Kevin S. Cruz

Co-Worker Exclusion and Employee Outcomes: An Investigation of the Moderating Roles of Perceived Organizational and Social Support

When does social support alleviate or exacerbate the effects of being excluded by colleagues in the workplace? This study integrates belongingness and social support theories to predict and demonstrate the differential effects of work-related support (i.e., perceived organizational support; POS) and non-work-related support (i.e., family and social support; FSS) on employee reactions to co-worker exclusion. Consistent with our predictions, we found that employees reporting high levels of co-worker exclusion and high levels of perceived organizational support demonstrate higher levels of performance and increased levels of self-worth than those reporting low levels of POS. Alternatively, support from family or friends intensified the negative relationship between co-worker exclusion and self-esteem and the positive relationship between co-worker exclusion and job-induced tension. Unexpectedly, FSS did not influence the supervisor-rated task performance of excluded workers, nor did POS mitigate the relationship between co-worker exclusion and job-induced tension. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Team design and stress: A multilevel analysis

Using a sample of 1708 team members in 292 team-based establishments, we examine the relationship between team member stress, and team autonomy in the form of team decision making, team leader appointment, and team responsibility. We also examine the relationship between stress, and intrateam interdependence in the form of team member interdependency and team-based job rotation. We further examine whether the relationships between team design and stress are mediated by team member job demands and job control. We find that an increase in job demands indirectly mediates the positive relationships between team decision making and team responsibility, and stress. We also find that a decrease in job demands indirectly mediates the negative relationship between team-based job rotation and stress. Our results suggest that the optimal design of a team, with respect to stress, is a team that has a low degree of autonomy and a high degree of intrateam interdependence.

The moderating effect of power distance on employee responses to psychological contract breach

Understanding how employees’ cultural values are related to their responses to promises broken by their organizations (i.e., psychological contract breach) is important given today’s global workplace. Although past research has found that psychological contract breach is positively associated with employee exit, voice and neglect and negatively associated with loyalty, we know little about the role that cultural values play in this process. We explore the role that power distance orientation—an employee’s acceptance of power differentials in society—plays in employee responses to breach. We argue that employees with high power distance orientations will be more likely to respond passively to breach (loyalty and neglect), whereas employees with low power distance orientations will be more likely to exhibit active responses to psychological contract breach (exit and voice). We tested our notions using a sample of 265 employees from different cultures across two points in time. Employees with high power distance orientations were less likely to respond to psychological contract breach with exit and voice than employees with low power distance orientations. However, power distance orientation did not significantly moderate the relationships between psychological contract breach and neglect or loyalty, respectively. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Honor among thieves: The interaction of team and member deviance on trust in the team.

In this article, we examine member trust in deviant teams. We contend that a member’s trust in his or her deviant team depends on the member’s own deviant actions; although all members will judge the actions of their deviant teams as rational evidence that they should not be trusted, deviant members, but not honest members, can hold on to trust in their teams because of a sense of connection to the team. We tested our predictions in a field study of 562 members across 111 teams and 24 organizations as well as in an experiment of 178 participants in deviant and non-deviant teams. Both studies show that honest members experience a greater decline in trust as team deviance goes up. Moreover, our experiment finds that deviant members have as much trust in their deviant teams as honest members do in honest teams, but only in teams with coordinated rather than independent acts of deviance, in which deviant members engage in a variety of ongoing dynamics foundational to a sense of connection and affective-based trust.