Steven L. Grover

The Effects of Negative Affectivity, Hierarchical Status, and Self-Determination on Workplace Victimization

This study investigated the conditions under which employees are more or less likely to become targets of coworkers’ aggressive actions. Results from a field survey showed people high in negative affectivity more often perceived themselves as victims, as did people who were low in the self-determination component of empowerment. In addition, hierarchical status appeared to buffer the influence of negative affectivity: Negative affectivity was not related to indirect victimization for higher-status people but was positively related to indirect victimization for lower-status people.

When Push doesn't Come to Shove Interpersonal Forgiveness in Workplace Relationships

This article develops the construct of workplace forgiveness by drawing from several relevant literatures. Forgiveness is defined as a process by which an offended worker cognitively acknowledges the wrongfulness of an injurious act and deliberately chooses to release negative emotions and inhibit the desire for revenge. In contrast to revenge, forgiveness may repair damaged workplace relationships in the aftermath of a personal offense. The authors conclude with a research agenda in the form of objectives that provides researchers with a plan for investigating forgiveness.

Unraveling respect in organization studies

Organizational scholars have invoked the concept of respect and relegated it as a common sense, under-specified construct. This article analyzes the notion of respect by drawing on philosophy and defines respectful behavior as the manifestation of believing another person has value. Two types of respect are identified: appraisal respect is based on individual characteristics, and recognition respect is based on being human and having rights. In the organizational context, appraisal respect is acknowledgement of work performance and recognition respect is the quality of interpersonal treatment. This article presents a new theoretical framework that juxtaposes these two types of respect to model how they have different effects on self-esteem and therefore affect attitudes and behaviors differently. This model allows future research in the organization sciences to invoke respect more precisely, especially organizational justice and leadership research that explicitly or implicitly use concepts of respect.

How Job Pressures and Extrinsic Rewards Affect Lying Behavior

This study investigates how two situational elements influence peoples propensity to lie about their own performance. We hypothesized that, a) people are more likely to lie when rewarded for doing so, b) performance pressures at work lead people to lie about their performance, and c) the joint effect of the two elements led to the highest level of lying. Reward and pressure were manipulated in an experiment with 140 participants. The findings support both hypotheses. The results have implications for the manner in which corporations pressure and reward their employees, suggesting that unsavory behaviour such as lying is a natural outgrowth of high pressure, high reward work situations.

Mindfulness as a personal resource to reduce work stress in the job demands-resources model

Based on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study examines the different ways that the personal resource of mindfulness reduces stress. Structural equation modeling based on data from 415 Australian nurses shows that mindfulness relates directly and negatively to work stress and perceptions of emotional demands as well as buffering the relation of emotional demands on psychological stress. This study contributes to the literature by employing empirical analysis to the task of unravelling how personal resources function within the JD-R model. It also introduces mindfulness as a personal resource in the JD-R model.

Bringing Together Different Perspectives on Ethical Leadership

Recent corporate scandals, including the mortgage situation precipitating the global financial crisis in 2008, have led many people to question the role of un/ ethical leadership in corporate misbehaviour. Organizational scholars contribute to our understanding of ethical leadership by investigating and theorizing within the organizational justice, trust, business ethics and leadership literatures. Unfortunately, work relating to ethical leadership from these different subfields has rarely been brought together, despite common themes and concerns. As a result, the accumulated insights have been described as ‘underdeveloped and fragmented’ (Brown and Treviño, 2006), leading some researchers to call for better integration of these literatures (van Knippenberg et al., 2007; De Cremer, Mayer and Schminke, 2010; Rupp et al., 2010). This Special Issue is an attempt to take a step in that direction by bringing together five articles that propose links between leadership, ethics, integrity, organizational justice and trust. Existing theoretical definitions are explored and new theory is proposed, based on exploratory qualitative and quantitative studies, from North American and several European jurisdictions. Because of the central role that leadership, ethics, justice and trust can play in how we experience and manage workplace change, the topic is well suited for the readership of Journal of Change Management Vol. 12, No. 4, 377–381, December 2012

Psychological safety climate and workplace bullying in Vietnam’s public sector

ABSTRACT The bureaucratic and impersonal nature of public management can fertilize workplace bullying and risks for psychological health and safety. Psychological safety climate (PSC) is an important indicator to reduce psychological hazards. Yet, there have been few studies conducted to examine the existence of PSC in the public sector in non-Western economies. This study examined the implementation of PSC and its effects on 274 employees from six branches of a Vietnamese public sector organization. The results suggest that senior management in organizations should consider positive work conditions and an effective system of policies, procedures, and practices for the prevention of psychosocial hazards.

An integrative model of trust and leadership

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay between different streams of trust and leadership and their impact on motivation and performance. The model answers recent calls for a better understanding of underlying mechanisms in these interactions. Design/methodology/approach The authors drew from contemporary leadership and trust theories to develop ten propositions teasing out how specific person- and role-oriented leadership behaviors interact with calculus-, identification-, knowledge-based trust, motivation, and performance. Findings The model accentuates the complexity of the interactions between trust, leadership, and follower outcomes. It guides future empirical research to unravel these intricate relations and accentuates their complexity. Research limitations/implications The ten propositions act as guidelines in mastering the complex art of leadership by understanding how behaviors affect followers. An important limitation originates in the detailed analysis of leadership and trust. Focusing on specific leadership behaviors and trust types leaves further scope for future research into additional behaviors and cofounding variables to arrive at a more holistic picture of the underlying mechanisms that make or break an effective leader. Originality/value Contemporary theories on leadership and trust frequently view the different streams as overall constructs in lieu of multi-faceted phenomena. The model is a first of its kind in that it fuses contemporary leadership and trust theory to develop a set of propositions based on specific interactions between leadership behaviors and different forms of trust.

Fair Workplace Regulation of Internet Usage

Procedures for administering internet usage policy guidelines were investigated using a policy capturing method. Three hundred and twenty participants reported their satisfaction with, and perceived fairness of, model internet usage policies. Embedded in the policy statements were dichotomous variations on six independent variables derived from the social justice literature. People responded more favorably to policies that were given in a tangible paper form instead of remotely on a computer, were monitored remotely by a disinterested party as opposed to a direct supervisor, did not require immediate dismissal for breaches, and were conducted within a company culture with relaxed attitudes toward policy compliance. In addition, the results of a moderation analysis suggested that greater enforcement severity or a stricter compliance culture lead to more attention being focused on the related policies. The findings are of practical importance to firms considering how to manage internet access at work in a fair and acceptable manner.

Water Lilies: Does a Follower’s Regional Identity Negate the Effects of Leader Humility?

The literature to date has predominately focused and assumed that leader humility effect is functional across contexts. Nevertheless, scholars have speculated that leader humility may not be univer...