Expressing forgiveness after interpersonal mistreatment: Power and status of forgivers influence transgressors' relationship restoration efforts

One adverse consequence of interpersonal mistreatment is that it damages the relationship between the victim and the transgressor. Scholars have promoted forgiveness of such mistreatment as a victim response that can motivate transgressors to work towards relationship restoration. Building on social exchange theory and the social perception literature, we provide an account of when transgressors are less (vs. more) willing to restore their relationship with the victim in response to forgiveness. Specifically, we argue that transgressors perceive forgiveness from a victim who has high (vs. low) power, relative to the transgressor, as insincere, making transgressors less willing to restore the relationship. We further argue that this effect of high (vs. low) victim power is pronounced especially when the victim also has low (vs. high) status. Two experiments and two field studies support these predictions. These findings highlight the relevance of studying how contextual conditions color transgressors' perceptions of victims' behavior to understand relationship restoration after interpersonal mistreatment.     

The social construction of fairness: social influence and sense making in organizations

This paper explores how the social relationships employees have with peers and managers are associated with perceptions of organizational justice. These relationships are theoretically modelled as the conduits for social comparison, social cues, and social identification, which are sources of sense making about fairness ‘in the eyes of the beholder.’ It is argued that perceptions of procedural and interactional justice are affected by this type of social information processing because: (1) uncertainty exists about organizational procedures; (2) norms of interpersonal treatment vary between organizational cultures; and (3) interpersonal relationships symbolize membership in the organization. A structural equations model of data from workers in a telecommunications company showed that an employee's perceptions of both procedural and interactional fairness were significantly associated with the interactional fairness perceptions of a peer. In addition, employees' social capital, conceived as the number of relationships with managers, was positively associated with perceptions of interactional fairness. In the structural model, both procedural and interactional justice were themselves significant predictors of satisfaction with managerial maintenance of the employment relationship. The discussion highlights the key role which the fairness of interpersonal treatment appears to play in the formation of justice judgements. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employees' surface acting in interactions with leaders and peers

Surface acting has been widely studied in organizational research owing to its impact on organizational behaviors and outcomes. Past research almost exclusively has focused on employees' interactions with external parties such as customers, clients, and patients. This study sought to extend this literature by examining the effects of employees' surface acting in interactions with parties internal to the organization (i.e., leaders and peers). Data were collected from 40 work groups (129 focal participants, 40 leaders, and 40 peers) from a large real estate agency company located in Beijing, China. Results showed that employees' surface acting influenced various emotional, relational, and behavioral outcomes. In addition, the present findings revealed that the consequences of employees' surface acting differed across leaders versus peers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multilevel perspective of interpersonal trust: Individual,dyadic, and cross‐level predictors of performance

While it is generally known that interpersonal trust facilitates individual functioning, few studies have examined the role of specific features of the interpersonal trust network — individual, dyadic, third‐party, and network‐level features — on individual performance. We adopt a multilevel perspective of interpersonal trust to examine how individuals' performance is not only predicted by their individual‐level centrality in the interpersonal trust network but also moderated, at the network level, by the overall centralized nature of that network. Further, we examine whether mutual trust relationships at the dyadic level, as well as shared trust ties to common third parties, can predict individuals' performance. We test our hypotheses with 206 members in 15 professional networking groups and find that interpersonal trust operates at multiple levels to predict members' performance in terms of generating income from business referrals. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications on how interpersonal trust relationships operate and can be managed for performance gains. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A case for recognizing distinctions among constructs that capture interpersonal mistreatment in work organizations

Leading organizational behavior scholars have argued that construct proliferation threatens the interpretability of interpersonal mistreatment research and have argued that researchers should employ the same terminology to refer to constructs that have been studied under distinct labels (e.g., bullying, deviance, retaliation, abuse, undermining). We argue that most of the construct labels researchers regularly employ capture meaningful theoretical differences, although the corresponding measures often fail to capture the distinctive features of mistreatment constructs. We further argue that a more immediate threat to the interpretability of research in this area is that scholars have overlooked the distinctions among the individual forms of mistreatment that comprise extant operational definitions. We offer recommendations for addressing what we perceive to be the major limitations of current interpersonal mistreatment research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The mediating role of overall fairness and the moderating role of trust certainty in justice–criteria relationships: the formation and use of fairness heuristics in the workplace

