Change-oriented behavior: A meta-analysis of individual and job design predictors

Fostering proactive work behavior: Where to start?

This study underscores the significance of assessing the capabilities of rehabilitation officers in navigating challenges, devising innovative work methods, and successfully executing the rehabilitation process. This is particularly crucial amid the dual challenges of overcapacity and the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic, making it an essential area for research. To be specific, it aims to obtain empirical evidence about the influence of proactive personality and supportive supervision on proactive work behavior, as well as the mediating role of Role Breadth Self-efficacy and Change Orientation. This research was conducted on all rehabilitation officers at the Narcotics Penitentiary in Sumatra, totaling 272 respondents. This study employs a quantitative method via a questionnaire using a purposive sampling technique. The data was subsequently examined using the Lisrel 8.70 software and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). It can be concluded from the results that the rehabilitation officers for narcotics addicts at the Narcotics Penitentiary can create and improve proactive work behavior properly through the influence of proactive personality, supportive supervision, role breadth self-efficacy, and change orientation. The study may suggest new ways of working and generate new ideas to increase initiative, encourage feedback, and voice employee concerns. Furthermore, this research has the potential to pinpoint deficiencies in proactive work behavior, serving as a foundation for designing interventions or training programs. These initiatives aim to enhance the innovative and creative contributions of rehabilitation officers in the rehabilitation process.

Leadership effectiveness through coaching: Authentic and change-oriented leadership

There has been an increasing shift towards individually owned leader development programs within organizations. Whilst leadership coaching is one of these and is gaining in popularity, the mechanisms of its effect remain poorly understood. We develop and investigate a model in which leadership coaching enhances leader effectiveness through coaching's positive effect on authentic and change-oriented leadership behaviours as well as self-efficacy. To assess the model, multi-source data were collected for organizational leaders (N = 70) pre- and post-coaching. To investigate mechanisms of coaching's effect, relations between latent change scores were assessed in structural equation modelling using partial least squares indicating that after accounting for base-line scores, coaching-related increases in authentic leadership behaviour has the largest total effect on leadership effectiveness.

The Double-Sided Effect of Empowering Leadership on Constructive Voice Behavior: Focusing on the Mediating Effects of Task Significance and Task Overload

Focusing on job characteristics, this study examined the double-sided effect of empowering leadership on constructive voice behavior. We obtained and analyzed a total of 294 questionnaire responses from pairs of subordinates and supervisors in various industries in Korea. The results supported our hypotheses that task significance and task overload partially mediate the relationship between empowering leadership and constructive voice behavior. Specifically, we found that empowering leadership can promote constructive voice behavior by inducing a recognition of task significance and can suppress constructive voice behavior by causing task overload. These results confirm that empowering leadership indirectly influences constructive voice behavior through job characteristics. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications and highlight directions for future research.

Cooperation Leads Change: Subordinate Moqi, Leader-member Exchange, and Change-oriented Behaviors among Chinese Workers

This paper developed and tested a theoretical model linking subordinates’ moqi with their supervisor with change-oriented behaviors—specifically, creativity and taking charge—via leader–member exchange (LMX). Using a sample of 189 matched subordinate–supervisor dyads from 22 firms in China, a hierarchical modeling analysis showed that, as hypothesized, subordinate moqi with the supervisor positively affected employees’ creativity and taking charge. Additionally, LMX mediated the relationship between subordinate moqi with the supervisor and employees’ creativity and taking charge. This paper contributes to the current understanding of leadership from a followership perspective and its influence on change-oriented behaviors.

The role of synergistic interplay among proactive personality, leader creativity expectations, and role clarity in stimulating employee creativity

This study investigates the interplay among proactive personality, leader creativity expectations, and role clarity in stimulating employee creativity based on the theoretical frameworks of role theory. Questionnaires were distributed to obtain 290 leader-employee dyads from China to examine hypotheses via conditional process analysis. The results show that proactive personality has a positive effect on employee creativity, leader creativity expectations did not play a significant moderating role on the relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity. The interaction between leader creativity expectations and role clarity has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between proactive personality and employee creativity. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical significance.

How job complexity fosters employee creativity: a contextualized growth perspective and the mechanism of feedback-seeking

Purpose

Drawing on the work design growth model (WDGM), this paper aims to explore the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity through feedback-seeking and the moderating effect of team leaders with a growth creative mindset.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used an online survey to test the hypotheses. Data was collected in three waves from 74 supervisors and 349 paired employees in China.

Findings

Job complexity had a positive association with employees’ feedback-seeking, which further linked to employee creativity. This indirect effect was stronger in work teams with leaders endorsing a growth creative mindset.

Practical implications

Job complexity has become prevalent in organizations today. Taking daily complexity as a resource for nurturing employee creativity may balance organizations’ costs on formal training and give them more initiatives in long-term development. In addition, as the growth creative mindset is relatively easy to assess and change, it may bring insights in terms of creativity development.

Originality/value

By empirically testing the behavioural mechanism of WDGM, the learning and development perspective of work design offers a new explanation of the relationship between job complexity and employee creativity. The authors further extend WDGM by identifying leaders’ growth creative mindset to be a boundary condition.

