When narcissists exemplify ethics: Contingent consequences of ethical leadership.

Organizations increasingly encourage, recognize, and reward ethical leadership to preempt the economic and reputational risks associated with ethical failures. At the same time, organizational leadership positions are disproportionately occupied by individuals higher in narcissism. We highlight how the combination of these two phenomena carries important organizational implications by examining how ethical leadership behaviors differentially impact leaders based on their level of narcissism. Building upon self-concordance theory, we introduce a model of contingent consequences of ethical leadership. Our model identifies motivational (i.e., self-efficacy of the leader) and social (i.e., admiration of the leader) mechanisms that explain why ethical leadership positively predicts leadership effectiveness for some leaders, but not for others. We test our model using a field study and two experiments. Findings from these three studies point to a problematic leadership paradox: When leaders higher in narcissism behave more ethically, they incur higher motivational costs and reap fewer social benefits compared to their peers who are lower in narcissism. Results reveal risks to leadership effectiveness for narcissistic leaders who attempt to lead more ethically. We discuss implications for ethical leadership research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Gender, bottom-line mentality, and workplace mistreatment: The roles of gender norm violation and team gender composition.

Although gender has been identified as an important antecedent in workplace mistreatment research, empirical research has shown mixed results. Drawing on role congruity theory, we propose an interactive effect of gender and bottom-line mentality on being the target of mistreatment. Across two field studies, our results showed that whereas women experienced more mistreatment when they had higher levels of bottom-line mentality, men experienced more mistreatment when they had lower levels of bottom-line mentality. In another field study, using round-robin survey data, we found that team gender composition influenced the degree to which the adoption of a bottom-line mentality by female team members was perceived to be a gender norm violation, which subsequently predicted their likelihood of being mistreated. Specifically, women who had higher (vs. lower) levels of bottom-line mentality were more likely to be perceived to violate gender norms in teams with a lower proportion of women, and in turn, perceived gender norm violation was positively associated with being mistreated. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings and directions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Being present and thankful: A multi-study investigation of mindfulness, gratitude, and employee helping behavior.

Gratitude plays an integral role in promoting helping behavior at work. Thus, cultivating employees' experiences of gratitude represents an important imperative in modern organizations that rely on teamwork and collaboration to achieve organizational goals. Yet, today's workplace presents a complex array of demands that make it difficult for employees to fully attend to and appreciate the various benefits they receive at work. As such, gratitude is difficult for employers to promote and for employees to experience. Despite these observations, the role of attention and awareness in facilitating employees' feelings of gratitude is largely overlooked in the extant literature. In this study, we examined whether one notable form of present moment attention, mindfulness, may promote helping behavior by stimulating the positive, other-oriented emotion of gratitude. Across two experimental studies, a semiweekly, multisource diary study, and a 10-day experience sampling investigation, we found converging evidence for a serial mediation model in which state mindfulness, via positive affect and perspective taking, prompts greater levels of gratitude, prosocial motivation, and, in turn, helping behavior at work. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our investigation, as well as avenues for the future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The whiplash effect: The (moderating) role of attributed motives in emotional and behavioral reactions to abusive supervision.

Although extant research shows a clear link between abusive supervision and detrimental consequences for organizations and their members, the popular press and media are replete with suggestions that abusive supervision can be positive and motivating. Drawing from the social functional view of emotions and emerging research on attributed motives of abusive supervision, we examine this phenomenon, which we refer to as the whiplash effect-the notion that subordinates may display different emotional and behavioral reactions to supervisory abuse depending on their attributions for abuse. We conduct 3 studies to examine this effect at both the between- and within person level. Results from a multisource, time-lagged field study (between-person) and a laboratory-based experiment (between-person) indicate that when subordinates believe that the abusive supervisor is motivated by desires to cause harm (i.e., injury initiation attribution is higher), abusive supervision is more likely to engender anger, which, in turn, elicits more deviant behaviors and fewer organizational citizenship behaviors; however, when subordinates believe the abusive supervisor is motivated by desires to improve performance (i.e., performance promotion attribution is higher), abusive supervision is more likely to evoke guilt, which, in turn, elicits fewer deviant behaviors and more organizational citizenship behaviors. These results were then expanded in an experience sampling study (within-person), which allowed us to further examine how general interpretations of supervisors' motives behind abusive supervision shape employees' momentary emotional and behavioral responses toward daily abusive supervisor behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Why victims of undermining at work become perpetrators of undermining: An integrative model.