Theory suggests that perceptions of overall fairness play an important role in the justice judgment process, yet overall fairness is insufficiently studied. We derived hypotheses from fairness heuristic theory, which proposes that perceptions of overall fairness are influenced by different types of justice, are more proximal predictors of responses than specific justice types, and are used to infer trust when trust certainty is low. Results from Study 1 (N = 1340) showed that employees' perceptions of overall fairness in relation to a senior management team mediated the relationships between specific types of justice and employee outcomes (e.g., affective commitment). In Study 2 (N = 881), these mediated effects were replicated and trust certainty moderated the effect of overall fairness on trust as hypothesized. Study 2 also showed that, relative to procedural and informational justice, distributive and interpersonal justice had stronger effects on overall fairness. To explore how the organizational context may have influenced these findings, we performed qualitative analyses in Study 3 (N = 268). Results suggested that, consistent with the quantitative findings from Study 2, some types of justice were more salient than others. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, research, and practice. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fewer workers' compensation claims and lower claim costs if employers with high injury rates achieved the rates of their safer peers

Introduction: Employers engaged in similar business activities demonstrate a range of workers' compensation claim rates. Workplace injuries and illnesses could be prevented if employers with high claim rates achieved the claim rates of their safer peers. Methods: We used Washington workers' compensation claims data for years 2013–2015 to calculate rates of compensable claims (eligible for disability or time loss benefits, if unable to work four days after injury) and total accepted claims (compensable plus medical-aid only claims) for each employer. We estimated the number and cost of claims to occur if employers with high claim rates reduced them to the rates of employers at the 25th percentile, adjusted for insurance risk class, employer size, and injury type. To evaluate the impact of setting more or less ambitious goals, we also estimated reductions based on claim rates at the 10th and 50th percentiles. Results: Over 43% of claims and claim costs would be prevented if employers with higher claim rates lowered them to the 25th percentile using either total accepted or compensable claim rates as the benchmark outcome. The estimated claim cost savings from benchmarking to compensable claims was nearly as great as the estimate based on benchmarking to total accepted claims ($308.5 mil annually based on compensable claims vs. $332.4 mil based on total accepted claims). Restaurants and Taverns had the greatest number of potentially prevented compensable claims. Colleges and Universities and Wood Frame and Building Construction had the greatest potential reduction in compensable claim costs among larger and smaller employers, respectively. Conclusion: Substantial reductions in workers' compensation claims and costs are possible if employers achieve the injury rates experienced by their safer peers. Practical application: Evaluating the range of workplace injury rates among employers within industry groups identifies opportunities for injury prevention and offers another approach to resource allocation.     

Getting even with one's supervisor and one's organization: relationships among types of injustice,desires for revenge,and counterproductive work behaviors

I tested hypotheses derived from the agent–system model of justice specifying that, among the different types of justice, interpersonal and informational justice explain the most unique variance in counterproductive work behavior (CWB) directed toward one's supervisor, and procedural justice explains the most unique variance in CWB directed toward one's organization. I also tested whether individuals' desires for revenge against one's supervisor and one's organization mediate certain justice–CWB relationships. Results (N = 424) provided considerable support for the study hypotheses, showing that employees tend to direct their CWB toward the source of perceived mistreatment, and that desires for revenge explain part, but not all, of the relationships between some types of injustice and CWB. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information,beliefs, and motivation: The antecedents to human resource attributions

Despite significant interest in the attributions employees make about their organization's human resource (HR) practices, there is little understanding of the antecedents of HR attributions. Drawing on attribution theory, we suggest that HR attributions are influenced by information (perceptions of distributive and procedural fairness), beliefs (organizational cynicism), and motivation (perceived relevance). We test a model through a two‐wave survey of 347 academic faculty in the United Kingdom, examining their attributions of the purpose of their institution's workload management framework. After two preliminary studies (an interview study and a cross‐sectional survey) to establish contextually relevant attributions, we find that fairness and cynicism are important for the formation of internal attributions of commitment but less so for cost‐saving or exploitation attributions. Fairness and cynicism also interact such that distributive fairness buffers the negative attributional effect of cynicism, and individuals are more likely to attribute fair procedures to external forces if they are cynical about their organization. This study furthers the application of attribution theory to the organizational domain while making significant contributions to our understanding of the HR‐performance process.     

How team helping influences abusive and empowering leadership: The roles of team affective tone and performance

Leaders' perceptions of their teams are critical sources of contextual social information influencing leadership behaviors. In this paper, we extend affect-as-social-information theory to understand how and why team helping behaviors predict leaders' mistreatment of their teams in the form of abusive supervision and positive leader behavior in the form of empowering leadership, both through leaders' perceptions of team positive affective tone. In addition, based on social information processing, we examine the cue of leaders' perceptions of team task performance as a factor that helps us understand when the relationship between positive affective tone and leadership behaviors may be attenuated. In two text-based scenario studies, a video-based scenario study, and a multisource field study, we found evidence that team helping behavior is antecedent to abusive and empowering leadership behaviors and that this relationship is fully mediated by leaders' perceptions of team positive affective tone. Moreover, our results support team task performance as a factor that decreases the degree to which affective tone is related to abusive supervision. We discuss our findings as a caution to scholars' assumptions about the directionality of leader-team influence, emphasizing the need to acknowledge upward effects in workplace mistreatment research in the leader–team relationship.     

