All Publications
Cognitive demands are increasingly prevalent in today’s complex work environments. With research having established that cognitive demands lead to strain, we introduce and test error management as a strain buffer for cognitive demands. We examined our theoretical model with two field studies. Across both studies, we found that when error management was low, cognitive demands were positively related to strain, while the relationship between cognitive demands and strain vanished when error management was high. This interaction was unique for cognitive demands, as error management did not influence strain in response to workload. Errors in cognitively demanding tasks were seen as more internal, but more controllable and less stable than errors when working with high workloads. Yet, we could not find error management influencing error attributions as we assumed to be the underlying theoretical mechanism. In sum, we suggest error management as a tangible mean by which organizations and employees can mitigate the strain-inducing effect of cognitive demands, which needs further research to be better understood.
In this research, we set out to uncover why silver ceilings exist in organizations. Drawing on systematic–heuristic processing theory and recent psychological findings, we propose that “older” workers (aged 45 or more) are less likely to receive promotions because these decisions are based on potential appraisals, which are susceptible to managers’ heuristic (stereotypical) thinking. We test our hypotheses using two-wave field data (Study 1) from a large financial organization and an experiment (Study 2) in which we manipulate age while holding all else equal. Both studies show that employee age has a negative effect on promotion likelihood and that this relationship is mediated by managers’ potential appraisals. Moreover, Study 2 also provides evidence for our theoretical rationale showing that the central effect is driven by managers’ heuristic processing and work-related age stereotypes. Across both studies, our results provide consistent support for our hypothesis that appraisals of potential constitute a potent pathway via which managers’ age stereotypes can affect promotion decisions in organizations. We discuss theoretical contributions to the literature on workplace aging, employee appraisals, and personnel decisions, and formulate practical recommendations to help organizations tackle silver ceilings in the workplace.
Various entities, such as startups, suppliers and governments, face substantial difficulties in convincing nanostore shopkeepers to adopt digital technologies. Given the informal status of nanostores, we posit that shopkeepers experience Tax Privacy Concerns from their operational records potentially becoming transparent to the tax authorities, which hampers their inclination to digitize. Through the application of a survey and vignette experiments in the field with hundreds of shopkeepers across three cities in Latin America, we find consistent evidence for the negative role of Tax Privacy Concerns, above and beyond shopkeepers' willingness to share data with various entities, trust in the government and other entities, and general privacy concerns.
Further, we show that having entities that shopkeepers trust and are willing to share data with offer technological solutions does not mitigate shopkeepers' Tax Privacy Concerns and boosts digitization. In contrast, positive word of mouth that data are unlikely to be shared with the tax authorities does mitigate Tax Privacy Concerns. Overall, our findings provide novel evidence for the existence and influence of privacy concerns for operational data among microentrepreneurs, which answers calls in the extant literature to explore privacy concerns.beyond the consumer context.
Abstract 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.
We argue that the literature on presenteeism needs to consider that employees not only go to work despite being ill but also often work from home despite being ill, especially since the COVID-19 crisis enabled home-office work on a large scale. We label this phenomenon “workahomeism” and develop theory that shows its distinctness from traditional presenteeism through the evoked pattern of guilt. Across three studies (a vignette experiment, a critical incident study, and a within-person intervention study), we tested whether employees' work-related reactions to illness (i.e., workahomeism, presenteeism, and resting at home) differ in terms of experienced and anticipated guilt. We found that when employees considered engaging in workahomeism, they anticipated feeling less guilty than when resting at home. However, when employees actually engaged in workahomeism, they felt as guilty or even more guilty than when resting at home. In contrast, employees' anticipated guilt for presenteeism as compared to workahomeism changed from the same to more after the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, we identify facets of guilt in response to workahomeism (i.e., guilt toward colleagues and about own health) and demonstrate that organizations can change guilt patterns by asking employees to reflect on the consequences of workahomeism and presenteeism.
