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- Volume 6, 2019
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior - Volume 6, 2019
Volume 6, 2019
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Perspectives of a Practitioner-Scientist on Organizational Psychology/Organizational Behavior
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 1–16More LessIn this article I comment on areas where I agree/disagree with the five previous perspectives on organizational psychology/organizational behavior (OP/OB). This is followed by a dire prediction of the future for OP doctoral programs, criticisms of the journal editorial processes and the overemphasis on deductive theory building, the value of qualitative analyses and enumerative reviews, the importance of mentors for advancing one's career, and the strengths and weaknesses of our scholarly societies. The article ends with a call for improving the balance currently in favor of scientists at the expense of practitioners.
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Embracing Complexity: Reviewing the Past Decade of Team Effectiveness Research
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 17–46More LessWe conceptualize organizational teams as dynamic systems evolving in response to their environments. We then review the past 10 years of team effectiveness research and summarize its implications by categorizing studies under three main overlapping and coevolving dimensions: compositional features, structural features, and mediating mechanisms. We highlight prominent work that focused on variables in each of these dimensions and discuss their key relationships with team outcomes. Furthermore, we review how contextual factors impact team effectiveness. On the basis of this review, we advocate that future research seek to examine team relationships through a dynamic, multilevel perspective, while incorporating new and novel measurement techniques. We submit that the future of teams research may benefit from a conceptualization of them as dynamic networks and modeling them as small complex systems.
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Self-Leadership: A Paradoxical Core of Organizational Behavior
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 47–67More LessThis review focuses on the paradoxical concept of self-leadership—defined as a comprehensive self-influence process capturing how individuals motivate themselves to complete work that is naturally motivating or work that must be done but is not naturally motivating—as a fundamental process that challenges many traditional assumptions in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. We first present a historical review that traces the roots of self-leadership to early psychological theory and research. We next briefly summarize research related to self-leadership at both the individual and team levels of analysis. We then discuss four paradoxes associated with self-leadership: the paradox of self-leadership depletion and strengthening, the paradox of self-leadership through collaboration, the paradox of me-but-not-you self-leadership, and the paradox of needing self-leadership to improve self-leadership. We conclude with guidelines for future research and practice.
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Diversity in the Workplace: A Review, Synthesis, and Future Research Agenda
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 69–88More LessFueled by socioeconomic trends that changed the composition of organizational workforces, the term workforce diversity was coined in the 1990s. Since then, both researchers and practitioners have strived (and struggled) to understand the concept, its effects in and on organizations, and strategies for managing such effects. In this article, I provide an overview and interpretation of the current literature to examine its purpose, progress, and direction. Highlighting key conceptualizations of the construct, theoretical foundations, and empirical findings on diversity and diversity management, I discuss the evolution and current state of the field and synthesize this information to propose a future research agenda. In doing so, I seek to identify theoretical, empirical, and practice areas of opportunity for advancing scientific knowledge about the meaning, substance, and outcomes of diversity as well as the implementation of diversity science in organizations.
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The Moment of Truth: A Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda for the Customer Service Experience
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 89–113More LessCustomer service is a central feature of the service context. As service research has evolved into a burgeoning multidisciplinary field, management scholars have developed an impressive body of research regarding the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of customer service. We provide an integrative review and synthesis of the literature with a focus on three important and interrelated aspects of customer service that specifically focus on the interpersonal service interaction between employees and customers: (a) affect in customer service, including emotional labor and emotional contagion processes; (b) customer mistreatment, the low-quality interpersonal treatment of customers toward service employees; and (c) customer service behaviors, including customer orientation and service-oriented citizenship behaviors. We review theoretical perspectives for each of these streams of research and summarize the current knowledge regarding empirical findings. We provide a critical assessment of the literature and conclude with a discussion of future research agendas and practical implications for service managers.
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Goal Orientation: A Review of the Miles Traveled and the Miles to Go
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 115–144More LessGoal orientation, a theory that originated primarily in the educational and social psychology fields, has emerged in the past two decades as a prominent theory in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. We review the state of affairs for goal orientation research with the following roadmap. First, we discuss the historical roots of goal orientation. Next, we summarize the nomological network of goal orientation and describe the processing frameworks associated with goal orientation factors. We then discuss the crucial role of moderator variables to explain the notable variance found in goal orientation–outcome variable relationships. We next summarize the research findings on the relationship of goal orientation with the proximal mediator and distal outcome variables. We conclude the review with a miles-to-go discussion of several major issues currently faced in goal orientation research.
