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Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) contributes to organizational effectiveness, but it can also create a burden for employees and their partners. In three studies, we examine how employees communicate with their partner about engaging in OCB and how this affects employees' OCB, their work–family conflict, and their partner's satisfaction. In Study 1, we use qualitative data to identify five ways employees communicate with their partner in order to engage in individual initiative OCB (e.g., staying late at work, volunteering for special assignments). In Study 2, using dual-concern theory, we hypothesize that self-concerned citizenship communication strategies will not only increase OCB, but also increase work–family conflict, and we predict that other-concerned communication strategies will reduce work–family conflict and increase partner satisfaction. Using survey data from employees and their partners, these hypotheses were partially supported. Finally, in Study 3, we use experimental vignette methodology to provide causal evidence that citizenship communication strategies influence partner satisfaction. Together, these studies increase our understanding of how employees communicate with their partner about OCB, indicate that there is no single communication strategy that has positive implications for both OCB and home life, and suggest that employees and their partners tend to think of OCB as involuntary for achieving family goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity is a topic that is garnering much attention in society and organizations. Unfortunately, diversity initiatives have the potential to focus only on diversity while essentially neglecting an equally important element: unity. This is problematic because diversity and unity represent an organizational paradox in terms of being seemingly contradictory yet interdependent elements that persist over time. In line with this notion, we identify two prototypical categories of strategy to address diversity: (a) woke and (b) integrative. "Woke strategies" take a single-edged approach to diversity, whereby concerns for diversity are pursued without concern for potentially detrimental effects on unity. Conversely, "integrative strategies" simultaneously activate the advantages of both diversity and unity while neutralizing their downsides. In support of this reasoning, we also refer to positive organizational behavior theory that would suggest that "woke" strategies may run counter to the development of psychological capital on the part of both minority and majority group members. Despite the arguments in this article, it is clear that further research is necessary to better understand these alternative approaches to diversity, as well as their effects on individuals, organizations, and society as a whole. Thus, we conclude with a consideration of research needs, as well as practical and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the prevailing interindividual and interactionist perspectives on (un)ethical behavior, recent research has demonstrated that employees can dynamically transition between ethical and unethical behavior as part of an intraindividual moral self-regulation process. We review over 300 empirical studies that examined within-person processes (e.g., moral licensing, moral cleansing, and slippery slope) as explanations for a variety of organizationally relevant behaviors (e.g., [un]ethical behavior, organizational citizenship behaviors, and counterproductive work behaviors). From our review, we develop a multistage model that integrates the influences of individual traits and contextual factors with intraindividual moral self-regulation processes. Combining findings from diverse research domains (e.g., management, psychology, marketing, and economics), we emphasize the importance of these factors in understanding the evaluation of initial and compensatory (un)ethical behavior, the selection of targets for compensatory behavior, and shifts in moral reference points. In doing so, we highlight conceptual, empirical, and methods-related contributions to this literature, and we identify paths for future research that integrates different perspectives on behavioral ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive body of literature has demonstrated the incentive effect by which pay for performance (PFP) motivates employees' in-role task performance. Nonetheless, scholars have also posited that PFP is likely to demotivate employees' extra-role behaviors. Drawing upon expectancy theory (Vroom, 1964) and the heuristic processing literature (Kahneman, 2011), we examine the relationship between PFP and employee helping behavior. We perform this examination not only by considering the "pay" component (e.g., PFP intensity) but also by scrutinizing the "performance" component; namely, performance subjectivity, which refers to the extent to which the criteria or indicators used to measure employee performance in the performance appraisal system are subjective. Specifically, we propose that PFP has a conditional positive effect (i.e., in the context of high performance subjectivity) on employee helping behavior, and further theorize and test the underlying psychological mechanism by which individual perceived helping–performance expectancy accounts for the interactive effects between PFP and performance subjectivity on employee helping behavior. The empirical results of three studies employing distinctive methodologies provide general support for our hypotheses. Taken together, our research challenges the conventional wisdom that PFP undermines employees' extra-role behaviors by