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This study investigates the positive and negative effects of developmental job experience (DJE) on employees’ innovative behavior. Relying on transactional stress theory, we hypothesize the mediating roles of psychological capital and burnout in the relationship between DJE and innovative behavior as assessed by team leaders. The results reveal that DJE is only indirectly related to innovative behavior via psychological capital and burnout when employees’ perceived job mobility within an organization (PJM) is low (moderated mediation). We also find that employees’ PJM significantly and differentially moderates the relationships between DJE and psychological capital and between DJE and burnout. Our study provides both theoretical and practical guidance on how to utilize developmental jobs to promote employees’ innovative behavior.

Based on a multilevel data set collected from 599 individuals working in 102 self-managing teams, we examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and team member performance, focusing on the dimensions of teamwork and leadership performance. Furthermore, we explored the moderating role of team-level characteristics, such as noninformational diversity, size, and collective EI on the EI–performance relationship. As predicted, team members with higher EI were better at facilitating teamwork and playing the role of an informal leader than those with lower EI. The positive contribution of EI on team member performance was stronger for teams with greater diversity, larger sizes, and with lower average levels of team member EI. The study suggests that managers of self-managing teams should emphasize EI in their selection, training, and evaluation systems.

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...

In a study of 357 managers using multiple methods and raters, we investigated how leaders' affective experience was linked to their transformational leadership. As predicted, we found that leaders who experienced more pleasantness at work were rated by their subordinates as more transformational, and this relationship was partially mediated by leaders' affective organizational commitment. Surprisingly, job satisfaction did not mediate this relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Via a longitudinal study of organizational change, we found that employees’ later commitment to change, in both affective and normative forms, was generally greater when they initially felt more rather than less commitment to change and that more commitment to change was sustained over time when employees perceived their leaders to have provided more transformational and informational justice behaviors within their work units. We also found that employees’ later commitment to change was a strong predictor of employees’ later behavioral support for change and turnover intention. The implications of our findings for how to maintain employee commitment to organizational change will be discussed.

Although past research has identified the effects of emotional intelligence on numerous employee outcomes, the relationship between emotional intelligence and creativity has not been well established. We draw upon affective information processing theory to explain how two facets of emotional intelligence—emotion regulation and emotion facilitation—shape employee creativity. Specifically, we propose that emotion regulation ability enables employees to maintain higher positive affect (PA) when faced with unique knowledge processing requirements, while emotion facilitation ability enables employees to use their PA to enhance their creativity. We find support for our hypotheses using a multimethod (ability test, experience sampling, survey) and multisource (archival, self-reported, supervisor-reported) research design of early career managers across a wide range of jobs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)

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

We advance understanding of the role that leaders play in promoting psychological empowerment and positive work outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job performance) for employees who engage in a high degree of electronic communication in their job. By integrating leader–member exchange (LMX) theory and theories of electronic communication, we build and test a mediated moderation model in which employees’ degree of electronic communication in their job amplifies the positive relationship that LMX has to psychological empowerment and subsequent employee work outcomes. Based on a sample of 353 early-career professionals employed in a range of different types of organizations, we found general support for the hypothesized model. We discuss the study’s theoretical and practical implications for leading employees in electronically-enabled work environments.

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...

Based on multilevel data collected at 2 points in time, we examine the role of employees’ affective experiences in shaping their commitment and behavioral responses to both the initial (Time 1) and later (Time 2) phases of organizational change (12 months later). We also test the cross-level effect of workgroup managers’ transformational leadership on their employees’ responses to change. We find strong support for predicted longitudinal relationships between employees’ affective experiences and their commitment and behavioral responses to change. In particular, employees’ positive and negative affect (NA) at Time 1 significantly predict both their commitment to change and the 3 dimensions (supportive, resistant, and creative) of behavioral responses at Time 2. Further, the effects of NA directly influence employee change commitment and behaviors at Time 2, whereas the long-term effects of positive affect occur both directly and indirectly through commitment to change at Time 1. Finally, our results support the hypothesized role of workgroup managers’ transformational leadership in shaping employees’ affective reactions and commitment to change at the initial phase of change and thereby, their subsequent behavioral responses in the later phase. We discuss the implications for theory and practice in organizational change.

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.

In this article, the authors identify six theories (anxiety theory, social identity theory, acculturation theory, role conflict theory, job characteristics theory, and organizational justice theory) to explain problems in managing the merger and acquisition (M&A) organizational change process. These theories have implicitly or explicitly formed the basis for the past M&A literature. The authors integrate these theories into one conceptual framework that clearly delineates unique sources of problems that can emerge in different stages of M&A integration, their psychological and behavioral effects on employees, and prescriptions to address the problems. The framework can be used as a guide for M&A integration leaders to systematically plan interventions to smooth the human integration process. It also provides a foundation for future theoretical and empirical M&A integration research.

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.