Business Commons^™

Gender Bias In Cultural Tightness Across The 50 U.S. States And Its Links To Gender Inequality In Leadership And Innovation, Xin Qin, Roy Y. J. Chua, Ling Tan, Wanlu Li, Chen Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Cultural tightness theory, which holds that “tight” cultures have rigid norms and sanctions, provides unique insights into cultural variations. However, current theorizing has not analyzed gender differences in cultural tightness. Addressing this gap, this research shows that women are more constrained than men by norms within the same society. By recruiting 15,425 respondents, we mapped state-level gender bias in cultural tightness across the United States. Variability in gender bias in cultural tightness was associated with state-level socio-political factors (religion and political ideology) and gender-related threats. Gender bias in cultural tightness was positively associated with state-level gender inequality in (business and …

How Transformational Leadership Transforms Followers’ Affect And Work Engagement, Benjamin Bader, Michael Gielnik, Ronald Bledow

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How do episodes of transformational leadership transform followers? To address this question, we build on theories of affective events and affect regulation and develop a research model that explicates a mechanism of the transformation process implicit in transformational leadership theory. Specifically, the model explains how experiencing episodes of transformational leadership transforms (i.e., changes) followers’ positive affect and eventually their work engagement by fulfilling followers’ basic psychological needs. We tested our model in two independent longitudinal samples using daily and weekly measurement designs with 214 (N = 75) and 147 (N = 54) lagged observations, respectively. In support of our model, …

How Should Leaders Manage Hybrid Working Relationships?, Karin Sanders, Andrew Dhaenens

Perspectives@SMU

Organisations and their leaders need to adapt to new ways of working and hybrid work relationships, write UNSW Business School’s Karin Sanders, Andrew Dhaenens and Patrick Sharry

Smart Heuristics For Individuals, Teams, And Organizations, Gerd Gigerenzer, Jochen Reb, Shenghua Luan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Heuristics are fast, frugal, and accurate strategies that enable rather than limit decision making under uncertainty. Uncertainty, as opposed to calculable risk, is characteristic of most organizational contexts. We review existing research and offer a descriptive and prescriptive theoretical framework to integrate the current patchwork of heuristics scattered across various areas of organizational studies. Research on the adaptive toolbox is descriptive, identifying the repertoire of heuristics on which individuals, teams, and organizations rely. Research on ecological rationality is prescriptive, specifying the conditions under which a given heuristic performs well, that is, when it is smart. Our review finds a relatively …

Leader Mindfulness And Employee Performance: A Sequential Mediation Model Of Lmx Quality, Interpersonal Justice, And Employee Stress, Jochen Reb, Sankalp Chaturvedi, Jayanth Narayanan, Ravi S. Kudesia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the present research, we examine the relation between leader mindfulness and employee performance through the lenses of organizational justice and leader-member relations. We hypothesize that employees of more mindful leaders view their relations as being of higher leader-member exchange (LMX) quality. We further hypothesize two mediating mechanisms of this relation: increased interpersonal justice and reduced employee stress. In other words, we posit that employees of more mindful leaders feel treated with greater respect and experience less stress. Finally, we predict that LMX quality serves as a mediator linking leader mindfulness to employee performance—defined in terms of both in-role and …

Flexible Moral Behavior In The Workplace, Kraivin Chintakananda

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In my dissertation, I systematically examine what it means to be morally flexible. I develop a scale to capture an individual’s willingness to adapt their moral behavior and examine both positive and negative consequences of this type of moral flexibility in the workplace. My dissertation consists of three studies. In Chapter 2, I draw from the personality strength literature and research on within-person variability in moral behavior to introduce the construct of moral adaptability (MA) defined as the willing to adjust moral behavior depending on the situation. I argue MA functions in a similar manner to personality strength (but in …

The Missing Shifts, Saumya Sindhwani, Jerry Conner, Howard Thomas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Saumya Sindhwani, Jerry Connor and Howard Thomas argue it is time to change the way we develop leaders – and tap into the power of mindset. The needs the managers speak of fit into two broad categories (“empathy” and “resourcefulness”) and both are fundamental “changes in mindset”. By that, we mean a change in attitude or world view.

Leading Mindfully In Dynamic Times: Can A Mindfulness-Based Leadership Training And Coaching Program Increase Leadership Effectiveness?, Nina Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This research examined the influence of a Mindfulness-based Leadership Training and Coaching Program (MBP), in garnering three aspects of leadership effectiveness; extra employee effort, productive performance and followers’ satisfaction with leadership.

We hypothesized that mindfulness-based leadership training and coaching program can influence leaders’ frequency in adopting authentic, transformational and transactional leadership behaviors to enhance leadership effectiveness.

