Natalia Lorinkova

Employees’ Social Context and Change-Oriented Citizenship A Meta-Analysis of Leader, Coworker, and Organizational Influences

Change-oriented citizenship depends on support received from employees’ social context. Meta-analytic tests based on 131 independent samples and 38,409 employees confirmed positive relationships between leader, coworker, and organizational support and change-oriented citizenship, even after accounting for employees’ attitudes and intentions (i.e., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to quit). Moderator analyses indicated that specific coworker and organizational support had stronger relationships with change-oriented citizenship than generic support. In contrast, specific and generic leader support were equally important predictors of change-oriented citizenship.

When Is Empowerment Effective? The Role of Leader-Leader Exchange in Empowering Leadership, Cynicism, and Time Theft

Applying arguments from social exchange theory, we theoretically derive and empirically test a multilevel model that informs theory on leadership, cynicism, and deviant withdrawal. Namely, we examine the moderating effect of the upward exchange relationship of a leader on empowering leadership behaviors as they affect subordinate psychological empowerment, cynicism, and time theft. In a sample of 161 employees across 37 direct supervisors, empowering leadership was associated with reduced employee cynicism both directly and indirectly through employee psychological empowerment. The positive relationship between empowering leadership and employee psychological empowerment, however, was significant only when the leader enjoyed a high-quality relationship with his or her own boss. In turn, cynicism was associated with increased time theft, suggesting that employees may reciprocate frustrating experiences by withdrawing in minor, yet impactful and deviant, ways in efforts to balance their exchange with the organization.

When Does Virtuality Really “Work”? Examining the Role of Work–Family and Virtuality in Social Loafing

We sought to clarify the relationship between virtuality and social loafing by exploring two work–family moderators—family responsibility and dissimilarity in terms of family responsibility—and two mediators—cohesion and psychological obligation—in two studies. We expected that “busy teams” (i.e., comprising similar individuals with many family responsibilities) would exhibit the strongest positive virtuality–social loafing relationship, and teams comprising similar individuals with few family responsibilities would experience a weaker virtuality–social loafing relationship. We expected that individuals working with dissimilar others would report consistently high levels of social loafing regardless of virtuality. Furthermore, we expected cohesion and psychological obligation to one’s teammates would mediate these effects. Similar individuals in teams indeed exhibited different virtuality–social loafing relationships in both studies, suggesting that the flexibility provided by virtuality might be more effective in teams comprising similar people with few family responsibilities. Study 2 further revealed that cohesion and obligation may mediate these effects, such that high levels of these mediators were associated with low levels of social loafing in similar teams comprising people with few family responsibilities. We discuss contributions to the virtual work and social loafing literatures, as well as the work–family and team literatures. We also suggest several specific actions managers can take on the basis of these findings, including for employees with few versus many family responsibilities.