This article draws on status characteristics theory to explore the mechanisms of individual-level boundary-spanning behavior on employee creative performance, as well as the mediating role of informal status and the moderating role of Zhongyong thinking. The results of a two-wave questionnaire survey of 202 employees show that boundary-spanning behavior has a significant positive relationship with employees’ creative performance, informal status mediates the link between boundary-spanning behavior and creative performance of this employee, Zhongyong thinking plays a moderating role between employees’ boundary-spanning behavior and their informal status, and Zhongyong thinking also moderates the mediating role of informal status between boundary-spanning behavior and employee creative performance. In this paper, a moderated mediation model is established to enhance the understanding of the effects and mechanisms of individual boundary-spanning behavior, as well as to provide some constructive insight into how boundary-spanning behavior can be effectively employed in management practice within the Chinese context.

This research addresses the role of organizational language in the establishment of legitimacy from the perspective of New Institutional Theory. Several conceptual and methodical contributions have been made. First, by pairing cultural-cognitive legitimacy with phenomenological institutionalism and socio-political legitimacy with social organizational institutionalism, we have proposed a new way of classifying legitimacy. Second, we made connections between language strategies of organizations and cultural-cognitive and socio-political legitimacy. Finally, by re-categorizing language strategies aimed at legitimacy, we have provided a framework that is applicable in studying the relationship between different language strategies and legitimacy. Using this framework, we conducted an empirical study in which we analyzed the press releases of five major Turkish business groups. It was found that their language strategies were generally similar and mostly aimed at socio-political legitimacy.

This study explores how employees’ flow experience at work emerges, is sustained, and continuously grows over time. Based on the job demand-resource model, we propose the intraday upward spiral of flow: Challenging demands and job resources activate employees’ flow experience, further encouraging them to seek more challenges and resources. Furthermore, drawing on the perseverative cognition theory and spill-crossover model, we propose the inter-day upward spiral of flow: The antecedents (or consequences) of flow can overflow from work to the family domain and result in employees’ positive rumination, thus promoting the next-day flow experience. Our diary study generated 1,208 data points from 142 employees over 10 working days. We found that in the morning, challenging demands and job resources positively affected the participants’ flow, further encouraging them to pursue more challenging demands and job resources in the afternoon and thus enter this state again. Moreover, the afternoon’s challenging demands and job resources promoted the respondents’ problem-solving pondering at night, which further increased their next-morning challenging demands, job resources, and, thus, their flow. Through this study, we expand the emerging literature on positive organizational behavior and provide information for practitioners on how to build and sustain employees’ peak states.

Prior studies have treated employees’ remedial voice as a single-stage phenomenon. However, it is problematic because, in reality, employees often respond to mistreatment in a sequence. This paper aims to add new insights by empirically testing a three-stage process model to explain employees’ remedial voice. Also, this study intends to test important factors in the employees’ remedial voice decision-making process. Based on data obtained by surveying 382 Chinese employees, we found that mistreatment severity, mistreatment source, and employees’ external job opportunities are related to employees’ remedial voice. Our data provides support for a three-stage-process model for remedial voice. We contribute to the gaps in the existing research which largely views employees’ remedial voice as a single ‘snapshot.’ The study also deepens understanding of what factors affect employees’ remedial voice.

While previous research has identified the performance implications of leaders’ positive implicit followership theories (IFTs, i.e., personal expectations regarding followers’ positive characteristics), this study focuses on the effect of leader–follower congruence in positive IFTs on followers’ job performance. To test our predictions, we conducted two complementary studies. The results of Study 1 (an experiment, N = 200) show that leader–follower congruence (versus incongruence) in positive IFTs is positively related to followers’ relational identification with the leader, which, in turn, is positively related to followers’ job performance. Moreover, followers’ uncertainty avoidance strengthens this relationship. These findings were replicated in Study 2 (a three-wave survey, N = 223) through polynomial regression and response surface analysis. This study improves our understanding of IFTs by showing that leader–follower congruence in this domain is related to followers’ outcomes.