This study integrates research on newcomer socialization and work teams to examine how the team environment facilitates or hinders the translation of human capital into newcomer performance in professional sports teams. Using large, multiyear and multilevel data from the top five European professional football leagues, we examine how individual-level newcomer human capital and the team-level characteristics (prior team performance, number of newcomers) influence individual newcomer performance during two different socialization contexts (when more vs. less time for socialization is provided). We found that individual human capital was positively related to newcomer performance across socialization contexts while the direct relationships between team variables and performance were conditional on the socialization context. Prior team performance was positively related to newcomer performance when more time for socialization was provided, but prior team performance as well as the number of newcomers were negatively related to newcomer performance when less time for socialization was provided. Beyond the direct relationships, our results show that human capital was less positively related to newcomer performance when newcomers joined higher performing teams across socialization contexts. These findings extend our understanding of the complex relationships between individual human capital and the team’s socialization environment on newcomer performance and advance new knowledge regarding conditions that facilitate the success of newcomers who join existing (operating) teams.
Research conceptualized meaningful work as an important resource reducing work-related strain. Literature has however neglected the possibility that the relationship between meaningful work and strain may be bidirectional. Based on Conservation of Resources theory and the attention view on stress, we therefore simultaneously examine the relationship between strain and meaningful work in a cross-lagged panel study with 983 participants. We demonstrate that meaningful work reduces employees’ degree of strain more than a month later. Vice versa, the strain that employees experience at work also reduces the degree to which they perceive their work as meaningful. These results indicate that while meaningful work serves as an important psychological resource reducing strain, it may, itself, prove susceptible to high levels of strain.
Today's turbulent environment, with fast and unpredictable technological changes, requires employees to increasingly act ambidextrously, i.e., to simultaneously incorporate exploitative and explorative tasks in their work roles. To improve our understanding of how to foster individual ambidexterity in technologically turbulent environments, we draw on organizational management theories by arguing (1) that perceived technological turbulence directly affects individual ambidexterity in a positive way and (2) that organizations can strengthen this effect by providing employees with internal stability in these times of external changes through high degrees of formalization. Using data collected in a three-wave online survey of 739 German employees, this study demonstrates that employees who perceive high degrees of technological turbulence in their organization's environment show high degrees of ambidexterity in their work. In addition, we show that formalization in the form of written rules, procedures, and instructions positively moderates this relationship so that employees' ambidexterity is highest when both perceptions of technological turbulence and formalization are high. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the ambidexterity literature, for future research and managerial practice.
Research has shown that the use of digital technologies in the personnel selection process can have both positive and negative effects on applicants’ attraction to an organization. We explain this contradiction by specifying its underlying mechanisms. Drawing on signaling theory, we build a conceptual model that applies two different theoretical lenses (instrumental-symbolic framework and justice theory) to suggest that perceptions of innovativeness and procedural justice explain the relationship between an organization’s use of digital selection methods and employer attractiveness perceptions. We test our model by utilizing two studies, namely one experimental vignette study among potential applicants (N = 475) and one retrospective field study among actual job applicants (N = 335). With the exception of the assessment stage in Study 1, the positive indirect effects found in both studies indicated that applicants perceive digital selection methods to be more innovative. While Study 1 also revealed a negative indirect effect, with potential applicants further perceiving digital selection methods as less fair than less digitalized methods in the interview stage, this effect was not significant for actual job applicants in Study 2. We discuss theoretical implications for the applicant reactions literature and offer recommendations for human resource managers to make use of positive signaling effects while reducing potential negative signaling effects linked to the use of digital selection methods.
Whereas digital businesses can have an enormous market value, it remains an open question, whether firms, embarking on a digital transformation journey, can realize similar benefits. Thus, we rely on the signaling theory to study, whether strategic emphasis on digital transformation – i.e., the extent, to which a firm focuses on digital transformation in its strategy – as well as firm size as an indicator of a large resource basis jointly influence market capitalization. To answer this question, we conducted a longitudinal panel data analysis of the largest German publicly listed companies from 2000 to 2017. Our results show, that strategic emphasis on digital transformation leads to a higher market capitalization for larger firms and to a lower market capitalization for smaller firms. Whereas larger firms should further disclose their strategic emphasis on digital transformation, smaller firms should consider sending additional signals to investors, demonstrating their ability to undergo digital transformation successfully.
