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High-performing employees (HPEs) contribute disproportionate value to organizations not only through exceptional task performance but also through discretionary helping behaviors toward coworkers. Yet prior research offers mixed evidence regarding HPEs’ engagement in organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCB-I), portraying them alternately as highly productive “all-stars” or isolated “lone wolves.” We argue that this inconsistency reflects differences in how HPEs interpret coworkers’ reactions to their success, particularly envy, and how these interpretations are shaped by relational context. Drawing on the envy-attribution model and Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, we develop a moderated mediation framework in which HPEs’ perceptions of coworkers’ envy, whether benign or malicious, explain when high-performance status translates into OCB-I, and how relational identification shapes these interpretations. Across two vignette experiments (N = 837), a two-wave field study (N = 233), and a laboratory experiment (N = 197), we find convergent evidence that perceiving benign envy increases OCB-I, whereas perceiving malicious envy decreases it. Relational identification selectively reduces perceptions of malicious envy and buffers its negative indirect effect on OCB-I but does not significantly shape perceptions of benign envy or its positive behavioral consequences.
Experiments are a powerful method for establishing causal inference and have increasingly been used in international business (IB). Yet the method remains in its infancy, standards remain unclear, and IB is particularly challenging for experimental designs despite its promise. IB experiments are also scattered across a wide range of (non-IB) journals. We therefore conduct a comprehensive review of experiments in IB to assess how, where, and with what rigor experimental methods are currently being used, and where methodological weaknesses may limit their contributions to IB and adjacent fields. We identify and analyze 212 experiments since 2000 across IB and management journals. Our review highlights both the opportunities and methodological challenges of experimentation in IB, with particular attention to issues of external validity, internal validity, and transparency. We provide an IB-specific design guide to address these challenges, illustrate how experiments can strengthen theory building in cross-border contexts, and outline opportunities for impactful future research at the intersection of IB and experimental methods.
Control conditions are essential to establishing causal relationships in experimental management research, yet they receive little attention compared to treatments. This study thus examines the current state of control-condition selection and design in top-tier management journals, reviewing 958 experiments from 421 study papers published from 2021 to 2023. Our review shows that researchers use true and pseudo-control conditions. True control conditions—such as no-treatment, all-but-treatment, and treatment-as-usual controls—provide a baseline for interpreting the effect of the treatment condition. In contrast, pseudo-control conditions (e.g., opposite-treatment-level or alternative-treatment designs) allow relative comparisons across conditions without providing a baseline. Notably, 20% of the studies we examined presented causal claims that were not supported by their designs, opening the risk of their results being misinterpreted and their effect sizes being exaggerated. These issues were further exacerbated by a lack of method transparency and construct validity. In response, we offer guidelines not only for primary study researchers to support the selection and design of control conditions, thereby enhancing transparency and yielding valid interpretations of causal claims, but also for research synthesists, reviewers, and editors to evaluate the same.
The sociocultural perspective on social class holds that people from the working class (vs. middle and higher class) show more prosocial behavior because they have an interdependent self-construal (i.e., understanding the self as connected to others). This perspective, however, is challenged by numerous other studies that find that social class is positively related to prosocial behavior, arguing that prosocial behavior requires economic resources. Against this background, in an effort to integrate the disconnected sociocultural and economic perspectives on social class, we argue that both are true, but that (a) sociocultural and economic aspects of social class differently influence the extent to which people from the working class engage in prosocial behaviors, and that (b) these influences differ depending on the situation. Specifically, when directly interacting with someone in need, the interdependent self-construal of people from the working class prompts them to help, but when doing so involves monetary costs, limited economic resources constrain their ability to help. We present three complementary studies—a meta-analysis, an archival data analysis, and an experiment—to support our theorizing. Together, these findings provide an integrated picture of when and why social class is associated with prosocial behaviors.
