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Using a sample of 62 ongoing research and development (R&D) project teams from a large multinational company, the present study examines how transformational leaders enhance team creativity. The re...

Work-related attitudes and/or behaviors that harm other organizational members and/or the organization— thereby potentiating the onset or worsening of conflict or other consequences that threaten o...

This article presents a response by Richard M. Steers, Richard T. Mowday and Debra L. Shapiro to Christopher Michaelson's comments on the July 2004 “Academy of Management Review” Special Topic Forum regarding the Future of Work Motivation Theory. Steers and colleagues agree with Michaelson that the articles in the forum did not directly address his desire to see further linkages developed between work motivation theories and people's legitimate desire for meaningful lives. The authors note that no papers were submitted to this special issue directly examining the topic and encouraged Professor Michaelson to develop this linkage. If there are to be any future papers on the subject the line of theory development will need to be differentiated from current constructs in work motivation research which currently focus on intrinsic sources of motivation.

We highlight linguistic-related challenges in multicultural teams that increase the likelihood of emotional conflict, and also highlight the difficulty of “finding words” in emotional situations because of the nonlinear, fragmented, image-driven qualities of these circumstances. As a result, we question whether team members embroiled in emotional conflict ought to be advised to talk (discuss their feelings with the goal of repairing frayed relationships), whether this meaning of talk is shared by people from culturally different backgrounds, and what conflict management alternatives may exist when talk is not possible or desirable.

The topic of employee motivation plays a central role in the field of management—both practically and theoretically. Managers see motivation as an integral part of the performance equation at all levels, while organizational researchers see it as a fundamental building block in the development of useful theories of effective management practice. Indeed, the topic of motivation permeates many of the subfields that compose the study of management, including leadership, teams, performance management, managerial ethics, decision making, and organizational change. It is not surprising, therefore, that this topic has received so much attention over the past several decades in both research journals and management periodicals. Whereas several recent articles have examined how far we have come in researching work motivation, this special forum focuses on where we are going. That is, we ask the questions: What is the future of work motivation theories? What are the critical questions that must be addressed if progress in the field is to be made? What is the future research agenda? How can we extend or modify current models of work motivation so they continue to be relevant in the future? And where are entirely new models of motivation needed to further our understanding of employee behavior and job performance in contemporary organizations? To understand where the field is going, however, we must first understand where it has been. This introduction represents an overview of the field of work motivation from a theoretical standpoint and lays the foundation for the articles that follow. The term motivation derives from the Latin word for movement (movere.) Building on this concept, Atkinson defines motivation as “the contemporary (immediate) influence on direction, vigor, and persistence of action” (1964: 2), while Vroom defines it as “a process governing choice made by persons . . . among alternative forms of voluntary activity” (1964: 6). Campbell and Pritchard suggest that

Debra L. Shapiro University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This study examined a model of the relative mitigating effects of three types of explanations on the negative reactions of subjects who had been told that they had been deceived. Explanations were found to mitigate differentially feelings of disapproval, injustice, punitiveness, and unforgiveness, depending on the type of explanation, the severity of the outcome the subjects experienced, how adequate they judged the explanation to be, and how honest they felt the explainer was. The perceived adequacy of the explanation was more important in mitigating negative reactions than the type of explanation, although punitiveness was affected, more than the other negative reactions, by the type of explanation and was moderated more by the outcomes of greater severity. The study shows that whether explanations have a mitigating effect on negative reactions depends on more than the characteristics of the explanations and the explainer, which have been the focus of previous research.'

The antecedents and consequences of the perceived familiarity, or resemblance, of a stranger to someone already known are explored in two studies. Study 1 showed that subjects in a discussion group who expected hostility to be directed toward them were more likely to perceive familiarity in group members compared to subjects in control conditions. In Study 2 male perceiver subjects had an 8-min phone conversation with female targets who did or did not resemble a close friend of the perceiver. Familiar targets were rated by both perceivers and naive judges to be more similar to the close friends in central trait descriptors. Results are discussed in terms of the social functions of perceived familiarity.

The article discusses a study which examines whether voice and justification affect unfavorable decisions in job recruitment and budget decision-making. A discussion is presented about the influenc...

There has been an increasing amount of research conducted on issues of procedural justice. Although this research has demonstrated that the type of procedure used to allocate outcomes has an independent influence on people's judgments of the fairness of a decision, there is growing empirical evidence that such judgments are influenced by the enactment of the procedure as well. Fairness concerns raised about the propriety of a decision maker's behavior during the enactment of procedures are representative of a desire forinteractional justice. In this paper, we present three studies that examine the effects of giving acausal account, or a justification, versus not providing a justification, on judgments of interactional fairness and endorsement of a decision maker's actions. In Study I, a laboratory study, ratings of interactional fairness and support for a manager were higher when subjects received a causal account that claimed mitigating circumstances for a manager's improper action than when they did not receive such a causal account. A second laboratory study replicated the same pattern of findings in two different organizational contexts. In addition, it was found that the perceived adequacy of the causal account was a critical factor explaining its effect. In Study 3, a field setting, ratings of both interactional fairness and procedural fairness were higher when a manager provided anadequate causal account to justify the allocation of an unfavorable outcome. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for research on interactional and procedural justice.

People act in ways that sometimes violate social expectations or role requirements. To bridge the gap between action and expectation, and thus prevent conflict, the offending party can provide an account, which is an explanation of the behavior in question. This article examines situations in work organizations in which a boss refuses a subordinate's request, thus failing to meet the subordinate's expectations. Specifically, we examine the effects of a boss's causal account, which is an explanation claiming mitigating circumstances for the refusal, on subordinate reactions that might induce conflict (e.g., anger, complaints). In a survey of 121 currently employed subordinates, it was found that the mere claim of mitigating circumstances does not explain the influence of a causal account in lessening conflict; rather, it is the adequacy of reasoning in support of the claim and the boss's sincerity in communicating the causal account that explain the variance in subordinates' reactions. The implications of these results for an analysis of accounts as a conflict-management strategy are discussed.

This research tests the notion that mediation is an art and thereby reflects mediators' unique interpretation of case characteristics and their intuitive resolution skills. Self-report data were collected from 327 grievance mediation conferences. Specifically, five mediators reported whether or not they encouraged a compromise settlement, proposed a concrete settlement, encouraged the parties to discuss a compromise settlement, separated the parties during the mediation conference, and/or advised the parties in private how they thought the grievance would be resolved by an arbitrator. In addition, mediators were asked to report the duration of the conference and the type of conference outcome. The findings show that although four of the five mediators varied their behavior across conferences, all were about equally successful in settling grievances. The kind of settlements the mediators achieved, however, varied according to their behavioral choices. It is suggested that mediators choose behavioral tactics based on the kind of outcome they wish to achieve. Mediator behavior is less reactive and more proactive and systematic than popularly thought. It may thus be time to recognize that mediators are skilled practitioners of a learned craft-not innately intuitive artists.