Anne S. Tsui

Cross-National, Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior Research: Advances, Gaps, and Recommendations

The advent of the 21st century has witnessed an increasing interest in developing knowledge of international management to meet the needs of global business development. To take stock of the progress in organizational behavior research with national culture as the major explanatory variable, the authors analyzed 93 empirical studies published in the 16 leading management journals from 1996 to 2005. This analysis shows some advances but also identifies many gaps in both theory and methods. They offer seven recommendations to address these gaps and advance future research.

Explaining Employment Relationships With Social Exchange and Job Embeddedness

The research reported in this article clarifies how employee-organization relationships (EORs) work. Specifically, the authors tested whether social exchange and job embeddedness mediate how mutual-investment (whereby employers offer high inducements to employees for their high contributions) and over-investment (high inducements without corresponding high expected contributions) EOR approaches, which are based on Tsui, Pearce, Porter, and Tripolis (1997) framework, affect quit propensity and organizational commitment. Two studies evaluated these intervening mechanisms. Study 1 surveyed 953 Chinese managers attending part-time master of business administration (MBA) programs in China, whereas Study 2 collected cross-sectional and longitudinal data from 526 Chinese middle managers in 41 firms. Standard and multilevel causal modeling techniques affirmed that social exchange and job embeddedness translate EOR influence. A second multilevel test using lagged outcome measures further established that job embeddedness mediates long-term EOR effects over 18 months. These findings corroborate prevailing views that social exchange explains how mutual- and over-investment EORs motivate greater workforce commitment and loyalty. This study enriches EOR perspectives by identifying job embeddedness as another mediator that is more enduring than social exchange.

Pursuit of Whose Happiness? Executive Leaders' Transformational Behaviors and Personal Values

This paper theorizes and tests how chief executive officers (CEOs) transformational leadership behaviors, which motivate followers to do more than expected and act for the good of the collective, influence followers commitment. We theorize that CEOs values may either enhance or attenuate the effect of transformational behaviors on followers, depending on followers reactions to the congruence or incongruence between leaders internal values and their outward transformational behaviors. Self-enhancement values—focusing on the leaders own happiness—would attenuate the effect, whereas self-transcendent values—focusing on others happiness—would accentuate the effect of CEOs transformational behaviors on followers commitment. Using a sample of 45 managers in two companies in China, we validated a Q-sort method of measuring personal values. Results of a second study using cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys as well as interview data from a sample of Chinese CEOs, top managers, and middle managers supported both the attenuation and the accentuation effects and validated the idea that middle managers can detect their CEOs values.

Unpacking Employee Responses to Organizational Exchange Mechanisms: The Role of Social and Economic Exchange Perceptions

Organizations form different degrees of social and economic exchange relationships with their employees. In this study, we unpack employee responses to organizational-level mechanisms of executive leadership style, organizational culture, and employment approaches by examining the mediating role of employees perceptions of social and economic exchange relationships. The results of hierarchical linear modeling analyses show that social exchanges partially mediate the influence of the CEOs transformational leadership, an integrative organizational culture, and the mutual investment employment approach on affective commitment and task performance but not on organizational citizenship behavior. Economic exchanges partially mediate the influence of a hierarchical culture on all three employee outcomes and mediate the influence of the quasi-spot contract employment approach on commitment and organizational citizenship behavior but not on task performance. These results suggest the need for further understanding of the role of social and economic exchanges in organizational research.

Humble Chief Executive Officers’ Connections to Top Management Team Integration and Middle Managers’ Responses

In this article, we examine the concept of humility among chief executive officers (CEOs) and the process through which it is connected to integration in the top management team (TMT) and middle managers’ responses. We develop and validate a comprehensive measure of humility using multiple samples and then test a multilevel model of how CEOs’ humility links to the processes of top and middle managers. Our methodology involves survey data gathered twice from 328 TMT members and 645 middle managers in 63 private companies in China. We find CEO humility to be positively associated with empowering leadership behaviors, which in turn correlates with TMT integration. TMT integration then positively relates to middle managers’ perception of having an empowering organizational climate, which is then associated with their work engagement, affective commitment, and job performance. Findings confirm our hypotheses based on social information processing theory: humble CEOs connect to top and middle managers through collective perceptions of empowerment at both levels. Qualitative data from interviews with 51 CEOs provide additional insight into the meaning of humility among CEOs and differences between those with high and low humility.

International Collaboration for Academic Publication Implications From the Resource-Based View and Transaction Cost Theory

In this study, the authors examine factors that explain international scholars’ success in publishing in North American management journals through collaboration. Drawing on the international entry mode literature, the authors propose that international collaboration teams are more successful when they increase complementary resources and reduce transaction costs. A sample of 364 articles from 10 North American management journals shows that teams published in higher impact management journals when they had U.S. or Canadian collaborators, higher proportions of assistant professors, and less gender diversity. Combining additional findings from 23 semistructured interviews, the authors provide a research model to explain the resources and costs embedded in international collaboration teams as well as mechanisms that help transform costs into resources.

Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development

This article presents a review of a book entitled “Great Minds in Management: The Process of Theory Development,” edited by Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt.