Jisung Park

The need for status as a hidden motive of knowledge-sharing behavior: An application of costly signaling theory

ABSTRACT This study draws on costly signaling theory (CST) and explores the hidden motive of proactive knowledge sharing. We theorize that the need for status drives employees to generously share their tacit knowledge and special expertise to obtain social recognition and status as conferred by supervisory appraisal. We tested our hypotheses based on the moderated mediation model using a sample of 146 supervisor–subordinate dyads that were collected from South Korean organizations. The present analysis supports the proposed theoretical framework based on CST, thereby providing new insights into the need for status as an unexplored hidden motive of proactive knowledge sharing and the roles of job design factors as contextual contingencies. This study offers theoretical and practical implications related to knowledge management, employee motivation, and job design.

Pay Dispersion and Organizational Performance in Korea: Curvilinearity and the Moderating Role of Congruence with Organizational Culture

Abstract This study examines the curvilinear relationship between pay dispersion and organizational performance. According to the pay dispersion literature, a large pay gap has benefits and drawbacks for organizational performance because employees can feel motivated or demotivated depending on the degree of pay dispersion. We investigate the possibility of nonlinearity in the context of these countervailing forces, and aim to uncover the condition under which the positive effect of high pay dispersion prevails. Our empirical analysis of data from 436 Korean cross-industry firms shows that pay dispersion and organizational performance have an inverted U-shaped relationship. Moreover, when a pay scheme matches current organizational culture, the positive relationship between pay dispersion and organizational performance is more pronounced. We discuss the implications for future compensation research and practice.

The Effect of Coworker Social Loafing on Employees’ Distributive Justice Perceptions

Coworker social loafing, the tendency of workgroup members to reduce effort when they are working in groups, affects employee demotivation and productivity losses. However, little attention is paid to the dynamics of individual traits and situational contexts in explaining the relationship between coworker social loafing and perceptions of distributive justice. Therefore, drawing on organizational justice and social comparison theories, we examine the interactive effects of individual and situational characteristics on the negative relationship between social loafing and distributive justice perceptions. More specifically, we primarily focus on social comparison orientation (SCO) as a dispositional factor and leader-member exchange social comparison (LMXSC) as a situational factor because the degree to which people perceive unfairness markedly differs depending on how much an individual is sensitive to the context that harms self-interest, and how much a damaged sense of fairness can be compensated by a resource allocator’s support. Our findings showed that the degree of SCO negatively deteriorated the relationship between coworker’s social loafing and distributive justice, and this negative effect was the highest when a high level of SCO was combined with a low level of LMXSC. This means that employees’ perceptions of justice decreased more severely for individuals with greater comparison orientations and their perceptions of fairness were the lowest when people with high SCO feel less support from their leaders compared to other colleagues. These findings have several theoretical and practical implications. First, we extend theoretical perspectives through the integration of organizational justice and social comparison theories. By introducing organizational justice and social comparison theories, we provide richer rationales for the dynamics of loafing, dispositions, and situations, beyond simply predicting the negative relationship between social loafing and perceptions of distributive justice. Second, we simultaneously considered the effects of individual orientations and situational conditions to elucidate the employees’ ultimate recognition of others’ social loafing. By simultaneously considering the combined effects of an individual disposition and a situational factor in explaining the employees’ perceptions of justice, the theoretical arguments and empirical findings of this study will contribute to the elaboration of the extant social loafing literature. Third, we stress the importance of leader support to mitigate the negative effect of social loafing on distributive justice.

The hidden motive of knowledge sharing and the resultant outcome

Drawing on costly signaling theory, this study explores the hidden motive about why people voluntarily share their tacit knowledge with others and the resultant outcome. More specifically, we theoretically and empirically show how the need for status facilitates knowledge sharing behavior and this knowledge sharing behavior ultimately leads to increased supervisor ratings. Furthermore, we examine the moderating roles of task visibility and task significance as critical boundary conditions in the motive and behavior relationship. We test our hypotheses based on moderated mediation model using a sample of 146 usable supervisor and subordinate dyads in Korea. The results showed that all hypotheses were supported. Theoretical and empirical implications are also discussed.

Two Faces of Consciousness on Knowledge Sharing Dilemmas: The Moderating Role of LMXSC

The current study takes a self and other-centered approach to examining two faces of consciousness on knowledge sharing dilemma in organizations. Building on these narrow traits of conscientiousnes...