Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison

Taking Charge At Work: Extrarole Efforts to Initiate Workplace Change

In this study, we investigated a neglected form of extrarole behavior called taking charge and sought to understand factors that motivate employees to engage in this activity. Taking charge is disc...

Newcomer Information Seeking: Exploring Types, Modes, Sources, and Outcomes

This study provides insight into the organizational newcomer information-seeking process. Surveys were given to 205 new accountants one, three, and six months into their jobs. Patterns of seeking v...

An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don’t Communicate Upward and Why

ABSTRACT There is evidence from a variety of sources that employees often do not feel comfortable speaking to their bosses about organizational problems or issues that concern them. The purpose of this study was to shed light on the types of issues that employees are reluctant to raise, and identify why employees sometimes decide to remain silent rather than voice their concerns. We interviewed 40 employees and found that most had been in situations where they were concerned about an issue but did not raise it to a supervisor. Silence spanned a range of organizational issues, with several of our respondents indicating that they did not feel comfortable speaking to those above them about any issues or concerns. The most frequently mentioned reason for remaining silent was the fear of being viewed or labeled negatively, and as a consequence, damaging valued relationships. From our data, we develop a model of how the perceived consequences of voice contribute to silence, and a model of how the social and relational implications of speaking up can take away employees’ ability to have influence within an organizational setting.

Longitudinal study of the effects of information seeking on newcomer socialization

In this study, the effects of information seeking on newcomer socialization are assessed. The results suggest that by seeking information, organizational newcomers can facilitate the socialization process. The frequency with which 135 new staff accountants sought specific types of information during their first 6 months of employment was related to how well they had mastered their job, defined their role, learned about their organizations culture, and become socially integrated. In contrast to findings from research focusing on the organizations role in socialization, these findings suggest that newcomers are proactive information seekers who take an active role in adjusting to their new environment

Employee Voice Behavior: Integration and Directions for Future Research

Within organizations, employees continually confront situations that put them face to face with the decision of whether to speak up (i.e., voice) or remain silent when they have potentially useful information or ideas. In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of conceptual and empirical research focused on better understanding the motives underlying voice, individual, and situational factors that increase employee voice behavior, and the implications of voice and silence for employees, work groups, and organizations. Yet this literature has notable gaps and unresolved issues, and it is not entirely clear where future scholarship should be directed. This article, therefore, is an attempt to review and integrate the existing literature on employee voice and also to provide some direction for future research.

Organizational citizenship behavior as a critical link between HRM practices and service quality

This paper discusses how organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) provides a critical link between a firms human resource management practices and its level of customer service. It is argued that a firms overall human resources philosophy, approach to selection and socialization, evaluation and reward practices, and use of rules and job descriptions will affect the amount of citizenship behavior that employees display. In the aggregate, OCB will have a positive impact on a firms level of service quality.

Disentangling Role Perceptions: How Perceived Role Breadth, Discretion, Instrumentality, and Efficacy Relate to Helping and Taking Charge

The objective of this study was to empirically disentangle role perceptions related to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that have been confounded in past research, investigate their unique relationships with both an affiliative (helping) and a challenging (taking charge) form of OCB, and determine their relative importance in explaining these 2 forms of OCB. The authors also examined whether role discretion and role breadth independently moderate the procedural justice-to-OCB relationship. The authors surveyed 225 engineers in India and their direct supervisors. The results showed that 3 of the 4 facets of OCB role perception explain unique variance in either helping or taking charge, and that role breadth moderates the relationships between procedural justice and both helping and taking charge. The authors discuss implications of these findings for OCB theory and research, as well as for managerial practice.

Speaking up in groups: a cross-level study of group voice climate and voice.

Despite a growing body of research on employee voice—defined as the discretionary communication of ideas, suggestions, or opinions intended to improve organizational or unit functioning—the effects of shared or collective-level cognitions have received scant attention. There has also been relatively little research on voice within work groups. Our goal in this study was to address these important gaps by focusing on the effects of group-level beliefs about voice (i.e., group voice climate) on individual voice behavior within work groups. We conducted a cross-level investigation of voice behavior within 42 groups of engineers from a large chemical company. Consistent with our hypotheses, group voice climate was highly predictive of voice and explained variance beyond the effects of individual-level identification and satisfaction, and procedural justice climate. Also consistent with predictions, the effect of identification on voice was stronger in groups with favorable voice climates. These findings provide evidence that voice is shaped not just by individual attitudes and perceptions of the work context, as past research has shown, but also by group-level beliefs. The results also highlight the importance of broadening our conceptual models of voice to include shared cognitions and of conducting additional cross-level research on voice.

Doing the Job Well: An Investigation of Pro-Social Rule Breaking

This article introduces and explores the construct of pro-social rule breaking. Pro-social rule breaking is rooted in a desire to promote the welfare of the organization or one of its stakeholders. The first two studies used interview data to identify three primary types of pro-social rule breaking: rule breaking to perform one’s responsibilities more efficiently, rule breaking to help a subordinate or colleague, and rule breaking to provide good customer service. A third study used a scenario-based laboratory experiment. It found that the likelihood of pro-social rule breaking was positively related to job autonomy, coworker behavior, and risk-taking propensity.

THE EMPLOYEE-ORGANIZATION RELATIONSHIP: A TIMELY CONCEPT IN A PERIOD OF TRANSITION

The employee-organization relationship (EOR) has increasingly become a focal point for researchers in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial relations. Literature on the EOR has developed at both the individual – (e.g. psychological contracts) and the group and organizational-levels of analysis (e.g. employment relationships). Both sets of literatures are reviewed, and we argue for the need to integrate these literatures as a means for improving understanding of the EOR. Mechanisms for integrating these literatures are suggested. A subsequent discussion of contextual effects on the EOR follows in which we suggest that researchers develop models that explicitly incorporate context. We then examine a number of theoretical lenses to explain various attributes of the EOR such as the dynamism and fairness of the exchange, and new ways of understanding the exchange including positive functional relationships and integrative negotiations. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed on the EOR.