The experience of working from home changed drastically with the arrival of COVID-19. Compared to pre-pandemic experiences, key differences included the vast number of people involved, its involuntary nature, the suddenness of its implementation, its lengthy duration, and the presence of others at home. The demands of this form of remote work during lockdown have partly been mitigated by the resources employees have accessed. This study aimed to investigate the factors impacting employee performance and wellbeing while compulsorily working from home during New Zealand's first nationwide lockdown. We analyzed qualitative data gathered from employees in two organizations. The resulting aggregate dimensions across both demands and resources include organizational factors, furniture and technology factors, and individual factors. Given the ongoing nature of COVID-19 we identify new research directions for investigating remote work, and practical implications focusing on suitable home furniture and technology, plans for future remote work, and supporting employees.

Supervisory mentoring represents a type of social dilemma called a delayed social fence. This study adopts a social dilemma perspective to examine how the three types of psychological contracts (balanced, relational, and transactional) perceived by supervisors differently influence their mentoring. Drawn on social dilemma perspective, we proposed that supervisory mentoring would be more likely to occur when supervisors perceived benefit return from their mentoring provision in a timely manner. The results obtained from a sample of 596 supervisor–subordinate matched data from the self-reported questionnaires completed by 225 sales agent teams in the insurance industry in Taiwan support our predictions. Consistent with the social dilemma perspective, supervisory mentoring is more likely among subordinates whose supervisors perceived balanced psychological contract, while supervisory mentoring is less likely among subordinates whose supervisors perceived transactional psychological contract. Furthermore, we found that supervisory mentoring is positively related to subordinate performance. Our mentor-centric multilevel framework helps identify the social dilemma nature underlying mentoring provision, and verify the positive influence of mentoring on protégé performance.

Based on the fundamental principles of social identity theory, this study examines how inclusive leadership can help build employees' organizational identification, stimulate leader-directed helping behavior, and improve task performance by facilitating insider status and relational coordination. Furthermore, we explored how these relationships are conditional on the synergy diversity climate in a moderated mediation model. We collected temporally segregated data (n = 300) from employees in diverse workforces at three time intervals with a 2-week gap between intervals. The results support the indirect effects of inclusive leadership on employee outcomes through the development of perceived insider status and relational coordination. Additionally, these indirect effects are more pronounced at higher levels of a synergy diversity climate. In conclusion, our study offers critical insights into the diversity and leadership literature by answering why and under what conditions an inclusive leader can generate favorable employee outcomes.

While individuals’ proactive career behaviors (PCBs) are critical to sustainable career outcomes, knowledge of how and when PCBs translate into these outcomes is limited. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory and the socially embedded model of thriving, this study examines the psychological process through which PCBs translate into two sustainable career outcomes (i.e., subjective career success and perceived employability). Based on data collected from 228 participants in a Chinese company, our findings reveal that PCBs positively predict subjective career success and perceived employability by fostering thriving at work. Furthermore, the indirect association between PCBs and perceived employability via thriving at work is strengthened when participants’ perception of humble leadership is high. This study extends our knowledge by identifying a psychological mechanism that explains how employees’ PCBs translate into sustainable career outcomes and enriches our understanding of the boundary conditions of PCBs by identifying humble leadership as an important factor.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influencing mechanism of shared leadership (SL) on taking charge behavior (TCB) based on cognitive–affective system theory. Specifically, the current study intends to build a model of perceived insider status and emotional intelligence that mediate the relationship between SL and TCB from a dual cognitive–affective perspective. Further, given the nature of SL that develops through social interactions, we propose and examine the moderating role of social media use in the relationship between SL and TCB. We used multilevel and multi-sourced data to test the theoretical model and used a social network approach to measure SL in teams. Our findings provide a significant contribution to the literature in that this paper shows perceived insider status and emotional intelligence as a crucial dual mediating mechanism through which SL influences TCB and affords fresh thoughts for IT-related contextual conditions.