This case study aims to improve supervisor-subordinate relationships by sensitizing participants to inappropriate treatment by supervisors. It focuses on identifying the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dynamics that often mask abusive behavior. Abusive behavior can take many forms, including verbal abuse, micromanagement, and physical intimidation, leading to low morale, decreased productivity, and increased turnover among victims. The case portrays a victim and a transgressor in the high-pressure environment of a fictional consultancy firm, Strong Strategy Solutions, introducing several bystanders with distinct perspectives on the situation. Additionally, a member of the Senior Leadership team becomes aware of the issue and must decide on the most appropriate course of action to address it effectively.
The rapid shift to hybrid work settings has raised concerns about decreased workplace interactions and communication ties. Based on Need-to-Belong Theory, this study extends previous research by adopting the concept of ‘concern about relationship loss’ to explore when and how hybrid work leads to the retention of work-related communication ties. Our research, comprising a quasi-experimental study and a pre-registered replication, both conducted in the US, shows that hybrid work increases worries about the potential loss of work-related relationships (‘concern about relationship loss’). This concern prompts employees to engage in proactive interpersonal and organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs), but only when organizational identification is high. Notably, the impact of hybrid work and organizational identification is more pronounced for retaining existing communication ties than for losing or forming new ones. Our findings underscore the need to differentiate between concerns about relationship loss and actual isolation. They also emphasize the active role of employees in maintaining communication ties, highlighting the importance of organizational identification and OCBs. This study extends the conventional view of hybrid workers as passive towards a more dynamic understanding of how employees navigate work-related communication challenges in hybrid work settings.
Studies have shown that anomie, that is, the perception that a society’s leadership and social fabric are breaking down, is a central predictor of individuals’ support for authoritarianism. However, causal evidence for this relationship is missing. Moreover, previous studies are ambiguous regarding the mediating mechanism and lack empirical tests for the same. Against this background, we derive a set of integrative hypotheses: First, we argue that perceptions of anomie lead to a perceived lack of political control. The repeated failure to exert control in the political sphere leads to feelings of uncertainty about the functioning and meaning of the political world. This uncertainty heightens people’s susceptibility to authoritarianism because, we argue, the latter promises a sense of order, meaning, and the guidance of a “strong leader.” We support our hypothesis in a large-scale field study with a representative sample of the German population (N = 1,504) while statistically ruling out alternative explanations. Adding internal validity, we provide causal evidence for each path in our sequential mediation hypothesis in three preregistered, controlled experiments (conducted in the United States, total N = 846). Our insights may support policymakers in addressing the negative political consequences of anomie.
A consensus in the literature has converged on the idea that one's perceptions of being treated better by a leader (compared with one's coworkers' treatment by the same leader) motivate prosocial behaviour. Drawing on current theory of hubristic pride and its evolutionary role in status maintenance, we challenge this consensus by proposing that favourable, downward social comparisons of leader-member exchange (i.e., leader-member exchange social comparisons; LMXSC) can also lead to social undermining. Specifically, we argue that, in individuals with high trait dominance, LMXSC triggers hubristic pride, which, in turn, motivates social undermining. Results from two experiments and a longitudinal field study support this idea. In sum, our work shifts the consensus in LMXSC theory by showing when and why high LMXSC can motivate negative coworker-directed behaviour, and it also offers practical help to organizational leaders dealing with the ethical decision of if, and when, to preferentially treat individual team members.
The literature has widely discussed and supported the relationship between poverty and support for authoritarian leaders and regimes. However, there are different claims about the mediating mechanism and a lack of empirical tests. We hypothesize that the effect of poverty on support for authoritarianism is mediated by shame: People living in poverty frequently experience social exclusion and devaluation, which is reflected in feelings of shame. Such shame, in turn, is likely to increase support for authoritarianism, mainly due to the promise of social re-inclusion. We support our hypothesis in two controlled experiments and a large-scale field study while empirically ruling out the two main alternative explanations offered in the literature: stress and anxiety. Finally, we discuss how the present findings can support policymakers in efficiently addressing the negative political consequences of poverty.