providing new insight into understanding when and why PFP motivates employee helping behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars continue to debate whether voice and silence are opposites or distinct constructs. This ambiguity has prevented meaningful theoretical advancements about employees' voice and silence at work. We draw on the behavioral activation and behavioral inhibition systems perspective to provide a conceptual framework for the independence of voice and silence and explicate how two key antecedents—perceived impact and psychological safety—more strongly relate to voice and silence, respectively. We further differentiate voice and silence by identifying their distinct effects on employee burnout. In Study 1, a meta-analysis, we demonstrate that voice and silence are independent (Mρ = −.15) and that perceived impact (psychological safety) relates more strongly to voice (silence) than to silence (voice). We also find that silence has a significantly stronger association with burnout compared to voice. In Study 2, we constructively replicate these findings in an interval-contingent panel study across six months. Taken together, this article helps shift the conversation of whether voice and silence are distinct constructs to how they differ and why such differences matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The burgeoning literature on LMX differentiation has demonstrated positive and negative cross-level outcomes depending on specific boundary conditions. Although this research has provided key insights into the LMX phenomenon at multiple levels of analysis, we currently lack a conceptual understanding of when and why LMX differentiation may have positive or negative consequences at work. Opening the black box between LMX differentiation and work behaviors, we draw on social comparison theory to develop a conceptual model of the cross-level implications of LMX differentiation for employee emotions and discretionary behaviors. Since each LMX dyad is nested within the broader workgroup, we incorporate multilevel relationships in our theorizing. Relying on social comparison theory, we theorize that specific instances of resource allocation by leaders function as affective events that trigger social comparison emotions. More specifically, we posit that these affective events trigger an emotion appraisal process that causes relative individual LMX status and justice perceptions to interact as sources of social comparison information, influencing the type of social comparison emotion that emerges, with subsequent effects on interpersonal discretionary behavior. Overall, our social comparison perspective unravels emotional mechanisms that provide one explanation for why LMX differentiation has inconsistent effects on employee work behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We integrate the social functional view of emotions with recent developments in workplace envy research to develop and test a novel theoretical framework showing that envious employees can use their envy to promote self-enhancing actions rather than other-diminishing behaviors. We theorize that enviers' core self-evaluations and friendship ties will attenuate the extent to which enviers undermine envied targets and promote the extent to which enviers actively learn from their envied targets through observational learning and advice seeking. Using two data sets from round-robin surveys of employees in the cosmetic (Study 1) and the financial (Study 2) industries, we show that, while enviers undermine envied targets, they also capitalize on their envy by seeking advice from the envied targets, and enviers who have higher core self-evaluations and friendship with the envied targets are more likely to seek advice from those targets; higher core self-evaluation also decreases the likelihood of undermining the envied targets. We found limited support for the role of envy in triggering enviers' observational learning. Furthermore, enviers who learn from envied targets perform better and advice seeking is more influential for enviers' performance than observational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance pressure focuses employee efforts toward enhanced performance. It is unclear, however, whether performance pressure serves as a productive or unproductive strategy for producing beneficial work behavior. Our research provides clarity on the dynamic nature of performance pressure. We theorize that reactions to performance pressure are influenced by daily fluctuations in how the pressure is appraised, and these fluctuations explain why performance pressure can be a double-edged sword, producing bright and dark side effects for organizations. We predict that, on a daily basis, performance pressure may be appraised as a threat, which promotes self-regulation depletion that explains dysfunctional behavior (i.e., incivility); daily performance pressure may also be appraised as a challenge, which elicits engagement that explains enhanced task proficiency and citizenship. Trait resilience is predicted to moderate these effects, promoting performance pressure to be appraised as a challenge rather than a threat, which then mitigates the depleting effects that produce dysfunctional behavior and enhances the engaging effects that produce functional behavior. Results from an experience sampling study support our predictions. Implications for theory and research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We’ve all been there. You ask a colleague for help with something, maybe a tricky research design or a difficult student. They agree to help, but their assistance misses its mark. You wonder what happened and, if you turn to