We develop and test an integrative model explaining why victims of workplace social undermining become perpetrators of undermining. Conceptualizing social undermining as a norm-violating and a resource-depleting experience, we theorize that undermining victimization lowers interpersonal justice perceptions and depletes self-regulatory resources, and these 2 mechanisms in tandem trigger a moral disengagement process that influences subsequent undermining behaviors. We further theorize that moral identity functions as a boundary condition: high moral identity attenuates whether interpersonal injustice and resource depletion shape moral disengagement and whether moral disengagement translates to subsequent undermining. A field study of bank employees provides empirical support for the mediating mechanisms, and shows that employees who have high moral identity are less likely to respond to interpersonal injustice by morally disengaging and to translate moral disengagement to undermining. (PsycINFO Database Record

A contingency model of conflict and team effectiveness.

The authors develop and test theoretical extensions of the relationships of task conflict, relationship conflict, and 2 dimensions of team effectiveness (performance and team-member satisfaction) among 2 samples of work teams in Taiwan and Indonesia. Findings show that relationship conflict moderates the task conflict-team performance relationship. Specifically, the relationship is curvilinear in the shape of an inverted U when relationship conflict is low, but the relationship is linear and negative when relationship conflict is high. The results for team-member satisfaction are more equivocal, but the findings provide some evidence that relationship conflict exacerbates the negative relationship between task conflict and team-member satisfaction.

Abusive supervision and subordinates' organization deviance.

The authors developed an integrated model of the relationships among abusive supervision, affective organizational commitment, norms toward organization deviance, and organization deviance and tested the framework in 2 studies: a 2-wave investigation of 243 supervised employees and a cross-sectional study of 247 employees organized into 68 work groups. Path analytic tests of mediated moderation provide support for the prediction that the mediated effect of abusive supervision on organization deviance (through affective commitment) is stronger when employees perceive that their coworkers are more approving of organization deviance (Study 1) and when coworkers perform more acts of organization deviance (Study 2).

An under-met and over-met expectations model of employee reactions to merit raises.

The authors developed a model of how raise expectations influence the relationship between merit pay raises and employee reactions and tested it using a sample of hospital employees. Pay-for-performance (PFP) perceptions were consistently related to personal reactions (e.g., pay raise happiness, pay-level satisfaction, and turnover intentions). Merit pay raises were strongly related to reactions only among employees with high raise expectations and high PFP perceptions. The interactive effects of under-met/over-met expectations and PFP perceptions were mediated by the extent to which participants saw the raise as generous and they were happy with the raises they received. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for expectation-fulfillment theories, merit pay research, and the administration of incentives.

The moderating roles of self-esteem and neuroticism in the relationship between group and individual undermining behavior.

The authors developed and tested a multilevel interactive model of the relationship between group undermining and individual undermining behavior in 2 multiwave studies of group members. Integrating the literature on group influences on individual behavior with the individual difference literature, the authors predicted a 3-way Group Undermining x Self-Esteem x Neuroticism interaction, such that the relationship between group and individual undermining would be strongest among those simultaneously high in self-esteem and neuroticism. The 3-way interaction was supported in Study 1 (457 participants in 103 groups) and replicated in Study 2 (415 participants in 93 groups) with additional controls and alternative measures of key constructs. The authors discuss the implications of the research and identify future research directions.

Moderators of the relationships between coworkers' organizational citizenship behavior and fellow employees' attitudes.

The authors developed and tested the prediction that the relationship hetween coworkers' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and fellow employees' attitudes depends on the supervisors' abusiveness. Results of a longitudinal study using data collected from 173 supervised employees at 2 points in time (separated by 7 months) suggested that coworkers' OCB was positively related to fellow employees' job satisfaction and affective commitment when abusive supervision was low. However, when abusive supervision was high, coworkers' OCB was negatively related to job satisfaction and was unrelated to organizational commitment. The results of a 2nd study were consistent with the idea that the attributions employees make for their coworkers' OCB explains the moderating effect of abusive supervision on the relationship between coworkers' OCB and job satisfaction.

Reactions to merit pay increases: a longitudinal test of a signal sensitivity perspective.

The relationships among merit pay raises, trait positive affectivity (PA), and reactions to merit pay increases (pay attitudes and behavioral intentions) were explored in a longitudinal study of hospital employees. Drawing on signal sensitivity theory, the authors expected that PA would moderate the relationship between merit pay raise size and reactions to the increase such that pay raise size would be more strongly related to pay attitudes and behavioral intentions among those low in PA. Results strongly supported the predictions in the case of reactions to the raise amount (happiness and effort intentions) but not for pay level satisfaction. Implications of the results and directions for future research are identified.

Abusive supervision and subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior.

The relationship between subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision and supervisors' evaluations of subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) was explored among a sample of 373 Air National Guard members and their military supervisors. As predicted, the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinates' OCB was stronger among subordinates who defined OCB as extra-role behavior (compared with those defining OCB as in-role behavior), and this effect was fully mediated by the interactive effect of procedural justice and OCB role definitions. The study's implications for theory and research are discussed, its limitations are identified, and directions for future research are suggested.