Frederick P. Morgeson

Integrating Motivational, Social, and Contextual Work Design Features: A Meta-Analytic Summary and Theoretical Extension of the Work Design Literature

The authors developed and meta-analytically examined hypotheses designed to test and extend work design theory by integrating motivational, social, and work context characteristics. Results from a summary of 259 studies and 219,625 participants showed that 14 work characteristics explained, on average, 43% of the variance in the 19 worker attitudes and behaviors examined. For example, motivational characteristics explained 25% of the variance in subjective performance, 2% in turnover perceptions, 34% in job satisfaction, 24% in organizational commitment, and 26% in role perception outcomes. Beyond motivational characteristics, social characteristics explained incremental variances of 9% of the variance in subjective performance, 24% in turnover intentions, 17% in job satisfaction, 40% in organizational commitment, and 18% in role perception outcomes. Finally, beyond both motivational and social characteristics, work context characteristics explained incremental variances of 4% in job satisfaction and 16% in stress. The results of this study suggest numerous opportunities for the continued development of work design theory and practice.

The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work

Although there are thousands of studies investigating work and job design, existing measures are incomplete. In an effort to address this gap, the authors reviewed the work design literature, identified and integrated previously described work characteristics, and developed a measure to tap those work characteristics. The resultant Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ) was validated with 540 incumbents holding 243 distinct jobs and demonstrated excellent reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. In addition, the authors found that, although both task and knowledge work characteristics predicted satisfaction, only knowledge characteristics were related to training and compensation requirements. Finally, the results showed that social support incrementally predicted satisfaction beyond motivational work characteristics but was not related to increased training and compensation requirements. These results provide new insight into how to avoid the trade-offs commonly observed in work design research. Taken together, the WDQ appears to hold promise as a general measure of work characteristics that can be used by scholars and practitioners to conduct basic research on the nature of work or to design and redesign jobs in organizations.

Climate as a moderator of the relationship between leader-member exchange and content specific citizenship: Safety climate as an exemplar

The present study integrates role theory, social exchange, organizational citizenship, and climate research to suggest that employees will reciprocate implied obligations of leadership-based social exchange (e.g., leader-member exchange [LMX]) by expanding their role and behaving in ways consistent with contextual behavioral expectations (e.g., work group climate). Using safety climate as an exemplar, the authors found that the relationship between LMX and subordinate safety citizenship role definitions was moderated by safety climate. In summary, high-quality LMX relationships resulted in expanded safety citizenship role definitions when there was a positive safety climate and there was no such expansion under less positive safety climates. The authors also found that safety citizenship role definitions were significantly related to safety citizenship behavior. Implications for both social exchange theory and safety research are discussed.

Leader-member exchange and citizenship behaviors: a meta-analysis.

This article provides a meta-analytic review of the relationship between the quality of leader-member exchanges (LMX) and citizenship behaviors performed by employees. Results based on 50 independent samples (N = 9,324) indicate a moderately strong, positive relationship between LMX and citizenship behaviors (rho = .37). The results also support the moderating role of the target of the citizenship behaviors on the magnitude of the LMX-citizenship behavior relationship. As expected, LMX predicted individual-targeted behaviors more strongly than it predicted organizational targeted behaviors (rho = .38 vs. rho = .31), and the difference was statistically significant. Whether the LMX and the citizenship behavior ratings were provided by the same source or not also influenced the magnitude of the correlation between the 2 constructs.

Leadership in Teams: A Functional Approach to Understanding Leadership Structures and Processes

As the use of teams has increased in organizations, research has begun to focus on the role of leadership in fostering team success. This review sought to summarize this literature and advance research and theory by focusing on leadership processes within a team and describing how team leadership can arise from four distinct sources inside and outside a team. Then, drawing from this inclusive, team-centric view of leadership, the authors describe 15 team leadership functions that help teams satisfy their critical needs and regulate their behavior in the service of goal accomplishment. This integrative view of team leadership enables the summarization of past research and identification of promising areas of future research.