existing research and theory, you don’t find much illumination. Armed with experience sampling and interview data from a design consultancy, we explored instances of unhelpful help – any instance in which potential help-givers agree to help, but instead deliver nothing or something that receivers find of little or no value. This happens, we discovered, because two aspects of the organization that, ideally, should facilitate creative work can instead operate as hazards: flexibility in role definitions, and – ironically – strong helping norms. These hazards play a role in three critical junctures: the helping request, the help itself, and the helping aftermath. This research paves the way for scholars to more deeply understand conditions driving unhelpful help, illuminates unforeseen downsides of organizing for creative work, and shows how creative workers and their leaders can increase the chances that help will be truly helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We integrate theoretical perspectives on humor to test the processes through which leader humor (LH) facilitates subordinate organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). In doing so, we argue that humor is a key interpersonal resource for leaders and derive our comprehensive model with logic from three individual-resource-related theories—social exchange theory, conservation of resources theory, and broaden-and-build theory. Leader-triggered positive emotion and subsequent social exchange, operationalized as leader–member exchange (LMX), functioned as key sequential mechanisms mediating the relationship between LH and subordinate OCBs. LH induced positive emotion in subordinates, which fostered high-quality LMX and, in turn, OCBs. Contrary to expectations, the stress relief explanation of LH was not supported. This research contributes to knowledge of humor in organizations, and particularly LH, as it is the first to establish a link between LH and OCBs and also represents the first integration and concurrent examination of three functions of humor. We additionally offer empirical contributions to the humor literature by providing a comprehensive test of prior conceptual arguments regarding mechanisms of LH and validating a measure of LH that can be used in future research. For LMX research, we draw attention to LH as an overlooked but important socioemotional resource for social exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the job-crafting perspective, we theorized a serial curvilinear mediated moderation model that links underemployment to two outcomes that benefit the organization: creativity and organizational citizenship behavior. A three-waved time-lagged survey of teachers and a field study of technical workers provided convergent support for this model. In Study 1, using data from 327 teachers and their immediate supervisors, we found support for our hypotheses that perceived underemployment had an inverted U-shaped relationship with task crafting and that this relationship was moderated by organizational identification. When the teachers' organizational identification was high, they engaged in more task crafting for the organization at intermediate levels of perceived underemployment. We also found that task crafting was positively related to creativity and organizational citizenship behavior. In Study 2, the simulation tasks for 297 technical workers provided convergent evidence for the idea that objective underemployment indirectly influences objective task crafting through perceived underemployment with the inverted U-shaped path from perceived underemployment to task crafting. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has consistently demonstrated that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) produce a wide array of positive outcomes for employees and organizations. Recent work, however, has suggested that employees often engage in OCBs not because they want to but because they feel they have to, and it is not clear whether OCBs performed for external motives have the same positive effects on individuals and organizational functioning as do traditional OCBs. In this article, we draw from self-determination and moral licensing theories to suggest a potential negative consequence of OCB. Specifically, we argue that when employees feel compelled to engage in OCB by external forces, they will subsequently feel psychologically entitled for having gone above and beyond the call of duty. Furthermore, these feelings of entitlement can act as moral credentials that psychologically free employees to engage in both interpersonal and organizational deviance. Data from two multisource field studies and an online experiment provide support for these hypotheses. In addition, we demonstrate that OCB-generated feelings of entitlement transcend organizational boundaries and lead to deviance outside of the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burgeoning theory and research signal the prominence of within-individual dynamics in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), with such work focusing primarily on shortterm (i.e., minutes, days, weeks) fluctuations that result from a focus on immediate circumstances. But longer-term variations in OCB also occur as people continuously craft identity narratives to tell evolving stories about themselves using selective appropriation of the past, present, and future. By focusing on individuals who have internalized a "good citizen identity" (a reflection of one's self-concept as a person who demonstrates OCB), we shift attention by presenting theory that speaks to modifications of OCB trends over the course of good citizens' tenure. We ground our framework in the