus Credé

Leadership Institute: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to evaluate claims that emotional intelligence is significantly related to transformational and other leadership behaviors. Results (based on 62 independent samples) indicated a validity estimate of .59 when ratings of both emotional intelligence and leadership behaviors were provided by the same source (self, subordinates, peers, or superiors). However, when ratings of the constructs were derived from different sources, the validity estimate was .12. Lower validity estimates were found for transactional and laissez-faire leadership behaviors. Separate analyses were performed for each measure of emotional intelligence. Trait measures of emotional intelligence tended to show higher validities …

Perceived Fairness Of Pay: The Importance Of Task Versus Maintenance Inputs In Japan, South Korea, And Hong Kong, Tae-Yeol Kim, Todd J. Weber, Kwok Leung, Yukiko Muramoto

Leadership Institute: Faculty Publications

This study compares East Asians’ evaluations of task and maintenance inputs in reward allocation decisions and examines the effects that inequity in various types of inputs and rewards have on fairness judgments. Based on a sample of 587 employees from various organizations in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, we find that Hong Kong Chinese and South Korean employees are more likely to want their organizations and supervisors to emphasize maintenance inputs, while Japanese employees value task inputs in reward allocation. Results also show that there are significant country differences in fairness judgments associated with various types of inputs. For …

Regulation And Mindful Resident Care In Nursing Homes, Cathleen S. Colón-Emeric, Donde Ashmos Plowman, Donald Bailey, Kirsten Corazzini, Queen Utley-Smith, Natalie Ammarell, Mark Toles, Ruth Anderson

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Regulatory oversight is intended to improve the health outcomes of nursing home residents, yet evidence suggests that regulations can inhibit mindful staff behaviors that are associated with effective care. We explored the influence of regulations on mindful staff behavior as it relates to resident health outcomes, and offer a theoretical explanation of why regulations sometimes enhance mindfulness and other times inhibit it. We analyzed data from an in-depth, multiple-case study including field notes, interviews, and documents collected in eight nursing homes. We completed a conceptual/thematic description using the concept of mindfulness to reframe the observations. Shared facility mission strongly impacted …

Impact Of Positive Psychological Capital On Employee Well-Being Over Time, James B. Avey, Fred Luthans, Ronda M. Smith, Noel F. Palmer

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

The recently recognized core construct of psychological capital or PsyCap (consisting of the positive psychological resources of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience) has been demonstrated to be related to various employee attitudinal, behavioral, and performance outcomes. However, to date, the impact of this positive core construct over time and on important employee well-being outcomes has not been tested. This study meets this need by analyzing the relationship between a broad cross-section of employees’ (N = 280) level of PsyCap and two measures of psychological well-being over time. The results indicated that employees’ PsyCap was related to both measures of well-being …

Everyday Sensegiving: A Closer Look At Successful Plant Managers, Anne D. Smith, Donde Ashmos Plowman, Dennis Duchon

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

The authors conducted in-depth interviews and on-site visits with successful plant managers to understand similarities in their management approaches. Across 11 different plants, representing nine different industries, the authors found each plant manager actively engaged in shaping how employees viewed the organization and its values through what the authors call “everyday sensegiving.” From themes inductively identified from the interviews and on-site visits, four central values—”Here, we value people, we value openness, we value being positive, and we value being part of a larger community”— were identified. In this article, the authors link everyday sensegiving of these middle managers and extend …

Perceiver Effects As Projective Tests: What Your Perceptions Of Others Say About You, Dustin Wood, Peter D. Harms, Simine Vazire

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

In three studies, we document various properties of perceiver effects—or how an individual generally tends to describe other people in a population. First, we document that perceiver effects have consistent relationships with dispositional characteristics of the perceiver, ranging from self-reported personality traits and academic performance to well-being and measures of personality disorders, to how liked the person is by peers. Second, we document that the covariation in perceiver effects among trait dimensions can be adequately captured by a single factor consisting of how positively others are seen across a wide range of traits (e.g., how nice, interesting, trustworthy, happy, …

What Do Conscientious People Do? Development And Validation Of The Behavioral Indicators Of Conscientiousness (Bic), Joshua J. Jackson, Dustin Wood, Tim Bogg, Kate E. Walton, Peter D. Harms, Brent W. Roberts

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Typical assessments of personality traits collapse behaviors, thoughts, and feelings into a single measure without distinguishing between these different manifestations. To address this lack of specification, the current study develops and validates a measure that assesses a number of broad behaviors associated with the personality trait of conscientiousness (the Behavioral Indicators of Conscientiousness; BIC). Findings suggest that the lower-order structure of conscientious behaviors is mostly similar to the lower-order structure in extant trait measures. Furthermore, a daily diary method was used to validate the BIC against frequency counts of conscientious behavior. Overall, the results identify specific behaviors that conscientious individuals …

Relationship Between Positive Psychological Capital And Creative Performance, David S. Sweetman, Fred Luthans, James B. Avey, Brett C. Luthans

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Despite considerable attention to the creative process and its relationship with personal characteristics, there is no published study focused directly on the relationship between the recently recognized core construct of psychological capital (PsyCap) and creative performance. Drawing from a large (N = 899) and heterogeneous sample of working adults, this study investigates PsyCap and its components (i.e., efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience) as predictors of creative performance. Overall PsyCap predicted creative performance over and above each of the four PsyCap components. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered.

Malgré la grande attention accordée à la démarche créatrice et …

The Development And Resulting Performance Impact Of Positive Psychological Capital, Fred Luthans, James B. Avey, Bruce J. Avolio, Suzanne Peterson

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Recently, theory and research have supported psychological capital (PsyCap) as an emerging core construct linked to positive outcomes at the individual and organizational level. However, to date, little attention has been given to PsyCap development through training interventions; nor have there been attempts to determine empirically if such PsyCap development has a causal impact on participants’ performance. To fill these gaps we first conducted a pilot test of the PsyCap intervention (PCI) model with a randomized control group design. Next, we conducted a follow-up study with a cross section of practicing managers to determine if following the training guidelines of …