We present and test a model examining the role of organizational and psychological resources that enable employees’ high-quality service provision in public safety jobs. Through a two-study design conceptualized in the principle of reciprocity of social exchange theory, we recruited 120 firefighters and 119 police officers and found that service quality was positively associated with their trust in the administration, training, and staffing sufficiency. We also found that police officers’ prosocial motivation, as a psychological resource, amplifies the relationship between trust in administration and service quality. The beneficial role of prosocial motivation in police officers’ service quality appears to counter recent research suggesting that prosocial motivation has a dark side in demanding contexts. Our findings contribute to and highlight essential connections between distinct resources that positively impact the service quality of firefighters and police officers in dangerous and emotionally demanding job roles.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) develop a comprehensive understanding of the relationships between person–environment (PE) fit and employee engagement by shedding light on their intervening mechanisms; (b) represent how different types of PE fit and employee engagement interact; and (c) establish a comprehensive theoretical framework to guide future research based on the empirically examined constructs and their relationships. An integrative literature review of 51 empirical papers which analyzed the relationship between PE fit and employee engagement suggests that the antecedents of the relationship exist at the organizational, group, and individual levels and can be conceptualized as socialization, relationship building, and personal character, respectively; values–supplies fit, needs–supplies fit, and demands–abilities fit act as intervening mechanisms in the relationship; the relationship is temporal, reciprocal, and facilitated by human agency; and various outcomes result from the relationship. Implications for future research and practice are also discussed.

Many professional managers are driven to achieve the bottom line to secure income, honor, and standing in the workplace. Drawing on social information processing theory, we propose that supervisor bottom-line mentality in the workplace has a dysfunctional effect on organizations. Specifically, supervisor bottom-line mentality will hinder subordinates’ perception of the meaning of work, which eventuates high employee withdrawal (turnover intention and work withdrawal behavior). We also verified that amoral management weakens the negative relationship between supervisor bottom-line mentality and meaning of work in the first-stage moderated mediation model. Additionally, the strength of the indirect effects of supervisor bottom-line mentality on turnover intention and work withdrawal behavior is weaker (stronger) when supervisors’ amoral management is high (low). Our hypothesized moderated mediation model is supported by 301 data points generated by a three-stage full-time staff member. Furthermore, we put forward important theoretical and practical implications according to the research.

While unethical acts are common in the business world, we know little about how employees react when they observe coworkers caught engaging in unethical behavior. This is both theoretically and practically relevant, given that many supervisors take unethical behavior in the workplace very seriously. Drawing on appraisal theory, we argue that observing a coworker caught engaging in unethical behavior elicits feelings of schadenfreude. Then, this positive feeling spills over to a separate task and enhances performance. Finally, we suggest that trait empathy can weaken this effect because individuals with high trait empathy are more likely to understand the motivations of the person caught. Across two studies, our results showed that perpetrators getting caught increased schadenfreude among observers, which then increased their subsequent task performance. However, trait empathy did not significantly affect these results. Our work contributes to the literature on unethical behavior and emotions in the workplace.

Leadership emergence is fraught with pervasive gender stereotypes, and women remain underrepresented in senior leadership roles, particularly in healthcare organisations. We apply ecological systems theory to explain how environmental factors enable or inhibit women’s leadership emergence in healthcare settings. We interviewed 17 senior female leaders in the Australian healthcare sector to explore how gender-related perceptions affected their leadership journeys. Five themes emerged that challenge existing narratives: men supported women’s advancement; women impeded other women’s progress; vulnerability was a leadership strength; ambitious women were ostracised; and women were ‘given’ leadership opportunities rather than actively pursuing them. By situating these findings within the ecological systems theory framework, we highlight the interplay of individual and contextual influences across ecosystem levels. Our study offers a novel perspective on gender stereotypes in leadership emergence, advancing ecological systems theory by extending it into a new field. We provide recommendations at individual, organisational, community, and societal levels to empower women leaders.