Distributed leadership in healthcare: leadership dyads and the promise of improved hospital outcomes.

PURPOSE: This paper aims to extend the consideration of distributed leadership in health-care settings. Leadership is typically studied from the classical notion of the place of single leaders and continues to examine distributed leadership within small teams or horizontally. The purpose is to develop a practical understanding of how distributed leadership may occur vertically, between different layers of the health-care leadership hierarchy, examining its influence on health-care outcomes across two hospitals. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Using semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 107 hospital employees (including executive leadership, clinical management and clinicians) from two hospitals in Australia and the USA. Using thematic content analysis, an iterative process was adopted characterized by alternating between social identity and distributed leadership literature and empirical themes to answer the question of how the practice of distributed leadership influences performance outcomes in hospitals? FINDINGS: The perceived social identities of leadership groups shaped communication and performance both positively and negatively. In one hospital a moderating structure emerged as a leadership dyad, where leadership was distributed vertically between hospital hierarchal layers, observed to overcome communication limitations. Findings suggest dyad creation is an effective mechanism to overcome hospital hierarchy-based communication issues and ameliorate health-care outcomes. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The study demonstrates how current leadership development practices that focus on leadership relational and social competencies can benefit from a structural approach to include leadership dyads that can foster these same competencies. This approach could help develop future hospital leaders and in doing so, improve hospital outcomes.

Unfairness in stressful job environments: the contingent effects of perceived organizational injustice on the relationships between job stress and employee behaviors.

Adopting the transactional model of stress and affective events theory, we examine the boundary effects of injustice types (i.e., procedural and distributive) on the relationships between job stress and employee behaviors (i.e., creativity, organizational retaliatory behavior and organizational citizenship behavior). Using two sources of field data (N = 691) with independent measures for predictors (self-reports) and outcomes (peer reports), in the service sector of Pakistan, we tested our hypothesized model using Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping method for testing moderator effects. The results of the moderation analyses reveal that job stress worsened employees' creativity, citizenship and retaliatory behaviors when injustice levels (procedural and distributive) were high. No support was found for the moderating effect of procedural injustice on the relationship between job stress and retaliatory behavior. In conclusion, this study addresses an important theme that has not previously been explored in a developing country context.

Mitigating the Harmful Effect of Perceived Organizational Compliance on Trust in Top Management: Buffering Roles of Employees' Personal Resources.

This study considers how employees' POC-defined as their beliefs that the organizational climate stifles change and values compliance with the status quo-reduce their trust in top management, as well as how this negative relationship might be buffered by access to two personal resources that support organizational change: openness to experience and affective commitment to change. Data from a sample of Pakistan-based organizations reveal that POC reduce trust in top management, but this effect is weaker at higher levels of openness to experience and affective commitment to change. These findings are significant in that they indicate that employees who operate in organizational climates marked by "yea-saying" can counter the difficulty of improving their job situation by drawing from adequate personal resources.

Perceived competence and impression management: Testing the mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Using a diverse and unique sample of triads (N = 191 self, peer, and supervisor reports) from a field survey of two service sector organisations, this study examined the effects of perceived competence (self-reported) and supervisor-rated performance ratings on peer-rated impression management. The study also tested the mediating role of performance in competence-impression management relationships and the moderating role of job satisfaction (self-reported) in performance-impression management relationships using bootstrapping techniques. The study further examined the conditional indirect effects (i.e., moderated mediation) of perceived competence on impression management. The sample consisted of white collar employees from a government organisation and a leading cellular company in a developing country (i.e., Pakistan). Employees with low perceived competence were more likely to use impression management tactics than were those with high perceived competence. Similarly, poor performance ratings produced high impression management. Moreover, performance mediated the relationship between competence and impression management. The findings also suggest that perceived competence has a negative indirect effect on impression management for those with high levels of job satisfaction. Finally, impression management was highest when performance and satisfaction were low.

