This research explores the theory of authentic leadership and the critiques on the theory by analyzing the portrayals of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, and Margaret Thatcher in season 4 of the Netflix’s series The Crown. Utilizing directed qualitative content analysis, we seek to understand how authenticity in leadership is manifested, its limitations, and the role of gender within this framework. The investigation highlights the challenges leaders face between expected role fulfillment and genuine self-expression. It explores the benefits and drawbacks of authenticity, the attribution of authenticity when the leaders deviate from the formal roles, the nature of the role as influencing the expression of authenticity (e.g., degrees of freedom associated with each role) and the complex interaction between gender and authenticity. In response to these findings, the concept of ‘leader bounded authenticity’ is proposed, suggesting a balance between adhering to the formal role and the display of authentic leadership.

This study explores the relationships between group-affect tone, teams’ transactive memory systems (TMSs), and teams’ incremental creativity. Data were collected from 334 team members and 70 team leaders across 70 teams. Results indicate that positive group-affect tone enhances TMS, while negative group-affect tone impedes it. TMS positively impacts team incremental creativity. Additionally, both types of group-affect tone influence incremental creativity through TMS mediation. This research advances TMS theory and group-affect tone, substantiating the affect-cognition model and deepening the understanding of TMS’s role in incremental creativity.

Although practitioners and scientists agree that user adoption of new technologies is a key success factor in digital transformations, little is known about how specific management factors are related to user behavior. In particular, the temporal nature of digital transformation projects is largely neglected. Therefore, we propose a systematic, theory-based framework for the management of digital adoption (MDA) and derive specific process-oriented hypotheses for content-, process-, and context-related management factors, their relationships to user adoption, and underlying psychological processes (e.g., performance expectancy or social influence). We applied the MDA framework in the context of a large digital transformation project in a logistics company in a two-wave research design. We tested the process-oriented hypotheses based on latent change score analysis among 1,095 users. The results support the assumption that changes in management factors, largely mediated by changes in the psychological processes, lead to changes in user behavior.

Based on the five-level model of emotions in the workplace (FLMEW), we present an analysis of emotion and mindfulness at work. The five levels of emotion are: (1) temporal variations in emotion at the within-person level of analysis, which relate to state mindfulness; (2) stable individual differences in experiencing and expressing emotions at the between-persons level, which correspond with trait mindfulness; (3) perceiving and communicating emotions in dyadic relationships at the inter-personal level, reflecting interpersonal mindfulness; (4) emotional processes and leadership at the group level, which are associated with team mindfulness; and (5) and emotional culture and climate at the organizational level, which relate to organizational mindfulness. We provide a definition of mindfulness at each level. We argue that mindfulness tends to be associated with more positive and less negative affective experience at each level. We highlight practical implications and suggest future research at each level.

Drawing upon contemporary social hierarchy research, the purpose of this study is to integrate a novel theoretical perspective to examine the taken-for-granted conclusions of the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and interpersonal citizenship. We develop theoretically driven arguments and provide evidence of how LMX relates to power and status, the two prominent bases of social hierarchy. The results from our study support our assertion that the quality of LMX relationships provides social information about one's relative standing within a group's informal hierarchy. Specifically, LMX is positively associated with higher levels of perceived power and perceived status. Both power and status serve as important mediators that explain the relationship between LMX and interpersonal citizenship. We also identify the importance of citizenship pressure as a boundary condition for these relationships, finding that citizenship pressure interacts with power and status differently to influence the extent that employees engage in citizenship behaviors.

This mixed-method investigation examines the nature, prevalence, and correlates of mansplaining in modern workplaces. In Study 1, we scrape Twitter and conduct a thematic analysis of 2,312 tweets. These findings ground a comprehensive definition of mansplaining and propose six items for measurement. In Study 2, we quantitatively investigate mansplaining experiences at work (n = 499), finding that almost every participant had experienced mansplaining in the previous year. Expected gender differences emerged among mansplaining perpetrators and targets, yet men were not the only perpetrators, nor were women the only targets. Confirmatory factor analysis results support the possibility that mansplaining is a second factor of incivility. Further, mansplaining predicted significant variance in outcomes such as job satisfaction and turnover intentions above and beyond incivility. This research underscores that mansplaining is more than a social media phenomenon. Rather, it is a form of gendered mistreatment with implications for scholars and practitioners alike.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019)-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office (OPO) environments. While self-reports suggest that OPO noise is perceived as a stressor, there is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical OPO auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance. While OPO noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise. Such an approach will allow HR practitioners to make data-driven recommendations about the design and modification of workspaces to minimize negative effects and support employee well-being.

More than 30 years ago, I engaged in a debate with Oliver Williamson over the theoretical structure of transaction cost economics (TCE). This debate had its origins in our conflicting views of the labor-managed firm (LMF). Williamson believed that such firms were rare due to their inefficiency while I believed they might be rare due to market failures. Here I clarify my criticisms of TCE and contrast Williamson's view of the LMF with my own approach. I discuss empirical evidence that can distinguish between these two approaches and take up Williamson's challenge to identify policy interventions that could yield net social gains.

This study investigates whether the perceived opportunity to craft (POC) is related to job crafting (JC) strategies and whether these strategies are related to thriving at work, in terms of both vitality and learning. It aims to verify the mediating role of JC between POC and thriving. Data were collected from 424 accounting professionals in Canada. The structural equation modeling based on bootstrap analysis was used to test mediation. The results indicate that POC is positively related to increasing structural and social resources and challenging job demands and negatively to decreasing hindering job demands. They reveal that increasing structural and social resources enhances learning and mediates the relation between POC and vitality and learning, as do challenging job demands, whereas decreasing hindering job demands does not. This study is one of the first to confirm that POC influences vitality and learning via JC behaviors as mediators.

