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As organizations undertake significant transformation to compete and survive in today’s dynamic business environment, employees are required to engage their personal energies, not only in their day-to-day work but also in one or more change initiatives within their organization. Yet, we know little about how individuals devote energy to both the demands of change and to day-to-day work. Drawing on the job demands-resources model (JD-R), we develop and test theory that explains how employees direct and invest energy toward the pursuit of organizational change goals and how this engagement in change may affect subsequent engagement in work role activities. Results of a three-wave study conducted in a sample of 144 employees undergoing a significant organizational transformation revealed a positive relationship between work engagement and change engagement, which is particularly strong when employees experience the key resources of value congruence and perceived organizational support. Similarly, the relationship between change engagement and subsequent work engagement is also positive overall but strongest when employees are highly engaged in the change and highly involved in the transformation.

Past research widely demonstrates the importance of employee emotional experiences and processes for individual and small group outcomes. However, theory is lacking on how organizations systematically differ in their affective processes and how these impact important organizational outcomes. To address this problem, we use organizational climate theory to advance the construct of affect climate and provide a conceptual foundation for understanding its processes and effects in organizations. We propose that through various sources of climate, such as company practices, leaders, and routines, organizations can create environments that promote, among employees, (1) certain types of affective experiences or expressions, (2) specific uses of desirable affect for functional goals, and (3) particular ways to manage undesirable emotions and moods. We suggest that these three interrelated processes work together to form one of six unique organizational affect climate types. Further, we develop theory to explain ho...

Drawing on an overarching framework of transactional stress theory, this study develops and tests an affect-based model of developmental job experience (DJE) that explicates the affective mechanisms through which DJE is associated with both positive and negative individual outcomes—advancement potential and turnover intention— and the buffering role of emotional intelligence (EI) in the affective processes. In a sample of 214 early-career managers, we found DJE to be related to increased advancement potential by boosting employees’ pleasant feelings, but also that it can fail in this regard by increasing their unpleasant feelings. Moreover, whereas it is not surprising that there was a negative relationship between DJE and turnover intention mediated by pleasant feelings, our results also demonstrated a positive relationship via unpleasant feelings, depending on employees’ levels of EI. Specifically, they suggested that DJE was positively related to turnover intention for only low-EI employees, but not for high-EI employees

Research has shown that employees' affective and normative commitment to change (ACC and NCC, respectively) positively influence their behaviors supporting change; however, organizations are frequently unsuccessful in motivating appropriate levels of employee commitment to change. Using longitudinal, multilevel data collected from a large federal government agency implementing radical organizational change, we extend extant research related to antecedents of commitment to change by examining how employees' hierarchical distance (the number of reporting levels between an employee and the top management team) and the transformational leadership of their direct (immediate) manager both relate to their ACC and NCC. We also shed light on important mechanisms that explain these two relationships by examining the mediating role of employees' perceived effectiveness of top management's change-related communications (TMCs), including the top-down and bottom-up components of TMC. Taking advantage of a longitudinal field design, we tested these antecedents of commitment to change at Time 1 and the longitudinal effects of the Time 1 predictors on commitment to change 12 months later (Time 2). At Time 1, findings supported both the predicted direct and mediated effects. Hierarchical distance and perceived TMC remained significant predictors of ACC and NCC over a one-year follow-up period; however, direct managers' transformational leadership behaviors did not. The study extends previous findings related to antecedents of employee commitment to change and also shows the interplay between different levels of leadership in shaping employee affective and normative commitment to radical organizational change.

We tested the importance of two hypothesized resources—organizational inducements and employee psychological resilience—in determining employees' commitment to, and supportive behaviors for, organi...

We examined the role of affect (pleasant or unpleasant feelings) and decision frames (gains or losses) in risk taking in a 20-day stock investment simulation in which 101 participants rated their current feelings while making investment decisions. As predicted, affect attenuated the relationships between decision frames and risk taking. After experiencing losses, individuals made more risky choices, in keeping with the framing effect. However, this tendency decreased and/or disappeared when loss was simultaneously experienced with either pleasant or unpleasant feelings. Similarly, individuals’ tendency to avoid risk after experiencing gains disappeared or even reversed when they simultaneously experienced pleasant feelings.

The purpose of this paper was to contribute to understanding of the crucial role of emotion in work motivation by testing a conceptual model developed by Seo, Barrett, and Bartunek (2004) that predicted the impacts of core affect on three behavioral outcomes of work motivation, generative-defensive orientation, effort, and persistence. We tested the model using an Internet-based investment simulation combined with an experience sampling procedure. Consistent with the predictions of the model, pleasantness was positively related to all three of the predicted indices. For the most part, these effects occurred indirectly via its relationships with expectancy, valence, and progress judgment components. Also as predicted by the model, activation was directly and positively related to effort. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Based on psychological and neurobiological theories of core affective experience, we identify a set of direct and indirect paths through which affective feelings at work affect three dimensions of behavioral outcomes: direction, intensity, and persistence. First, affective experience may influence these behavioral outcomes indirectly by affecting goal level and goal commitment, as well as three key judgment components of work motivation: expectancy judgments, utility judgments, and progress judgments. Second, affective experience may also affect these behavioral outcomes directly. We discuss implications of our model.

We use a dialectical perspective to provide a unique framework for understanding institutional change that more fully captures its totalistic, historical, and dynamic nature, as well as fundamentally resolves a theoretical dilemma of institutional theory: the relative swing between agency and embeddedness. In this framework institutional change is understood as an outcome of the dynamic interactions between two institutional by-products: institutional contradictions and human praxis. In particular, we depict praxis—agency embedded in a totality of multiple levels of interpenetrating, incompatible institutional arrangements (contradictions)—as an essential driving force of institutional change.

The purpose of this paper was to contribute to understanding of the crucial role of emotion in work motivation by testing a conceptual model developed by Seo, Barrett, and Bartunek (2004) that predicted the impacts of core affect on three behavioral outcomes of work motivation, generative-defensive orientation, effort, and persistence. We tested the model using an Internet-based investment simulation combined with an experience sampling procedure. Consistent with the predictions of the model, pleasantness was positively related to all three of the predicted indices. For the most part, these effects occurred indirectly via its relationships with expectancy, valence, and progress judgment components. Also as predicted by the model, activation was directly and positively related to effort.