time-dependent perspectives of sensemaking and dynamic behavior to specify precise temporal relationships between triggering cues and OCB modifications. Specifically, we define a baseline OCB trend and then develop propositions about how sensemaking cues linked to role transitions and work episodes can prompt differences in four trend effects: lag, rate of change, magnitude, and permanence. In doing so we identify circumstances that interrupt good citizens' ongoing flow and that could spark permanent modifications to OCB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws on social identity theories of behavioral contagion and research concerning narratives in organizations to present and test a framework for understanding how narratives embed values in organizational newcomers' actions. Employing a field experiment using newly hired employees in a large IT firm that prioritizes selftranscendent values, this study explores how narratives that vary in terms of the organizational level of main characters and the values-upholding or values-violating behaviors of those characters influence newcomers' tendencies to engage in behaviors that uphold or deviate from the values. The results indicate that stories about low-level organizational characters engaging in values-upholding behaviors are more positively associated with self-transcendent, helping behaviors, and negatively associated with deviant behaviors, than are similar stories about high-level members of the organization. Stories in which high-level members of the organization violate values are more strongly negatively related to newcomers' engagement in both helping and deviance than are values-violating stories about lower-level members. Content analyses of the stories suggest that they convey values in different and potentially important ways. Implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the general picture in the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature is that OCB has positive consequences for employees and organizations, an emerging stream of work has begun to examine the potential negative consequences of OCB for actors. Drawing from the cognitive-affective processing system framework and conservation of resources theory, we present an integrative model that simultaneously examines the benefits and costs of daily OCB for actors. Utilizing an experience sampling methodology through which 82 employees were surveyed for 10 workdays, we find that daily OCB is associated with positive affect, but it also interferes with perceptions of work goal progress. Positive affect and work goal progress in turn mediate the effects of OCB on daily well-being. Moreover, employees' trait regulatory focus influences the strength of the daily relationships between OCB and its positive and negative outcomes. We conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications of our multilevel model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite meta-analytic evidence demonstrating that leader--member exchange (LMX) agreement (consensus between leader and subordinate perceptions) is only moderate at best, research on LMX typically examines this relationship from only one perspective: either the leader's or the subordinate's. We return to the roots of LMX and utilize role theory to argue that agreement between leader and subordinate perceptions of LMX quality has meaningful effects on employee motivation and behavior. In a polynomial regression analysis of 280 leader--subordinate dyads, employee work engagement--and subsequent organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)--was maximized (at each level of LMX quality) when leaders and subordinates were in agreement about the quality of their LMX relationship, but suffered when they did not see "eye to eye." Indeed, situations in which both leaders and subordinates evaluated their relationship as low quality were associated with higher work engagement (and subsequent OCB) than were situations of disagreement in which a single member evaluated the relationship as high quality. Further, this effect was consistent regardless of whether the leader or the subordinate evaluated the relationship highly. We conclude that, to fully understand the implications of our only dyadic leadership theory, we must consider the perspectives of both members of the LMX dyad simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the joint effects of diversity composition (as manifested in faultline strength) and diversity management (as manifested in diversity climate) on loyal behavior. Using data gathered from a sample of 1,652 managerial employees in 76 work units, we assess the cross-level effects of unit-level relationship- and task-related faultline strength and diversity climate on individual-level loyal behavior of managerial employees. We find a negative relationship between gender faultline strength and loyal behavior, and a positive relationship between diversity climate and loyal behavior. In addition, we find that work unit diversity climate moderates the relationships between the strength of gender and function faultlines and loyal behavior; specifically, a supportive diversity climate reduces the negative consequences associated with relationship-related faultlines and increases the positive consequences associated with task-related faultlines. The results highlight the value of simultaneously considering faultlines and diversity climate in understanding and managing workforce diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research builds on theory about how identification develops when members differ in which organizational values they hold to be important. It is relatively well established that conflict