A common explanation for the success of populists is that they rhetorically shift blame for their followers' hardships toward “elites,” therefore creating a culpable outgroup. However, we argue that there are two confounded ef-fects at play here: shifting blame toward an outgroup and shifting blame away from oneself. Therefore, we theorize that above and beyond elite blame, victimization rhetoric heightens leader support because it specifically relieves followers of the pressure of having to take responsibility for negative life outcomes, especially when they subscribe to neoliberal competition ideology. Supporting our pre-dictions, we show via a survey that victim rhetoric in-creases leader support while controlling for elite blame, especially among people subscribing to neoliberal compe-tition ideology. In a subsequent experiment, we replicate the findings causally and show that the effect works by reducing perceived personal responsibility for negative life outcomes. Our results indicate that populist rheto-ric involves shifting blame toward others and away from oneself. This can explain some of the conundrums that have plagued the literature, such as why elites also fall for populist rhetoric. We discuss our findings in relation to cultural differences and differences in left- versus right- wing populism.
Carbon emissions reduction initiatives have received considerable attention at the corporate level. Companies such as Daimler, Apple, and Amazon have publicly declared their goal of becoming carbon neutral or “net zero” in a near future. They are responding to a growing demand for sustainable products and services. Companies have a variety of options for carbon emission reductions available to them, including internal reductions such as adopting renewable energy as well as buying carbon offsets. This raises the question of whether consumers perceive the different types of carbon emission reductions as equivalent, or whether they favor the implementation of internal measures. We investigate this issue empirically through surveys and incentive-compatible discrete choice experiments. We find clear consumer preferences and willingness to pay for companies to reduce their carbon footprint when companies internally reduce their controllable emissions rather than buying carbon offsets for these emissions, and it is especially true for eco-conscious consumers. Consumers place roughly the same value, however, on internal reductions in controllable emissions and buying offsets for the same amount of uncontrollable emissions.
While managers generally seem to enjoy better mental health than regular employees, there are also plenty of reports about them suffering from burnout. The present study explores this relationship between hierarchy level and burnout in more detail. In doing so, we not only investigate what impact managerial rank may have on burnout, but we also contrast two different theoretically meaningful mediators for the relationship: sense of power (feeling in control over people) and work-related self-efficacy (feeling in control over tasks). The results of two surveys—the first with 580 managers (single-source) and the second with 154 managers matched with ratings from close others (multi-source)—show a negative relationship between managers’ hierarchy level and burnout that is explained by both mediators independently. Additional analyses reveal that high sense of power and high self-efficacy are both necessary conditions for low levels of burnout. Such fine-grained analyses allow us to understand why managers at the top are less threatened by burnout, in contrast to what some media reports suggest.
This paper seeks to explain when and why people respond to status threat at work with behaviors oriented toward either self-improvement or interpersonal harming. To that end, we extend the established static social comparison perspective on status threat. Specifically, we introduce the notion of temporal proximity of status threat, which is informed by five temporal social comparison markers. We argue that people construe distal future status gaps as a challenge (and thus show self-improvement-oriented responses), but construe a more proximal status gap as a threat (and thus engage in negative interpersonal behaviors). Further, we introduce three factors of uncertainty that may render the underlying temporal comparison less reliable, and thereby less useful for guiding one's response. Overall, our temporal social comparison theory integrates and extends current theorizing on status threat in organizations by fully acknowledging the dynamic nature of social comparisons. Plain Language Summary Employees often compare themselves to others to evaluate their status. If they perceive that their status is at threat or risk losing status, they engage in behaviors to prevent status loss. These behaviors can be positive, aimed at improving one's position or they can be negative, aimed at harming others. This paper develops a theoretical framework to examine when employees engage in more challenge- vs. threat-oriented behaviors. We argue that an important question how employees react to status threat is its temporal proximity—will an employee's status be threatened in the near versus distal future? We propose that the more distal (vs. proximate) the status threat is, the more employees gravitate towards challenge- and less threat-oriented behaviors. But how do employees know when a status threat occurs in the future? We argue that employees will compare their past status trajectories to co-workers’ status trajectories to mentally extrapolate the temporal proximity of such a threat. More specifically, we propose five characteristics (temporal markers) of social comparison trajectories that inform employees about the temporal proximity: their relative current position, the relative velocity and acceleration of their status trajectory, their relative mean status level, and their relative minimum and maximum status. Moreover, we suggest that employees’ conclusions from these markers are weakened by uncertainty in the "data stream" of social comparison information over time, that is, the length of the time span available, the amount of interruptions in this data stream, and the number of fluctuations in their own and others’ status trajectories.