Use of situational judgment tests to predict job performance: a clarification of the literature.

Although situational judgment tests have a long history in the psychological assessment literature and continue to be frequently used in employment contexts, there has been virtually no summarization of this literature. The purpose of this article is to review the history of such tests and present the results of a meta-analysis on criterion-related and construct validity. On the basis of 102 coefficients and 10,640 people, situational judgment tests showed useful levels of validity (rho = .34) that were generalizable. A review of 79 correlations between situational judgment tests and general cognitive ability involving 16,984 people indicated that situational judgment tests typically evidence relationships with cognitive ability (rho = .46). On the basis of the literature review and meta-analytic findings, implications for the continued use of situational judgment tests are discussed, particularly in terms of recent investigations into tacit knowledge.

The importance of job autonomy, cognitive ability, and job-related skill for predicting role breadth and job performance

Role theory suggests and empirical research has found that there is considerable variation in how broadly individuals define their jobs. We investigated the theoretically meaningful yet infrequently studied relationships between incumbent job autonomy, cognitive ability, job-related skill, role breadth, and job performance. Using multiple data sources and multiple measurement occasions in a field setting, we found that job autonomy, cognitive ability, and job-related skill were positively related to role breadth, accounting for 23% of the variance in role breadth. In addition, role breadth was positively related to job performance and was found to mediate the relationship between job autonomy, cognitive ability, job-related skill, and job performance. These results add to our understanding of the factors that predict role breadth, as well as having implications for how job aspects and individual characteristics are translated into performance outcomes and the treatment of variability in incumbent reports of job tasks.

The External Leadership of Self-Managing Teams: Intervening in the Context of Novel and Disruptive Events

Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on external leaders of self-managing teams. The integration of functional leadership theory with research on team routines suggests that leaders can intervene in teams in several different ways, and the effectiveness of this intervention depends on the nature of the events the team encounters. External team leaders from 3 organizations first described a series of events (N=117), and leaders and team members then completed surveys to quantitatively describe the events. Results indicated that leader preparation and supportive coaching were positively related to team perceptions of leader effectiveness, with preparation becoming more strongly related to effectiveness as event novelty increased. More active leader intervention activities (active coaching and sense making) were negatively related to satisfaction with leadership yet were positively related to effectiveness as events became more disruptive.

Multiple professional identities: examining differences in identification across work-related targets.

Although there is a growing literature on organizational identification, relatively little research has investigated other possible targets of identification. In a sample of veterinarians working in a wide range of organizations, the authors compared their identification with the veterinary profession, their organization, and their workgroup. The authors found different patterns of identification across these targets depending on whether the individual (a) worked in a veterinary medicine or nonveterinary medicine organization and (b) was an owner/partner or an associate. Owners of veterinary medicine organizations identified more with the organization than with either the profession or their workgroup. Associates in veterinary medicine organizations identified more with the organization and the workgroup than with the profession. Veterinarians in nonveterinary medicine organizations identified more with the profession and their workgroup than with the organization. Identification with each of the targets provided independent predictive validity of job satisfaction.

Understanding why they don't see eye to eye: an examination of leader-member exchange (LMX) agreement.

Although it is an explicitly dyadic approach to leadership, some leader-member exchange (LMX) research has been characterized by relatively low levels of agreement between leader and member judgments of the relationship. Using a combination of meta-analytic methods and primary data collection, the authors sought to explore several theoretically and methodologically meaningful factors that might account for lower levels of agreement. On the basis of data from 64 independent samples (N = 10,884 dyads), the authors found that overall agreement was moderate in nature (? = .37). In addition, they found that longer relationship tenure, affectively oriented relationship dimensions, and ad hoc sampling techniques showed the highest levels of agreement. Empirical results from 98 matched dyads revealed that the extent of LMX agreement increases as the length of relationship tenure and intensity of dyadic interaction increases. Implications for LMX theory and future empirical research are discussed.