Mickey B. Smith

A Multilevel Model of Employee Innovation Understanding the Effects of Regulatory Focus, Thriving, and Employee Involvement Climate

Drawing from tenets of self-determination theory, we propose and test a multilevel model that examines the effects of employee involvement climate on the individual-level process linking employee regulatory focus (promotion and prevention) to innovation via thriving. Using data collected at three points in time from 346 participants in 75 groups, multilevel path analytic results demonstrated support for a positive indirect effect from promotion focus to innovation via thriving and a negative indirect effect from prevention focus to innovation via thriving. In addition, results showed a positive indirect effect from employee involvement climate to innovation via thriving. Perhaps most important, cross-level moderated mediation results demonstrated that employee involvement climate strengthens the relationship between promotion focus and thriving, which, in turn, positively relates to innovation. The theoretical and practical implications of these multilevel effects on innovation are discussed.

A Review of Multilevel Regulatory Focus in Organizations

Over the past 15 years, regulatory focus has gained prominence as a theory of self-regulatory motivation. Building from personality and social psychology research, the nomological network of regulatory focus spans individuals, groups, and organizations. This review provides an appraisal of regulatory focus from a multilevel perspective as it relates to organizational behavior, human resources, strategic management, and entrepreneurship. We begin with a discussion of the theoretical foundations of regulatory focus, including hierarchical motivation and regulatory fit theory. Using these foundations, we summarize empirical research on regulatory focus and provide actionable avenues for future research on regulatory focus, with particular attention paid to how individuals adjust their motivational strategies on the basis of context. We also consider regulatory focus as a collective function of teams to develop our understanding of motivational processes in the workplace.

Upsides to Dark and Downsides to Bright Personality: A Multidomain Review and Future Research Agenda:

It has become common practice to refer to personality traits as being either bright or dark, and a wealth of research has provided support for the effects of both bright traits and dark traits in organizations. This research has largely focused on explaining the downside of dark traits and the upside of bright traits. However, a recent trend has emerged in which scholars are challenging the long-standing convention that bright traits are always beneficial and dark traits are always detrimental. Instead, novel research has begun to explore the potential upside of dark traits and downside of bright traits. In this review, we adopt a multidomain perspective—integrating work from organizational behavior, human resources, strategic management, and entrepreneurship—to highlight this growing body of research. Specifically, we focus on the work advancing our understanding of the complexity of personality, such as identifying situations in which dark traits may be advantageous or beneficial and detecting curvilinear effects that suggest too much of a bright trait may be disadvantageous. Furthermore, we provide a brief discussion on special considerations for the measurement of both bright and dark traits and close with a series of avenues for future research.

Employee involvement climate, task and citizenship performance, and instability as a moderator

Abstract This study explored the group-level effects of a climate of employee involvement. Using the immediate manager as the referent, we examined data from 153 workgroups to establish a positive relationship between climate for employee involvement and performance. Through multilevel analysis, we provide results supporting that a climate for employee involvement positively relates to group citizenship behaviors and group task performance, respectively. Furthermore, moderation analyses confirmed the deleterious effects of member turnover on the positive relationship between a climate of employee involvement and performance. Taken together, these results support the concurrent work exploring transactive memory and mental models in groups to further explicate the interactive effects of group-level perceptions and stability on performance.

Is Holding Two Jobs Too Much? An Examination of Dual Jobholders

The present study extends research related to alternative forms of employment by examining the phenomenon of dual jobholding. Drawing from partial inclusion theory, we empirically test the popular ...