We investigated the turnover intentions of employees who perceive that they are being treated with more or less abusive supervision than their coworkers. We call this incongruent abusive supervision. Our findings support our theory that employees associate incongruent abusive supervision with the anticipation of social exclusion from their coworkers. Furthermore, this appraisal of social exclusion threat is associated with feelings of shame, which, in turn, increase turnover intentions. Two experimental vignettes provide support for our theoretical model. These findings demonstrate the effect that incongruent abusive supervision has on employees’ reactions to abusive supervision and introduces shame as an emotional mechanism important for understanding employee responses to supervisor abuse both when they are singled out for abuse and when they are spared abuse while their coworkers are not.
Studies on abusive supervision typically posit that targets of abuse will either directly blame the perpetrating supervisor or indirectly blame the organization for allowing the abuse, and as a result reduce their cooperativeness at work. We pivot from this predominant logic and argue that, under certain circumstances, targets of abusive supervision may blame themselves, feel guilty, and then try to make it up to their abusive supervisors by helping them more. Drawing on the emotional process theory of abusive supervision and the more general sociofunctional perspective of emotions, we specify that such a dynamic is more likely to ensue when subordinates otherwise experience the relationship with their supervisors as good (high LMX). Two studies—an experiment and a two-week bi-daily experience sampling study—provide support for our reasoning. As such, our study extends theorizing on the consequences of abusive supervision, which has typically found that it reduces cooperative behaviors. Moreover, it contributes to previous speculations that leaders may engage in abusive supervision because it has beneficial consequences for them.
We investigate the pride reactions and coworker-directed behaviors of employees with high leader-member exchange social comparison (LMXSC). An experimental vignette and a time-lagged field study across three time points provide robust support for our theory that LMXSC (i.e. the perception of having a better relationship with one’s leader relative to the relationships fellow coworkers have with the leader) triggers feelings of hubristic and authentic pride in employees. Hubristic pride, in turn, promotes coworker-directed undermining while authentic pride promotes interpersonal citizenship behavior. Together, our studies demonstrate why and how LMXSC can have positive and negative effects on employees’ coworker-directed behavior.
Research has shown that employees who occupy more central positions in their organization’s network have lower turnover. As a result, scholars commonly interpret turnover as the consequence of social networks. Based on conservation of resources theory, we propose an alternative coevolution perspective that recognizes the influence of changes in individuals’ social network position on their thoughts of quitting (the consideration of turnover), and which also posits that thoughts of quitting shape individuals’ agency in maintaining and changing their social network. Extending previous research, we predict that creation (dissolution) of both friendship ties and advice ties are negatively (positively) related to subsequent thoughts of quitting. We then develop and test the novel hypotheses that for friendship ties, thoughts of quitting are positively related to tie retention and negatively related to tie creation (leading to network stasis), whereas for advice ties thoughts of quitting are negatively related to tie retention and positively related to tie creation (leading to network churn). In a longitudinal network analysis that assessed 121 employees across three time points, we find support for our hypotheses that thoughts of quitting affect network changes, but do not find that network changes affect thoughts of quitting.