Self‐protective reactions to peer abusive supervision: The moderating role of prevention focus and the mediating role of performance instrumentality

Across 3 studies, we apply a self‐protection perspective of observed mistreatment to examine a moderated mediation model on “when” and “why” third parties are motivated by peer abusive supervision. We hypothesize that prevention‐focused third parties will increase their performance effort as a response to peer abusive supervision, and this effect is mediated by performance instrumentality. In a field study of working adults (Study 1) and an experimental study that manipulated peer abusive supervision (Study 2), we found that peer abusive supervision interacted with third parties' prevention focus to predict their performance effort such that peer abuse was positively related to third parties' performance effort only for those high on prevention focus. Results were replicated in a second field study of working adults (Study 3). Further, we found support for the mediating effect of performance instrumentality. The theoretical and practical implications of our results are discussed.     

Organizational justice,voluntary learning behavior,and job performance: A test of the mediating effects of identification and leader‐member exchange

This paper presents and tests an integrative model of voluntary learning behavior. Drawing on social exchange theory, we argue that individuals are more likely to pursue learning activities when they identify with their employing organization and have a high quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship with their supervisor. We further argue that organizational identification is enhanced by both distributive and procedural fairness, whereas LMX quality is enhanced by interpersonal and informational fairness. Moreover, we contend that effective learning behavior improves job performance. The model was tested with a sample of 398 employees from a large automobile dealership. Results supported most predictions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do you only have yourself to blame? A meta-analytic test of the victim precipitation model

The current meta-analysis sought to evaluate the empirical evidence for the victim precipitation model, which has become an increasingly popular yet controversial theory in the organizational sciences. We did so by testing the prediction that some victim dispositional traits contribute to or provoke experiences of mistreatment. We additionally provided preliminary examinations of two distinct conceptual explanations underlying the empirical relationships between victim personality and mistreatment. Finally, we examined the support for the situational antecedents of experienced mistreatment to compare the relative evidence for each of these dominant theoretical explanations. Results for the tests of the victim precipitation model showed that only victim negative affectivity was consistently related to experienced mistreatment. Examinations of the explanations for the relationships between victim personality and victimization showed relatively weak support for the notion that certain employees are more likely to perceive mistreatment and for the proposition that certain employees are mistreated because they are also more likely to engage in mistreatment. Finally, the situational predictors of mistreatment were all supported, and a test of relative importance revealed that the situational antecedents accounted for more variance in mistreatment than the victim dispositional traits. Implications for the theoretical understanding of the origins of mistreatment are discussed.     

Effects of leadership consideration and structure on employee perceptions of justice and counterproductive work behavior

In this paper, we examine the effects of leadership consideration and structure on two important organizational behavior outcomes: employee perceptions of organizational justice and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). We examine these effects across two studies using multisource data (employees and supervisors in Study 1; employees and coworkers in Study 2). Results reveal that consideration and structure have distinct effects across distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal dimensions of justice. Moreover, results suggest that consideration and structure have multiplicative effects on employee CWB. We find the highest levels of CWB among employees of supervisors who exhibit high structure and low consideration. Interestingly, results also suggest that the effects of structure on CWB may be curvilinear (u‐shaped) such that moderate levels of structure are associated with the lowest levels of CWB. We discuss implications for future consideration and structure research as well as managerial practice. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What makes affirmative action‐based hiring decisions seem (un)fair? A test of an ideological explanation for fairness judgments

Studies show that Whites tend to show the lowest level of support for affirmative action (AA) policies. Opponents of AA often argue that this is because it violates principles of meritocracy. However, self‐interest (based on social identification with those adversely affected) could also explain their opposition. In three studies, we varied whether an Asian or White male is adversely affected by AA to test another explanation; namely, that Whites' fairness judgments are based on both the adversely affected person's race and the fairness evaluator's ideological beliefs. Although we found some support for the meritocratic explanation, this was not sufficient to explain why Whites view AA as (un)fair. Instead, we found strong support for our prediction that Whites who are opposed to equality perceive more unfairness when a White (vs. Asian) was harmed by AA, whereas Whites who endorse egalitarian ideologies perceive the opposite. This finding suggests that neither self‐interest nor meritocratic explanations can fully account for Whites' opposition to AA. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The path(s) to employee trust in direct supervisor in nascent and established relationships: A fuzzy set analysis