and dis-identification arise under such conditions. In the socially responsible retail company I studied, in contrast, I found identification as well as dis-identification. Both outcomes emerged from members’ interactions with others whose values and behaviors differed from their own. Identification arose when managers interpreted and enacted organizational values for frontline employees by developing integrative solutions, removing ideology, and routinizing ideology. Dis-identification developed in the absence of these practices. The resulting process model suggests a relational ecology of identification, in which identification emerges from the combination of bottom-up interactive processes among organizational members and top-down interpretations and enactments by managers. This model advances understanding of the relational dynamics of identification, offers new insight into how organizations can benefit from multiple identities, and illuminates the double-edged sword of ideology in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the acknowledged existence of egoism and altruism in human behavior, existing work teams research has primarily used a descriptive approach to summarize team behavior that does not distinguish between egoism and altruism. And despite increasing interest in positive organizational behavior and psychology, much more attention has been paid to understanding team egoistic behavior than team altruistic behavior, thus leaving theories of team motivation incomplete. Extending research on team processes and individual-level citizenship behavior, we develop a multilevel, dynamic framework that comprehensively establishes the team altruism construct and identifies its key dimensions. We further discuss the unique motives and evolution of team altruism over time. As a result, our theoretical framework offers a new taxonomy of team altruism, distinguishes team altruism from other related constructs, advances research on team processes by delineating those that are more altruistic from those that are more egoistic, argues that different types of team altruistic behaviors and processes have different antecedents, and generates a number of important directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intense emotions such as frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction often drive employees to speak up. Yet the very emotions that spur employees to express voice may compromise their ability to do so constructively, preventing managers from reacting favorably. I propose that to speak up frequently and constructively, employees need knowledge about effective strategies for managing emotions. Building on theories of emotion regulation, I develop a theoretical model that explains the role of managing emotions in the incidence and outcomes of voice. In a field study at a health care company, emotion regulation knowledge (1) predicted more frequent voice, (2) mediated by the emotional labor strategies of deep acting and surface acting, and (3) enhanced the contributions of voice to performance evaluations. These results did not generalize to helping behaviors, demonstrating that emotion regulation uniquely affects challenging but not affiliative interpersonal citizenship behaviors. This research introduces emotion regulation as a novel influence on voice and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational citizenship behaviors are discretionary employee behaviors that are helpful but not absolutely required by employers. While a great deal of information has been gleaned about the importance of organizational citizenship behaviors in the workplace, the nature of work has fundamentally changed; with this shift, the nature of organizational citizenship behavior for modern workers is also likely to have changed. Thus, the field is ready for an evolution in how we conceptualize organizational citizenship behavior that considers the contemporary nature of work. We carried out a multistage qualitative study designed to provide an understanding of a new generation of organizational citizenship behaviors as expressed at Google, a high-innovation, fast-paced firm, characteristic of the new form of work common to the high-technology industry and knowledge economy. Our findings indicate that some established organizational citizenship behavior concepts map onto knowledge workers' conceptualizations of such behavior. However, other common, historical forms of organizational citizenship behavior were deemed irrelevant in this context, and a set of new behaviors that had not surfaced in previous research emerged. These findings offer insight into the kinds of behaviors necessary for success in the new world of work. We discuss the implications of this research for employee and organizational performance in the knowledge economy and introduce an initial instrument to assess these new forms of organizational citizenship behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the generally negative relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors and counterproductive work behaviors, employees often engage in both. Psychologists have found that when people engage in morally praiseworthy behaviors, they often grant themselves a moral license to behave immorally. In this article we draw on moral licensing theory and research on identity orientations to explain why and when citizenship behavior may lead to subsequent counterproductive behavior. We also explain how the harm done to the personal reputation of employees who engage in counterproductive work behaviors will be lessened by the degree to which they have a moral license to engage in such behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]