Expatriation research has been intrigued by the question of how to prevent the unplanned return of expatriates to their home country. Although a majority of studies have focused on assigned expatriates (AEs), only recently have researchers expanded the scope of analysis by focusing on self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). For SIEs, research has identified job embeddedness as a key explanatory concept for early repatriation without yet acknowledging its potential to also explain the early expatriation of AEs. However, because AEs and SIEs differ in important motivational and behavioral aspects, the lack of comparative studies prohibits a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which job embeddedness influences early repatriation. We build on belongingness theory to conceptualize early repatriation as a compensatory reaction of expatriates to an inhibited need to belong. Using a unique sample of 345 expatriates from 40 countries, we show that off-the-job embeddedness is more important for explaining the repatriation intention of AEs than of SIEs, whereas on-the-job embeddedness is more important for explaining the repatriation of SIEs compared to AEs. Our integrative model carries important theoretical implications for expatriation research and provides managerial implications for recruiting and retaining AEs and SIEs.
Organizations often pay greater salaries to higher-ranking executives compared to lower-ranking executives. While this method can be useful for retaining those at the organization's apex, it may also incline executives at the bottom of the pay pyramid to see themselves at a disadvantage and thus exit the firm. Naturally, organizations often want to retain some of their lower-paid, but highly valuable executives; the question, then, is how organizations can reduce the turnover of lower-ranking executives. By integrating social with temporal comparison theory, we argue that, when executives earn relatively less than their peers, more pay growth (i.e., individual pay increases over time) leads to less turnover. The results of our analysis, which covered almost 20 years of objective data on a large sample of U.S. top executives, provide support for our theory.
Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die wichtigsten theoretischen Entwicklungen zum Thema Führung und Kultur gegenüberzustellen und mit Hinblick auf die effektive Führung von multinationalen Teams in einer global vernetzten Welt zu diskutieren. Dabei liegt der Schwerpunkt des Beitrags vor allem auf sozial kognitiven Theorien: Zum einen, weil diese Theorien sehr erfolgreich den Einfluss von Diversität in Organisationen beschreiben, und zum anderen, weil diese Theorien in der interkulturellen Forschung sehr verbreitet sind. Abschließend werden die noch zu erforschenden Fragestellungen vorgestellt und Implikationen für die Führung multinationaler Teams abgeleitet.
The extant social undermining literature suggests that employees envy and, consequently, undermine coworkers when they feel that these coworkers are better off and thus pose a threat to their own current status. With the present research, we draw on the sociofunctional approach to emotions to propose that an anticipated future status threat can similarly incline employees to feel envy toward, and subsequently undermine, their coworkers. We argue that employees pay special attention to coworkers' past development in relation to their own, because faster-rising coworkers may pose a future status threat even if they are still performing worse in absolute terms in the present. With a set of two behavioral experiments (N = 90 and N = 168), we establish that participants react to faster-rising coworkers with social undermining behavior when the climate is competitive (vs. less competitive). We extended these results with a scenario experiment (N = 376) showing that, in these situations, participants extrapolate lower future status than said coworker and thus respond with envy and undermining behavior. A two-wave field study (N = 252) replicated the complete moderated serial mediation model. Our findings help to explain why employees sometimes undermine others who present no immediate threat to their status. As such, we extend theorizing on social undermining and social comparison.
Expatriation research has predominantly focused on company-backed expatriates (CBEs), who are sent abroad by their employer, and on examining how their levels of on-the-job embeddedness affect their intention to prematurely repatriate. Yet, most expatriates are not CBEs but self-initiated expatriates (SIEs). In this article we hypothesize that for their behavioral and demographic features, CBEs and SIEs differ substantially in their levels of on-the job and off-the-job embeddedness. Moreover, these difference lay ground for moderating effects resulting in different explanations for the repatriation intention of CBEs and SIEs. Drawing on a unique sample of 345 expatriates from 40 different countries we show that while SIEs experience a higher degree of off-the-job embeddedness than CBEs, the two expatriate types do not differ in their levels of on-the-job embeddedness. Also, off-the-job embeddedness is more important for explaining the repatriation intention of CBEs than of SIEs. Most importantly, whereas for SIEs low levels of on-the-job embeddedness increase their intention to repatriate, for CBEs high-not low-levels increase their intention to repatriate. Our findings carry important theoretical implications for research on expatriates and provide managerial implications related to the choice, hiring criteria, and support programs for expatriates.
Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) plays an important role in explaining firm performance. In this study, we investigate the relation between EO and performance at the strategic business unit (SBU) level and examine the influence of decision-making mode and social capital of the focal business unit manager. Adopting the attention-based view (ABV) as our main theoretical perspective, we examine the impact of decision-making mode (i.e., participative vs. autocratic) on the EO–performance relation. In addition, we investigate the extent to which strong network ties with actors at lower, similar, and higher hierarchical positions, respectively, enable SBU managers to effectively engage in participative decision-making processes when leveraging EO. Our findings based on 119 SBUs of one large international company provide nuanced insights into how local conditions interact to shape EO’s influence on performance.
Despite self-determination and person-environment fit theories being comprised of several common key components, rarely have these theoretical frameworks been integrated. Both self-determination and person-environment fit theories highlight the importance of individuals’ need satisfactions and motivations. For example, self-determination theory highlights the importance of the reasons for goal pursuit in predicting individual well-being. Similarly, in person-environment fit theories, employee-environment value congruence is important because values influence outcomes through goals (motivation). The article begins by discussing the similarities and differences between these two theoretical frameworks, then devotes attention to integrating these frameworks and presenting an agenda for future research. It also discusses social network theory and research and highlights the potential usefulness of integrating these lines of research. A main premise of the article’s analysis is that self-determination theory is likely a useful framework for better understanding the processes through which person-environment fit influences employee outcomes.
This longitudinal study used data from 91 self-managed teams (456 individuals, 60 nationalities) to examine the interactive effects of a team's task ("workflow") network structure and its cultural diversity (as indexed by nationality) on the team's "potency" (i.e., the team's confidence in its ability to perform) and its performance (as rated by expert judges). We found that whereas the emergence of dense task networks enhanced team potency it was the emergence of (moderately) centralized task networks that facilitated team performance. These varied structural effects, moreover, were themselves contingent on team composition: the more culturally diverse a team, the more pronounced were the positive effects of network density on team potency and the higher the level of network centralization required for optimal team performance. The success of a team appears to hinge on the interplay between network structure and team composition.
We investigate how social comparison processes in leader treatment quality impact group members' self-worth, affect, and behavior. Evidences from the field and the laboratory suggest that employees who are treated kinder and more considerate than their fellow group members experience more self-worth and positive affect. Moreover, the greater positive self-implications of preferentially treated group members motivate them more strongly to comply with norms and to engage in tasks that benefit the group. These findings suggest that leaders face an ethical trade-off between satisfying the moral standard of treating everybody equally well and satisfying individual group members' desire to be treated better than others.
We argue that leader-directed voice (i.e., communicating critical suggestions for change to the leader) is a relational phenomenon, and that it is affected by an inherent feature of multinational teams: members (dis)similarities in nationality. We tested our hypotheses in a sample of middle managers who were working in multinational teams. The results of this study show that leaders of multinational teams are more likely to profit from the local know-how of employees from underrepresented nationalities when they are open to their ideas, and when they have the same nationality. The study also shows that the effects of being open to employees ideas and sharing the same nationality are mediated by affective commitment and psychological safety, respectively. We discuss how, even though the current relational demography perspective with its dichotomous understanding of (dis)similarity is not suited to capture the dynamics of cultural differences, it does set the stage for future studies to examine the cultural dynamics behind an individual's experience of being different from other team members in multinational teams. We also discuss the practical implications of these findings for multinational companies.
