Management & Organization
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Item THE DEI SIGNALING THRESHOLD: WHEN AND WHY MORE MESSAGING IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER(2024) Holmes, Tara; Derfler-Rozin, Rellie; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)When it comes to messaging diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts to employees, organizations take great care in considering the content of the signals they create. However, despite carefully designed communications, they continue to struggle to garner employee support and participation for these initiatives. Counter to the prevailing assumption that more DEI signaling is better (Roberson, 2006; Plaut et al., 2011; Nishii, 2013; Richard et al., 2013; Leslie, 2019; Hunt et al., 2020; Shuman et al., 2023), I argue that positive effects of organizational DEI signaling do not persist with increased exposure to DEI-related stimuli. Leveraging exposure effect research, I instead propose that employee attitudes shift from positive to negative as exposure to signaling increases, thereby decreasing their desire to engage with DEI at work. Specifically, I hypothesize that low and moderate levels of signaling are associated with employees feeling more engagement towards DEI, but at higher DEI fatigue and cynicism are more likely to develop, negatively impacting employees’ DEI effort. I further posit that because managers play a central role in shaping employee attitudes and behaviors, a manager’s consistency with organizational DEI signaling is the key to minimizing negative employee attitudes that emerge because of overexposure. I test these hypotheses in an experiment and a field study with implications for the literatures on DEI in organizations, issue fatigue, and behavioral integrity.Item Creative Star or Territorial Jerk? The Interpersonal Consequences of Claiming Ownership over Creative Ideas at Work(2024) Hong, Rebekah SungEun; Venkataramani, Vijaya; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Employee creativity—the generation of novel and useful ideas—is vital for organizational growth and survival. To encourage creativity, organizations often reward employees who develop successful ideas, motivating them to claim ownership over their specific creative ideas. However, this dissertation argues that such idea ownership-claiming behaviors are a double-edged sword. Drawing from the Dual Perspective Model of social evaluation, this study proposes that claiming ownership of creative ideas leads to positive evaluations by coworkers of the focal employee’s creative potential but can also result in coworkers perceiving such individuals as territorial, influencing their willingness to collaborate on subsequent creative work. The study further proposes that the idea claiming employee’s granting of idea ownership to other coworkers’ ideas serves as a moderating factor, amplifying the positive effect of perceived creative potential and mitigating the negative effect of perceived territoriality on coworkers’ willingness to collaborate creatively with them. Finding support from a field study and three pre-registered lab experiments, the current research sheds light on the importance of balancing idea ownership claims with acknowledging others’ contributions to navigate the collaboration dynamics in organizations.Item NATURE-LED COMPLACENCY: BIOPHILIC WORK ENVIRONMENTS’ NEGATIVE IMPACT ON PROACTIVE AND PROSOCIAL WORKPLACE BEHAVIORS(2024) Kim, Hae Lyeng; Foulk, Trevor; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While existing research has suggested that being in a biophilic work environment (BWE), or environments that incorporate nature and natural elements, would generally have positive implications for employees, our understanding of the potential downside consequences of this contextual setting is underdeveloped. Leveraging insights from Attention Restoration Theory (ART; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1995) and the biophilia hypothesis (Wilson, 1984), I hypothesize that the natural features of BWEs may draw one’s attention away from tasks at hand and trigger employee complacency, thereby decreasing beneficial workplace behaviors, including proactive behavior and prosocial behavior. Furthermore, I argue that the positive relationship between BWEs and complacency may be stronger for employees who are lower (vs. higher) in mindfulness. Results were mostly supported through three pre-registered studies: 1) an online experiment conducted with working professionals on Prolific Academic, 2) a multi-source field study involving 219 coworker dyads (438 employees) across 111 organizations in the Republic of Korea, and 3) an in-person experiment with undergraduate students at a large eastern U.S. university. Collectively, these studies aim to offer significant insights and implications regarding the consequences of various workplace environments.Item A Prosocial Contributor or Status Grabber? How and Why Newcomer Proactive Knowledge Sharing with Coworkers Impacts Inclusion Perceptions via Ambivalent Coworker Attributions(2023) Guan, Zhishuang; Liao, Hui HL; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Newcomers are often referred to as the “new blood” because they represent a source of fresh, unique, task-relevant knowledge that potentially adds value to organizations. In this research, I focus on newcomer proactive knowledge sharing with coworkers and investigate how it impacts the transition of newcomers from outsiders to insiders. Integrating attribution theory and the status characteristics theory, I propose that newcomer proactive knowledge sharing with coworkers triggers coworkers’ ambivalent attributions (i.e., perceiving it to be driven simultaneously by newcomers’ prosocial and status-striving motives). Furthermore, the ambivalent attributions affect the extent to which coworkers provide socialization support and utilize the newcomer’s knowledge, eventually exerting different influences on the newcomer’s inclusion perceptions. The results of a multi-wave (i.e., four waves) and multi-source (i.e., survey data from newcomers and coworkers) longitudinal study based on 336 newcomers in a large technology company support the proposed serial