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Psychological Contracts: Past, Present, and Future
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 145–169More LessWe provide a review of psychological contract research, beginning with past conceptualizations and empirical evidence. We tailor this retrospective look by reviewing the antecedents and outcomes associated with psychological contract breach and discussing the dominant theoretical explanations for the breach-outcome relationship. This synthesis of past evidence provides the foundation for reviewing the present emerging and developing themes in psychological contract research. This discussion is organized around the expansion of resources exchanged and the antecedents of contract breach and outcomes, moving beyond reciprocity as an underpinning explanation. We highlight the practical implications of research to date on psychological contracts and end with directions for future research to include the need for greater attention given to ideological currency, employee health, polycontextual approaches, the role of psychological needs, and post-breach/violation.
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Selection for Fit
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 171–193More LessWe review person-organization fit theory and research on selection and recruitment, and also highlight practical recommendations. The article is framed around explaining how and why people who are well matched to their organization experience optimal psychological reactions and performance. We address five key challenges to person-organization fit research and provide a brief overview of the critical distinction between “fitting in” decisions linked to the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model and day-to-day forces linked to “doing well” at work. Additionally, we organize the “fit on” domain into a parsimonious set of fundamental motivational constructs, highlighting a taxonomic perspective that broadly captures the “fit on” purposeful work goals (e.g., achievement, autonomy, communion, and status; Barrick et al. 2013) to enhance our understanding as to the nature of the joint nonlinear person-organization effects. We conclude by reviewing research findings using this organizing framework to systematically build knowledge to advance theory, concluding with practical implications for best management practices.
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The Changing Nature of Employee and Labor-Management Relationships
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 195–219More LessThis article reviews work and employment research, paying particular attention to theory and applications by scholars in organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OP/OB) and employment or industrial relations (ER), with the objective of better understanding employee and labor-management relationships. Our animating premise is that juxtaposing these two research traditions provides a stronger basis for analyzing these relationships today. OP/OB offer micro- and meso-level focuses, whereas ER focuses on organizations, collective actors, and labor markets, with an emphasis on historical context. We hope this review motivates efforts to think about and build new social and psychological contracts that are attuned to the evolving dynamics present in the economy, workforce, and society. To this end, we look to the future and propose ways of deepening, broadening, and accelerating the pace of research that might lead to useful changes in practices, institutions, and public policies.
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When Is Proactivity Wise? A Review of Factors That Influence the Individual Outcomes of Proactive Behavior
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 221–248More LessThere is solid evidence that proactivity, defined as self-initiated and future-focused action to change oneself or the situation, can positively benefit individuals and organizations. However, this way of behaving can sometimes be ineffective or have negative consequences. We seek to understand what factors shape the effect of proactivity on individual-level outcomes. On the basis of a review of 95 articles, we identify three categories of factors that mitigate or exacerbate the effectiveness of proactive behavior: task and strategic considerations (e.g., situational judgment), social and relational considerations (e.g., having an open leader), and self-regulatory considerations (e.g., learning orientation). We then extrapolate from this review, and draw on psychological theories of wisdom, to suggest that individuals can be more or less “wise” in the proactive goals they set, and in how they pursue those goals. In closing, we identify further research directions that flow from the notion of wise proactivity.
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The Evolution of Performance Management: Searching for Value
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 249–271More LessThis article reviews the history of performance management (PM), beginning with performance evaluation. We discuss various strategies that have been used to enable accurate ratings as well as cognitive processes and contextual factors that have been shown to significantly impact ratings. We raise questions about the concept of true performance and whether raters can be enabled and motivated to make accurate ratings. We progress to discussing more structured and comprehensive PM processes that typically involve cascading goals, goal setting, competency modeling, evaluation of behavior and results, and implementation. These systems have proven to be tedious and low-value, resulting in unprecedented, wide-spread experimentation with innovative practices to move companies away from heavy PM processes to simpler, cost-effective strategies that actually drive performance. These have ranged from abandoning ratings to implementing innovations in goal-setting, real-time feedback, coaching, and PM behavior change. Directions for future research and practice are discussed.
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Employee Psychoactive Substance Involvement: Historical Context, Key Findings, and Future Directions
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 273–297More LessHumans have consumed psychoactive substances for millennia, and these substances have played an important role in human culture and human labor. This article investigates our current understanding of the general association between the workplace and employee involvement with psychoactive substances. I begin by briefly exploring the broad evolutionary and historical intersection of psychoactive substances, human culture, and human labor. I then outline the multidimensional nature of employee psychoactive substance involvement and look at its prevalence. Next, I summarize recent research on workplace antecedents, such as work stressors, substance availability, norms, and social control. I then summarize research on the adverse workplace outcomes experienced by employees who use psychoactive substances as well as the collateral effects of such use on coworkers. Throughout the article, I identify directions for future research.