A novel inpatient vocational counseling service (named “In-Voc”) was developed and evaluated in three Australian spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation hospitals, aiming to improve vocational outcomes after SCI. The program provided a trained Vocational Counseling Coordinator who worked alongside the allied health team, medical, and nursing staff at each hospital. The Coordinators were interviewed to examine the role expectations and role behaviors associated with the introduction of their novel, vocationally focused, occupational role. The Coordinators’ descriptions of their role behavior were very similar to those defined by rehabilitation counselors in North America. They reported the novel role to be a productive and satisfying one. Encouragingly, the In-Voc program was associated with significantly higher post-injury employment outcomes.

This article addresses the tensions between calls for civility and rights to free speech in public academic employment. We begin by summarizing relevant organizational science on workplace incivility. Next come critical perspectives from other fields, asserting that civility appeals infringe on rights to freedom of expression. Following this is a review of key court decisions within the jurisprudence of free speech in the workplace, especially as it applies to academics. We also address the protections afforded by tenure and (at some institutions) unions. Bringing these streams of scholarship together, we expose predicaments faced by public universities seeking to cultivate safe and civil work environments while, at the same time, respecting faculty rights to free speech. We conclude by suggesting compromises between these conflicting aims that would allow organizations (in academia and beyond) to protect workforce dignity without infringing on the rights of reasonable people.

This study examines the impact of employability on turnover intention by differentiating internal and external employability, and considering the possible moderating roles of perceived organizational support (POS) and career orientation. Using a sample of 411 responses to a two-wave questionnaire survey generated from six cities in China, we find that external employability positively influenced turnover intention, but internal employability negatively influenced turnover intention. The results also indicate that POS had a positive moderating effect only on the relationship between external employability and turnover intention. Furthermore, for employees with disengaged career orientation, external employability exerts a strong impact on turnover intention. This study adds to the limited research empirically linking employability and turnover intention, whereas the findings can be used by HRM practitioners to factor in organizational support and career orientation initiatives that improve the retention of employees with high external employability.

The scholarship on political skill documents that it is a social savvy, personal style construct, associated with positive personal and organizational outcomes. However, this study takes a counterintuitive view and demonstrates that despite being a positive resource, political skill also has the potential to be used as a self-serving device to achieve one's personal agendas in the form of self-serving counterproductive work behaviors. Borrowing insights from the trait activation theory, this study demonstrates that a context, high in political perceptions, acts as an incentivized condition for politically skilled people to execute its dark side. The results supported the hypothesis and revealed that under high perceptions of organizational politics, political skill will have a significant, positive relation with self-serving counterproductive work behaviors. The study discusses important theoretical and practical implications of these results and extends the domains of political skill and counterproductive work behaviors.

There is limited research that addresses the inclusion of individuals with autism in the workforce. Autism employment in information technology (IT) is a new phenomenon and there is no established theory to draw from to investigate this phenomenon. In this paper, we review the existing literature on autism employment and present a theoretical framework to study information technology workplace readiness to equitably include individuals with autism. Our proposed framework extends Annabi and Lebovitz’s organizational interventions mitigating individual barriers theoretical framework to include Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior constructs. The framework will contribute to advancing the knowledge and understanding of the needs of individuals with autism, the knowledge and attitudes of neurotypical information technology employees, and organization and employment characteristics. Ultimately, this work will lead to discoveries that broaden participation of individuals with autism in the information technology industry and beyond.

The motivation of employees is one of the main reasons why companies define mission statements and other declarations of commitment to the company’s stakeholders. Research on organizational behavior has identified three main types of motivation: extrinsic, intrinsic and prosocial motivation. However, the three forms of motivation have hardly ever been considered together, nor has it been studied which motivation is linked to the stakeholders of business companies. The main contribution of this paper is to present an agent-stakeholders model of interaction which includes and integrates extrinsic, intrinsic and pro-stakeholders motivation, as a type of prosocial motivation related to the sense of contribution to benefitting the company’s stakeholders. By basing the research on 119 Spanish companies it is verified that the three types of motivation are present in employee motivation. This finding has implications for management, as it presents the dimensions of the motivational task to be performed by managers.

Research on prosocial behavior has tended to focus on the positive consequences of prosocial behavior. This paper draws on attribution, emotion and justice motive literature to expand the discussion of prosocial behavior in organizations. Specifically, an expanded definition of prosocial behavior is offered and a process-oriented process model of prosocial behavior is introduced. The process model of prosocial behavior is used to discuss the idea that prosocial behavior might have negative consequences. This paper contributes to the literature on prosocial behavior in organizations by (1) accounting for the effects of emotion and the need for justice on decisions to engage in prosocial actions and (2) identifying negative consequences of specific prosocial actions.

Counterproductive work behavior is detrimental to the organization or to coworkers. It includes both breaking rules or laws, as well as social norms. Many authors show a negative relationship between this behavior and work satisfaction, surmising that the lack thereof – and the ensuing desire to ‘get back’ at the employer – are the seeds of workplace deviance. A study carried out in Polish organizations found this relationship to be less clear. The study concerned work satisfaction and counterproductive behavior, organizational justice, stress at work and propensity for aggressive behavior. A cluster analysis identified a group of individuals in whom relatively high levels of job satisfaction are nevertheless accompanied by proclivity for counterproductive behavior. The configuration of results suggests that this group resorts to counterproductive behavior because of an inability to balance difficulties at work with personal inclinations. The implications of these results for personal management is discussed in the conclusions.