We tested these predictions separately on two control and intervention groups. Results suggested that the combined training and coaching mindfulness-based intervention program had predictive effects between the practice of mindful attunement of leaders’ behaviors and enhancement in leadership effectiveness, even in a short span …

"You Wouldn't Like Me When I'M Sleepy": Leader Sleep, Daily Abusive Supervision, And Work Unit Engagement, Christopher M. Barnes, Lorenzo Lucianetti, Devasheesh P. Bhave, Michael S. Christian

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine daily leader sleep as an antecedent to daily abusive supervisory behavior and work unit engagement. Drawing from ego depletion theory, our theoretical extension includes a serial mediation model of nightly sleep quantity and quality as predictors of abusive supervision. We argue that poor nightly sleep influences leaders to enact daily abusive behaviors via ego depletion, and these abusive behaviors ultimately result in decreased daily subordinate unit work engagement. We test this model through an experience sampling study spread over ten work days with data from both supervisors and their subordinates. Our study supports the role of the indirect …

Leading Mindfully: Two Studies Of The Influence Of Supervisor Trait Mindfulness On Employee Well-Being And Performance, Jochen Reb, Jayanth Narayanan, Sankalp Chaturvedi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This research examines the influence of leaders’ mindfulness on employee well-being and performance. We hypothesized that supervisors’ trait mindfulness is positively associated with different facets of employee well-being, such as job satisfaction and need satisfaction, and different dimensions of employee performance, such as in-role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. We also explored whether one measure of employee well-being, psychological need satisfaction, plays a mediating role in the relation between supervisor mindfulness and employee performance. We tested these predictions in two studies using data from both supervisors and their subordinates. Results were consistent with our hypotheses. Overall, this research contributes to …

Followership, Leadership And Social Influence, Burak Oc, Michael R. Bashshur

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Traditional research in leadership has largely relegated followers to the role of passive recipients or, at best, moderators of leader influence and behaviors. However, recent work in the area of followership has begun shifting this focus and emphasizing the possibility that followers actively have an influence over leaders, in particular leader behavior. This paper revisits traditional areas of the leadership literature and builds on the emerging followership literature to reintroduce followers as part of the social context of leaders. In an attempt to build theoretical rationales for how followers influence leader behavior we draw on the social influence (e.g., Social …

Pro-Creativity Leadership: An Exploratory Study On The Mediating Role Of Intrinsic Motivation, Gilbert Tan, Wei Nurn Chong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many scholars believe in the critical role leaders play in fostering creativity at the workplace (e.g. Amabile, 1998; Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 1996; Jung, 2000-2001; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). Leaders have been described to occupy a boundary role position in organizations (Katz & Kahn, 1978) where they are tasked with influencing subordinate behavior in order to attain organizational goals (Fleishman, 1973; Mumford, 1986). As such, they are in the position to influence subordinate behavior considerably, including subordinates’ creative behavior. Yet to date, not much research has been done on the effect of leadership on employee creativity (Jung, 2000-2001; …

Spirituality At Work In A Changing World: Managerial And Research Implications, Eugene Geh, Gilbert Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper identifies the seminal works of key theorists in the field of spirituality and traces the development of the key ideas of spirituality at the workplace in relation to their relevance in today's organizational context. We examine how having a healthy orientation towards spirituality at work can lead to desirable individual and organizational outcomes. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the rapidly changing workplace and its future directions by first uncovering the rationale behind the evolution of management thought since the introduction of Taylor's scientific management and then, by examining the various stages of economic development and as well …

Trust In Leadership: Meta-Analytic Findings And Implications For Research And Practice, Kurt T. Dirks, Donald L. Ferrin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this study, the authors examined the findings and implications of the research on trust in leadership that has been conducted during the past 4 decades. First, the study provides estimates of the primary relationships between trust in leadership and key outcomes, antecedents, and correlates (k = 106). Second, the study explores how specifying the construct with alternative leadership referents (direct leaders vs. organizational leadership) and definitions (types of trust) results in systematically different relationships between trust in leadership and outcomes and antecedents. Direct leaders (e.g., supervisors) appear to be a particularly important referent of trust. Last, a theoretical framework …

The Trusted General Manager And Unit Performance: Empirical Evidence Of A Competitive Advantage, James H. Davis, F. David Schoorman, Roger C. Mayer, Hwee Hoon Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Employee trust for the general manager is proposed as an internal organizational characteristic that provides a competitive advantage for the firm. This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust for a business unit's general manager and organizational performance. Trust was found to be significantly related to sales, profits and employee turnover in the restaurant industry. Managers who were either more or less trusted differed significantly in perceptions of their ability, benevolence and integrity.