mediating relationships between newcomer proactive knowledge sharing with coworkers and their inclusion perceptions via coworkers’ ambivalent attributions and behavioral reactions. The data also demonstrates that leader encouragement of learning is a viable leader strategy that makes coworkers more likely to interpret newcomer proactive knowledge sharing is driven by prosocial motives. This research has significant implications both theoretically and practically. From a theoretical perspective, it advances our understanding of newcomer socialization, knowledge sharing, and workplace inclusion. From a practical perspective, it helps newcomers better navigate the process of knowledge sharing by illuminating potential social consequences. Practitioners can leverage these insights to create more inclusive onboarding experiences for new employees.Item MODEL CITIZEN OR SQUEAKY WHEEL? HOW EMPLOYEES OF LOWER SOCIAL CLASS ORIGINS FACE AMBIVALENT REACTIONS AT WORK(2023) Park, Hyunsun; Tangirala, Subrahmaniam; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Employees of lower social class origins can elicit ambivalent reactions when they make it into elite, high-status organizations. On the one hand, they can be seen as misfits and face discrimination in work outcomes, such as lower performance evaluations and job rewards. On the other hand, their achievements can be viewed as admirable and earn them higher than usual evaluations and rewards. Drawing on the ambivalence-amplification theory, I propose that such ambivalence toward employees of lower social class origins leads to especially amplified reactions to their behaviors. When they engage in behaviors that support the existing norms in the organization (such as being courteous and helpful), those behaviors are seen as role-congruent and rewarded more highly than similar behaviors of employees with higher social class origins. By contrast, when they engage in behaviors that challenge such norms (such as speaking up with ideas and concerns), those behaviors are seen as role-incongruent and receive more negative evaluations than similar behaviors of higher-class employees. Through a field study of working professionals and two experiments, I examine this idea in the context of social caste in India. I replicate these findings in the context of socioeconomic status in the U.S. using two experiments.Item Putting the 'I' in Creativity Assessments: the Impact of Identities on Creativity Assessments and Willingness to Implement Ideas(2022) Dennis, Alexander Stuart; Bartol, Kathryn M; Marr, Jennifer; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Managers’ assessments of the creativity of ideas are crucial to organizations. Research suggests that there are distinct individual differences in the way managers assess creative ideas, yet it remains an under-researched topic. One such difference, shared social identities (e.g., nationality or organizational membership), can alter perceptions of creative ideas, yet no research has yet examined the other form of identities, role identities, despite research showing that role identities can influence the generation of ideas. I examined the effects of creative and economic managerial role identities on creativity assessments because past research shows these two identities play important roles in creativity. I theorized that the activation of either a creative or economic role identity would affect creativity assessments in three ways. First, that the activation of a creative managerial role identity would positively moderate the relationship between idea novelty and creativity assessments, while the activation of an economic managerial role identity would negatively moderate the relationship between idea novelty and creativity assessments. Second, that social comparison orientation would negatively moderate that relationship. Third, that the activation of a creative managerial role identity would strengthen the positive effects of creativity assessments on managers’ willingness to implement the idea, while the activation of an economic managerial role identity would weaken the positive effects of creativity assessments on managers’ willingness to implement the idea. I proposed several alternative hypotheses which examined whether trait levels of creative and economic managerial role identities had a significant effect on these relationships. I conducted four online experiments to test these hypotheses. The result of these four experiments did not support the hypotheses. However, across the four studies there was consistent evidence of a direct positive effect of trait creative managerial role identity on creativity assessments and an indirect positive effect on willingness to implement through higher creativity assessments.Item Lifted Up or Feet on the Ground? How Leader Emotional Balancing Moderates the Effect of Developmental Feedback on Employee Learning(2022) Guo, Siyan; Seo, Myeong-Gu; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Leaders expect their developmental feedback to help employees develop skills and improve performance, yet the effect of developmental feedback on learning remains unclear. In this dissertation, the concept of developmental feedback (DFB) is extended to include two dimensions, gap identification and gap elimination. I focus on the affective mechanisms underlying the DFB – learning relationship and identify trade-offs in each of the DFB dimensions. I argue that while gap elimination elicits employee positive affect (PA) that facilitates learning via increased learning self-efficacy, it undermines learning via PA and decreased learning need recognition. In addition, gap identification induces employee negative affect (NA) that works in the opposite way. Emotional balancing, or leaders’ dynamic engagement in both affect improving and affect worsening behaviors, is proposed to attenuate the negative mechanisms. I conducted a pilot study in the field to develop measures for the two DFB dimensions, followed by a three-wave, multisource field study to test my theoretical model at the between-person level, and a daily dairy field study to test the model at the within-person level. The findings largely support my proposed model. The results indicate that gap