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Reorganizing Organizational Politics Research: A Review of the Literature and Identification of Future Research Directions
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 299–323More LessOrganizational politics has been an oft-studied phenomenon for nearly four decades. Prior reviews have described research in this stream as aligning with one of three categories: perceptions of organizational politics (POPs), political behavior, or political skill. We suggest that because these categories are at the construct level research on organizational politics has been artificially constrained. Thus, we suggest a new framework with higher-level categories within which to classify organizational politics research: political characteristics, political actions, and political outcomes. We then provide a broad review of the literature applicable to these new categories and discuss the possibilities for future research within each expanded category. Finally, we close with a discussion of future directions for organizational politics research across the categories.
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Team-Level Constructs
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 325–348More LessStudies of team-level constructs can produce new insights when researchers explicitly take into account several critical conceptual and methodological issues. This article explicates the conceptual bases for multilevel research on team constructs and discusses specific issues relating to conceptual frameworks, measurement, and data analysis. To advance programmatic research involving team-level constructs, several future research directions concerning issues of substantive content (i.e., changes in the nature of work and teams, member-team fit, linking team-level constructs to higher-level constructs) and strategic approaches (i.e., the construct's theoretical roles, dimensionality and specificity, malleability and changes over time, relationships with Big Data) are proposed.
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Toward a Better Understanding of Assessment Centers: A Conceptual Review
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 349–372More LessAssessment centers (ACs) are employed for selecting and developing employees and leaders. They are interpersonal at their core because they consist of interactive exercises. Minding this perspective, this review focuses on the role of the assessee, the assessor, and the AC design, as well as their interplay in the interpersonal situation of the AC. Therefore, it addresses which conceptual perspectives have increased our understanding of ACs in this context. Building on this, we review relevant empirical findings. On this basis, the review contributes to an empirically driven understanding of the interpersonal nature of ACs and provides directions for practice and future research avenues on this topic as well as on technology in ACs and cross-cultural applications.
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Emotional Energy, Relational Energy, and Organizational Energy: Toward a Multilevel Model
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 373–395More LessThe concept of emotional energy generates increasing scholarly and popular interest. Research spans multiple disciplines (psychology, sociology, organization behavior, network science) and levels of analysis: micro (individual-level emotional energy), meso (dyadic or relational energy), and macro (group emotion, energy networks). I impose order on this sprawling and disparate literature by defining core concepts and conducting a broad but selective review with a focus on mechanisms. This review identifies key empirical findings but also reveals critical ambiguities and disagreements in the conceptualization (and therefore measurement) of energy. Theorizing has outpaced empirical testing. One implication is that practice may be unmoored from a solid empirical grounding. I offer a critique that points to several promising areas of empirical research. I conclude with practical implications for individuals and organizations, summary points, and future issues.
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Toward Reviving an Occupation with Occupations
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 397–419More LessThe notion of occupation has long played a vital role in understanding the psychology of individual behavior, choice, perceptions, and attitudes in work contexts. However, the centrality of occupation to research found within the broader organizational psychology and behavior literature has been largely supplanted in favor of a more organization-centric lens. The primary goal of this review is to build a case for renewing direct efforts to more meaningfully integrate occupation into organizational psychology and behavior scholarship. In doing so, this review outlines what it means, and why it matters, to once again take occupations more seriously in our theory and research. I discuss five essential ways occupations influence important organizational psychology and behavior phenomena and exemplifying evidence from previous research. The review concludes with illustrations of occupationally focused questions that could be investigated across several specific organizational psychology and behavior topics.
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Research on Work as a Calling…and How to Make It Matter
Vol. 6 (2019), pp. 421–443More LessThe concept of work as a calling has the potential to provide unique and powerful insights into how individuals relate to their work and organizations. However, although this concept may be one of the oldest in the study of work—harking back to the Protestant Reformation—its impact on mainstream OP and OB research has been limited. We review the research literature on work as a calling, and identify several issues that are preventing research in this area from reaching its potential—issues of definition, differentiation, generalizability, and relevance. We consider each of these questions and propose a path forward. Central to that path forward is an integrated conceptualization of calling—what we call a transcendent calling—that puts dual emphasis on the inner requiredness of passion and enjoyment and the outer requiredness of duty and destiny.
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