Based on a field study (N = 303), this paper explores the differential role that perceived top management trustworthiness has on female and male employees’ negative emotions and turnover intentions in organizations. A theoretical model is established that explicates a negative indirect effect of perceived top management trustworthiness on employee turnover intentions through employee negative emotions. The results reveal that there is a negative relationship between perceived top management trustworthiness and employee negative emotions and resulting turnover intentions and that this effect is stronger for female employees than for male employees. These results demonstrate the pivotal role played by top management trustworthiness, provide an explanation for the turnover gender gap, and highlight the subjectivity in reactions to trustworthiness perceptions. The implications for organizations are discussed in line with the need for top management to positively influence employees and particularly women, to retain them in their workforce.
Setting out to understand the effects of positive moral emotions in leadership, this research examines the consequences of leaders’ expressions of gratitude and pride for their followers. In two experimental vignette studies (N = 261; N = 168) and a field study (N = 294), leaders’ gratitude expressions showed a positive effect and leaders’ pride expressions showed a negative effect on followers’ ascriptions of leader selfishness. Thereby, leaders’ gratitude expression indirectly led to higher follower satisfaction with and OCB towards the leader, while leaders’ pride expressions indirectly reduced satisfaction with and OCB towards the leader. Furthermore, leaders’ expressions of gratitude indirectly reduced followers’ intentions to leave the leader, while leaders’ expressions of pride indirectly fuelled them. Although ascriptions of selfishness consistently influenced these leader outcomes more strongly than comparable organizational outcomes, results on organizational outcomes were mixed. While leaders’ expressions of gratitude led, as expected, to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions, leaders’ expressions of pride showed positive relations with both OCB towards the organization and intentions to leave the organization. We discuss the theoretical implications of leaders’ expressions of positive moral emotions as signals of outcome attributions, as well as leaders’ selfishness and practical implications that help leaders build followers’ satisfaction and positive leader–follower relationships.
We reevaluate the proposition that pride expressions relate positively to ascriptions of agency and negatively to communality by studying self-referential pride and vicarious pride in others. While both signal a positive outcome, they differ in attributing it to one’s own or others’ efforts. Based on these differential attributions, we assume that the asymmetric pattern found for pride pertains to self-referential pride, whereas pride in others relates positively to communal dimensions and could even reverse the negative effect of self-referential pride. We examined expressions of self-referential and vicarious pride in two experiments (N1 = 286, N2 = 309) and a field study (N3 = 210) in peer and leadership contexts. We found pride in the self to relate positively (and independently from expressions of pride in others) to ascribed agency and autocratic leadership for peers, but only to the latter for leaders. For peers, pride in others was found to relate positively with communality and democratic leadership, and could even reverse negative effects of pride in the self. For leaders, the results primarily showed a negative relationship between pride in the self and both communality and democratic leadership. Our results provide first evidence that vicarious pride affects outcomes differently than self-referential pride, and integrate expressers’ power position as a critical moderator. Therein, we contribute to emotion research in outlining boundary conditions for the asymmetrical effects of expressing pride, thus helping individuals to anticipate the effects of self-referential and vicarious pride in peer and leadership contexts.
This study derives a conceptual framework for examining parallel and differential influences of organizational pride in employees’ efforts versus abilities on proactivity. Data from a field survey (N = 1218) confirm our theoretical model. Organizational pride in employees’ efforts and organizational pride in employees’ abilities both had positive indirect effects on proactive behaviors via affective organizational commitment. Yet, whereas organizational pride in employees’ efforts additionally had a direct positive effect on individual and team member proactivity, organizational pride in employees’ abilities showed a direct negative effect on proactive behaviors for the self, the team, and the organization including a behavioral measurement of employees’ provision of ideas for improvement. These findings contribute to the nascent literature on organizational pride by indicating towards employees as source of organizational pride, highlighting potential negative effects of organizational pride, and introducing the differentiation between employees’ efforts and abilities.