identification positively predicts employee NA, while gap elimination predicts PA. Gap identification is positively associated with learning via employee learning need recognition, but negatively predicts learning via employee NA and learning self-efficacy. I also find that gap elimination positively predicts learning through PA and improved employee self-efficacy in learning. Importantly, the results demonstrate the beneficial effects of emotional balancing, which significantly moderates the effects of PA and NA. Taken together, these findings indicate that receiving DFB is a highly emotional experience that creates a tension between feeling uplifted and keeping feet on the ground, and leaders can use emotional balancing to manage employee affect to achieve better learning outcomes.Item Physical Boundaries Make Psychological Boundaries Stronger: The Synergistic Effect of Open Workspace and Authentic Climate on Employee Knowledge Sharing and Voice Behavior(2022) Cao, Rujiao; Tangirala, Subra; Derfler-Rozin, Rellie; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Physical settings in the workplace carry important implications for employees’ perceptions and behaviors. Organizations’ increasing need for employees’ sharing of expertise and ideas has led to an increased interest in the management of physical barriers in the workplace (Elsbach & Pratt, 2007). While prior research, which focuses primarily on the functional perspective (e.g., visibility, accessibility, level of noise), has yielded valuable insights into the role of open workspace (i.e., workspace with few or no physical barriers) in influencing employee knowledge sharing behavior (among other collaborative behaviors), the existing work may have over-emphasized the instrumental aspects of physical barriers. As a result, other critical psychological processes (such as the symbolic effects) through which physical barriers impact employees’ sharing of expertise and ideas could be overlooked, resulting in an incomplete and even biased view of open workspace. The goal of this dissertation is to extend the existing research by employing a symbolic perspective and investigate how and when fewer physical barriers in the workspace have a positive effect on employees’ knowledge sharing and voice behavior. Specifically, integrating the symbolic perspective of the physical environment with optimal distinctiveness theory, I propose that fewer physical barriers can increase employees’ knowledge sharing and voice behavior through decreased employees’ experienced isolation by signaling a sense of connectedness and inclusion. Furthermore, the positive relational cues of open workspace are more likely to be salient when there is a high (versus low) authentic climate. The results from two studies (a laboratory experiment and a field survey) supported that fewer physical barriers in employees’ workspace increased its occupant’s knowledge sharing and voice behavior, especially when there was a high (versus low) authentic climate. Moreover, employees’ experienced isolation mediated the above relationship. Together, my results suggest that there is a synergistic effect of physical barriers and authentic climate on employee knowledge sharing and voice by conveying positive relational cues.Item STAYING POWER: THE IMPACT OF TEAM EXPERIENCES ON EMPLOYEES’ FUTURE RESPONSES TO POWER AS LEADERS(2021) Chighizola, Nicolais; Chen, Gilad; Foulk, Trevor; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The ways that leaders use their power can have important impacts on their subordinates as well as their organizations, so it is important to discern how leaders develop the ways they understand (or construe) power. As people’s construals of power can develop through experiences that arise from their social contexts (e.g., Torelli & Shavitt, 2010; Belmi & Laurin, 2016), the structures of teams within the workplace can cause team members to have varied experiences, and may thus play a critical role in developing the ways that future leaders construe power. In this dissertation, I argue that the experiences that people have in teams as lower-level employees can influence the ways they understand power, which predict the behaviors they will later enact as leaders. I also integrate multiple streams of research on power construal and propose a framework to bridge multiple perspectives within this literature. In two pilot studies and two main studies, I find that team member experiences impact members’ power construals, and that power construals predict behaviors these members enact when they are later put in positions of leadership. I discuss contributions to the teams, power, and leadership literatures, and offer practical guidance for organizations and early-career employees.Item ADVERSE EFFECTS OF COMPETITION WITH COWORKERS: THE ROLE OF THIRD-PARTY TIES(2020) Yan, Taiyi; Venkataramani, Vijaya; Tangirala, Subra; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Employees rely on coworkers for support. Through workflow ties and friendship ties with coworkers, employees acquire task support and emotional support that allows them to be effective in their work. At the same time, employees often find themselves having to compete with those very coworkers for limited rewards and recognition (e.g., bonuses, promotion) that organizations provide. In this dissertation, I delineate the negative effects that competition with coworkers who are closely connected to employees in their workflow and friendship networks has on employees’ task performance. I note that such competition can prevent employees from obtaining critical task and emotional support required to remain effective in their roles. Using a social embeddedness perspective, I further highlight that these negative effects of competition can be avoided when employees and their competitors are connected to third-party peers in their teams who can act as mediators and allow for continued flow of task and emotional support via workflow and friendship ties between employees and their competitors. I test these hypotheses in the field (using a sample of 394 employees embedded in 39 R&D teams) and in two experimental studies (using 694 participants). I will discuss implications of my model for theory and practice.