While many of the propositions advanced by Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman's (1995) integrative model of interpersonal trust have been supported empirically, we still know little about how time impacts the relative importance of the model's elements. In addition, there may be situations in which trust can develop with lesser degrees of any of the trustworthiness facets or propensity to trust. Hence, we apply a configurational set‐theoretic perspective to examine what combinations will be sufficient to produce the presence of trust in a direct supervisor across nascent and established relationships. We find three distinct configurations associated with trust in supervisor, which allows us to elaborate theory and provide novel insights to trust research. In particular, we find that in both nascent and established relationships, perceptions of high supervisor ability, benevolence, and integrity constitute a sufficient configuration for high trust in supervisor. In established relationships, however, there were two paths to high trust in supervisor: (i) perceptions of high supervisor ability and integrity, or (ii) perceptions of high supervisor ability and benevolence, accompanied by high propensity to trust. As such, in established relationships, perceptions of high supervisor benevolence and high propensity to trust may be substitutable with perceptions of high supervisor integrity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synergy or substitution? The interactive effects of insiders' fairness and support and organizational socialization tactics on newcomer role clarity and social integration

Drawing on fairness heuristics theory (Lind, 2001) and cue consistency theory (Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991; Slovic, 1966), we test a moderated mediation model that examines whether the institutionalization of organizational socialization tactics enhances or constrains the beneficial effects of supervisory and coworker‐referenced justice and support on newcomer role clarity and social integration. The findings of a three‐wave study of 219 French newcomers show that although institutionalized tactics strengthen the positive indirect effects of supervisory interpersonal and informational justice on role clarity, via perceived supervisor support, it also acts as a substitute that weakens the positive indirect effect of coworker‐referenced interpersonal justice on social integration, via perceived coworker support. Implications of the findings for socialization research and practice are discussed.     

Workplace ostracism and deviant and helping behaviors: The moderating role of 360 degree feedback

Drawing on sociometer theory, we argue that when 360 degree feedback is used in a work setting, being ostracized by coworkers has a stronger negative influence on employees' state self‐esteem, which promotes interpersonal deviance and demotivates helping directed toward coworkers, as compared to settings in which 360 feedback is not used. We tested our hypotheses using data collected from North American employees (Study 1) and a two‐wave survey of employees in China (Study 2). Results from both studies support the hypothesized interaction between workplace ostracism and 360 degree feedback on interpersonal deviance and helping behavior. Results from Study 2 further show that lower state self‐esteem accounts for the stronger negative association of ostracism with helping behavior among employees who are exposed to 360 degree feedback. Ostracism is not related to subsequent state self‐esteem or behavior when 360 degree feedback is absent. We discuss the implications for theory and research concerning employee exclusion. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The employee as a punching bag: The effect of multiple sources of incivility on employee withdrawal behavior and sales performance

The link between the interpersonal stressor of workplace mistreatment and objective measures of performance is often overlooked in organizational research. In order to fill this research gap, we examined the unique and combined effects of two sources of incivility (customer and coworker) on objective sales performance and withdrawal behaviors (absenteeism and tardiness). We hypothesized that coworker and customer incivility would interact to predict reduced performance and increased withdrawal, using the conservation of resources model to support our hypotheses. We surveyed 120 bank tellers regarding experienced incivility and obtained performance and withdrawal data spanning a period of several months following the survey. The data indicated that coworker and customer incivility did interact to predict decreased sales performance and increased absenteeism, supporting the majority of our proposed hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings and future directions are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

It is all about the bottom line: Group bottom-line mentality,psychological safety,and group creativity

We examine bottom-line mentality (BLM) at the group level and examine the effect of group BLM on group psychological safety and subsequent group creativity. We draw on goal shielding theory to suggest that groups high in BLM narrowly focus on bottom-line outcomes, which encourages them to eliminate distracting considerations from their work processes. Because the group's high BLM encapsulates goal shielding, these groups are deficient in fostering psychological safety as an important interpersonal process that facilitates group creativity. We also couple goal shielding theory with arguments related to situational strength to examine group BLM agreement (i.e., the standard deviation of the mean of group BLM) as a first stage moderator. We contend that high-BLM agreement (vs. low agreement) strengthens the goal shielding effect of group BLM, which is reflected by a stronger detrimental effect on group psychological safety that then reduces group creativity. We found support for our theoretical model using multisource, multiwave field data from a diverse sample of workgroups and their supervisors. We discuss the theoretical implications of our research and provide practical suggestions for limiting the deleterious consequences of group BLMs in the workplace.