Combined effects of workplace bullying and perceived organizational support on employee behaviors: does resource availability help?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: This research examines the detrimental effects of workplace bullying as a social stressor on employees' job performance, organizational retaliatory behaviors, and organizational citizenship behaviors and how the availability of support can reduce the negative impact of bullying. Using social exchange theory and the conservation of resources theory as theoretical frameworks, we propose that workplace bullying drains personal resources, leading to reduced job performance, low citizenship behaviors, and increased organizational retaliatory behaviors. We also propose that perceived organizational support acts as moderator, such that it reduces the detrimental effects of bullying on employee behaviors. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We tested our hypotheses in two field studies (N = 478 and N = 395) conducted in Pakistan. RESULTS: The results of both studies supported the assertion that workplace bullying exacerbates employees' job performance, reduces organizational citizenship behaviors and intensifies organizational retaliatory behaviors. The idea that perceived organizational support would moderate the bullying-work behavior relationships found mixed support. While perceptions of organizational support reinforced the bullying-job performance and bullying-retaliatory behaviors relationships, it did not moderate the bullying-citizenship behaviors relationship in the suggested direction. CONCLUSION: The findings show that workplace bullying leads to more organizational citizenship behaviors when employee's perceptions of organizational support is high.

Combined effects of positive and negative affectivity and job satisfaction on job performance and turnover intentions.

Capturing data from employee-supervisor dyads (N = 321) from eight organizations in Pakistan, including human service organizations, an electronics assembly plant, a packaging material manufacturing company, and a small food processing plant, we used moderated regression analysis to examine whether the relationships between trait affect (positive affectivity [PA] and negative affectivity [NA]) and two key work outcome variables (job performance and turnover) are contingent upon the level of job satisfaction. We applied the Trait Activation Theory to explain the moderating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between affect and performance and between affect and turnover. Overall, the data supported our hypotheses. Positive and negative affectivity influenced performance and the intention to quit, and job satisfaction moderated these relationships. We discuss in detail the results of these findings and their implications for research and practice.

Organizational Change Questionnaire-Climate of Change, Processes, and Readiness: development of a new instrument.

On the basis of a step-by-step procedure (see T. R. Hinkin, 1998), the authors discuss the design and evaluation of a self-report battery (Organizational Change Questionnaire-Climate of Change, Processes, and Readiness; OCQ-C, P, R) that researchers can use to gauge the internal context or climate of change, the process factors of change, and readiness for change. The authors describe 4 studies used to develop a psychometrically sound 42-item assessment tool that researchers can administer in organizational settings. More than 3,000 organizational members from public and private sector organizations participated in the validation procedure of the OCQ-C, P, R. The information obtained from the analyses yielded 5 climate-of-change dimensions, 3 process-of-change dimensions, and 3 readiness-for-change dimensions.

Cognitive motivation correlates of coping style in decisional conflict.

Can personality traits account for the handling of internal conflicts? The authors explored how individual differences in information-processing style affect coping patterns displayed before making important decisions. Need for cognition and need for cognitive closure were linked to the major tendencies identified in the conflict theory of decision making: vigilance, hypervigilance, and defensive avoidance (buck passing and procrastination). A sample of 1,119 Belgian human resource professionals completed the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire, the 18-item short-form Need for Cognition Scale, and the Need for Closure Inventory. Ordinary least squares regression analysis indicated that significant relationships existed between need for cognition, need for closure, and conflict decision-making styles. The authors also found significant effects of gender and age.

Contribution of content, context, and process to understanding openness to organizational change: two experimental simulation studies.

The authors examined the contribution of the content, context, and process of organizational transformation to employees' openness to change. The authors predicted that 5 factors would have a positive effect on openness to change: (a) threatening character of organizational change (content related), (b) trust in executive management (context related), (c) trust in the supervisor (context related), (d) history of change (context related), and (e) participation in the change effort (process related). The authors tested their hypotheses in 2 separate studies (N = 828 and N = 835) using an experimental simulation strategy. The first study crossed 4 variables in a completely randomized 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design. Results showed significant main effects for content, context, and process but no significant interaction effects. A second study, with a completely randomized 2 x 2 factorial design, crossed two context variables. Results showed a significant main and an interaction effect: Openness to change decreased dramatically only when history of change and trust in executive management were low.

The prediction of stress by values and value conflict.

The authors investigated the relationships among stress, values, and value conflict. Data collected from 400 people working in a variety of companies in Flanders indicated that the values of openness to change, conservation, self-transcendence, and self-enhancement were important predictors of stress. Participants open to change reported less stress, whereas participants who had high scores on conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence perceived more stress. People who reported high value conflict also experienced more stress. Separate analyses for men and women showed that there were gender differences in the relationships observed between the 4 value types and stress. These data have noteworthy theoretical and practical implications.