Giles Hirst

Outperforming whom? A multilevel study of performance-prove goal orientation, performance, and the moderating role of shared team identification.

Performance-prove goal orientation affects performance because it drives people to try to outperform others. A proper understanding of the performance-motivating potential of performance-prove goal orientation requires, however, that we consider the question of whom people desire to outperform. In a multilevel analysis of this issue, we propose that the shared team identification of a team plays an important moderating role here, directing the performance-motivating influence of performance-prove goal orientation to either the team level or the individual level of performance. A multilevel study of salespeople nested in teams supports this proposition, showing that performance-prove goal orientation motivates team performance more with higher shared team identification, whereas performance-prove goal orientation motivates individual performance more with lower shared team identification. Establishing the robustness of these findings, a second study replicates them with individual and team performance in an educational context.

The Influence of Instructor Support, Family Support and Psychological Capital on the Well-Being of Postgraduate Students: A Moderated Mediation Model.

The influence of instructor support, family support and psychological capital (PsyCap) on the subjective well-being of postgraduate business students, including whether PsyCap mediates the proposed support – well-being relationship were examined in this study. It was further investigated whether family support moderates this proposed mediated relationship. Direct positive relationships between instructor support and well-being, and between PsyCap and well-being were found. It was also found that PsyCap mediates the instructor support – well-being relationship. Finally, it was found that family support moderates this mediated relationship in such a way that the relationship is stronger among students with lower levels of family support.

Exploitation and Exploration Climates’ Influence on Performance and Creativity Diminishing Returns as Function of Self-Efficacy

In response to calls for multilevel research examining individual and meso-level processes to understand how exploitation and exploration dynamics play out in teams, we propose that individual in-role performance (cf. exploitation) and creativity (cf. exploration) are associated with team exploitation and exploration climate respectively, and this influence is moderated by domain specific performance and creative self-efficacy respectively. Studying 317 engineers in 70 teams across three national regions, we theorize and find domain-specific evidence that when individual self-efficacy is high, team climate has diminishing performance (exploitation climate × performance self-efficacy) and creative (exploration climate × creative self-efficacy) benefits. By simultaneously studying creativity and performance, our study helps understand the differences and communalities in the drivers of those outcomes in identifying both the domain-specific character of these influences and the similarity in how these influences play out.

Other-focused leaders, self-focused followers, and citizenship behavior

Our study advances the servant leadership literature by theoretically and empirically linking servant leadership, through its unique feature of self-sacrificial acts, to follower perceptions of sac...