Cristiano L. Guarana

Too tired to inspire or be inspired: Sleep deprivation and charismatic leadership.

We draw from theory on sleep and affect regulation to extend the emotional labor model of leadership. We examine both leader and follower sleep as important antecedents of attributions of charismatic leadership. In Study 1, we manipulate the sleep of leaders, and find that leader emotional labor in the form of deep acting (but not surface acting or authentically experienced positive affect) mediates the harmful effect of leader sleep deprivation on follower ratings of charismatic leadership. In Study 2, we manipulate the sleep of followers, and find that follower experienced positive affect mediates the harmful effect of follower sleep deprivation on follower ratings of charismatic leadership of the leader. Thus, both leader and follower sleep deprivation harm attributions of charismatic leadership, with the regulation and experience of affect as causal mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record

Archival Data in Micro-Organizational Research A Toolkit for Moving to a Broader Set of Topics

Compared to macro-organizational researchers, micro-organizational researchers have generally eschewed archival sources of data as a means of advancing knowledge. The goal of this paper is to discuss emerging opportunities to use archival research for the purposes of advancing and testing theory in micro-organizational research. We discuss eight specific strengths common to archival micro-organizational research and how they differ from other traditional methods. We further discuss limitations of archival research, as well as strategies for mitigating these limitations. Taken together, we provide a toolkit to encourage micro-organizational researchers to capitalize on archival data.

Building sense out of situational complexity The role of ambivalence in creating functional leadership processes

There is growing consensus among scholars that the organizational environment has become increasingly complex, dynamic, and socially demanding. Leaders and followers navigate through a cognitive paradox where assessments of the situation can be at once cognitively overpowering and cognitively deceiving. In this article, we propose that complex situations can lead to ambivalence, a psychological state caused by contrasting evaluative orientations toward an object or situation. We propose that ambivalence can become a functional cognitive process that provides cognitive discomfort and fluidity for joint contextual interpretation when leaders and followers share ambivalent cognitive states. We develop a theoretical model of how this process unfolds, highlighting how and when situational complexity can trigger leader and follower ambivalence leading to distinct interpretative processes. Taken together, we explain how ambivalence can facilitate collaborative contextual interpretation within complex situations. In so doing, we advance the current understanding of ambivalence by explicating its role in creating functional leadership processes.

Identified ambivalence: When cognitive conflicts can help individuals overcome cognitive traps.

In this article we investigate the functional effects of ambivalence on decision-making processes. We build on the misattribution literature and recent work on ambivalence to propose that individuals who properly identify the causes of their ambivalence (i.e., identified ambivalence) can systematically process relevant situational cues to make more effective decisions. The results of 4 studies demonstrate that individuals experiencing identified ambivalence are less influenced by cognitive biases (i.e., the framing effect, availability bias, and conjunction bias) than individuals experiencing no ambivalence or felt ambivalence. Notably, we find that contextual awareness accounts for the effect of identified ambivalence on decision effectiveness. We then investigate the role of trait self-control as a specific contingency in our model; our results indicate that identified ambivalence leads to effective decisions when individuals are low in trait self-control. Taken together, we advance theory and offer robust, consistent empirical evidence that explains why and how ambivalence can result in functional outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record

An Examination of the Temporal Intricacies of Job Engagement

In this article, we theoretically develop and test the temporal intricacies of job engagement. Drawing on the attention view of social cognition, we examine the interplay of employees’ temporally relevant perspectives of fit (i.e., retrospected, current, and anticipated) within their ongoing membership to the organization. Utilizing field data gathered from a large multinational company over multiple time periods, we found support for a conditional indirect effect model. Specifically, our findings showed that current needs-supply (NS) fit accounted for two of the previously investigated antecedents of job engagement (i.e., psychological meaningfulness and safety), especially when organizational identification was low. Moreover, anticipated perceptions of NS fit fully mediated the influences of psychological meaningfulness and availability on job engagement. The mediating effect relating to psychological availability was also especially pronounced when organizational identification was low. By shedding light on employees’ temporally constructed psychological experiences, our research suggests that job engagement is not only affected by employees’ contemporaneous understandings of their jobs but also influenced by their perceptions of anticipated opportunities.

The Embedding Effect of Transformational Leadership in Extreme Contexts

Over the last thirty years, measures of transformational leadership have been positively related to a broad range of individual, unit and organizational performance outcomes. Most of this literatur...