At the origin of network centrality: How to design jobs to make employees central

Network centrality is vital for employees to attain superior performance or desired outcomes and yet we still know little of what makes employees develop central positions. A major challenge is that employees feel discomfort forming networks for opportunistic purposes that benefit them directly. This challenge can be overcome once we focus on the requirements raised by jobs. This paper posits that employees will be motivated to form networks in order to acquire the information capacity needed to satisfy the information requirements raised by the characteristics of their jobs. The study explores how the five enriching job characteristics influence the central position an employee occupies in the organizational network. Interestingly, not all job characteristics benefit networks. Evidence shows that task autonomy, task variety and task significance exercise a positive effect on network centrality but task identity and feedback from the job exercise a negative effect. Network centrality then mediates the relationship between job characteristics and performance. While dispositional determinants explain only between 3% and 5% of variance in network centrality, the model presented explains up to 32% of variance, thereby offering a solid answer to the core question of what determines network centrality.

My team makes me think I can (not) do it: team processes influence proactive motivational profiles over time

Purpose

This study aims to investigate cross-level influences of team cohesion, trust and conflicts on team member’s proactive motivational profiles and outcomes of profile membership over time.

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected in a four-month longitudinal field study with 47 teams (N = 202).

Findings

Latent profile analysis derived four proactive motivational profiles. The higher motivated profiles reported better study outcomes, higher levels of team trust and cohesion and fewer conflicts over time. Team trust and interpersonal conflicts emerged as significant predictors of profile membership.

Practical implications

Recommendations are derived on how to best manage teams and the members comprising it when trust in teams is low or interpersonal conflicts are high.

Originality/value

Applying a person-centred approach in a team context advances multi-level theories of team motivation by mapping the cross-level effects of team processes on different kinds of motivational states.

Research on the relationship between enterprise safety production management mode and employees' safety behavior based on social cognition and behavior incentive theory

AbstractThe realization of high-performance production safety needs not only a scientific and reasonable production safety management mode, but also active participation of employees with safety initiative (SI). Based on Social Cognition Theory and Behavior Motivation Theory, the study establishes a research model of the production safety management mode and safety behavior. Based on the survey data of 467 employees from 91 enterprises, and the Structural Equation Model is used for empirical verification. The findings show that three safety production management modes of punishment, regulation and guidance will affect the level of employees' SI, and then affect safety behavior. SI acts as an intermediary variable between safety production management mode and safety behavior. The transformation of enterprise safety production management mode from punishment to regulation, and then to guidance is conducive to encouraging employees to implement initiative safety behavior (ISB), reducing passive safety behavior (PSB), and improving enterprise safety management performance.

Research on the influence of job embeddedness on different initiative individuals

"How to improve individual initiative" has become an important subject facing the current researchers and practitioners. This study attempts to answer this question from the perspective of on-the-job embeddedness based on social cognitive theory, organization attachment theory and cognitive neural experiment，we revealed the differences in the effects of three dimensions of on-the-job embeddednesson individuals with different initiative by Event-related Potentials (ERPs) cognitive neural experiment. The experimental results showed that the effect on high-initiative individuals was in the descending order of organization fit, organization link, organization sacrifice; the effect on general-initiative individuals was in the descending order of organization link, organization fit, organization sacrifice; the effect on low-initiative individuals was in the descending order of organization sacrifice, organization link, organization fit. The ultimate goal is to put forward management strategies for different initiative individuals from the three dimensions embedded, promote their initiative level and actively participate in production activities.

A dual model of coping with and commitment to organizational change: the role of appraisals and resources

Purpose

Organizational change is usually stressful and destabilizing for employees, for whom coping with the induced stress is primordial to commit to the change. This paper aims to unravel how and when change recipients can enact different coping strategies and, ultimately, manifest different forms of commitment to change.

Design/methodology/approach

We propose a theoretical model that identifies challenge appraisal and hindrance appraisal as two primary appraisals of organizational change that fuel, respectively, proactive and preventive coping strategies and, indirectly, affective and normative forms of commitment to change. Moreover, this framework suggests that coping strategies and commitment are influenced by the secondary appraisal of two vital resources – resilience and POS – allowing individuals to react effectively to primary change-related appraisals. Finally, the relationship between coping strategies and the components of commitment to change is proposed to be moderated by employees' regulatory focus.

Findings

Using appraisal theory and conservation of resources theory as guiding frameworks, our integrated model describes the antecedents, processes and boundary conditions associated with coping with the stress of organizational change and how they ultimately influence commitment to it.

Originality/value

This is the first theoretical paper to identify a conditional dual path to disclose the different reactions that change recipients can manifest in response to the stressful aspects of organizational change.

Enhancing Personality Assessment in the Selection Context: A Study Protocol on Alternative Measures and an Extended Bandwidth of Criteria

Personality traits describe dispositions influencing individuals' behavior and performance at work. However, in the context of personnel selection, the use of personality measures has continuously been questioned. To date, research in selection settings has focused uniquely on predicting task performance, missing the opportunity to exploit the potential of personality traits to predict non-task performance. Further, personality is often measured with self-report inventories, which are susceptible to self-distortion. Addressing these gaps, the planned study seeks to design new personality measures to be used in the selection context to predict a wide range of performance criteria. Specifically, we will develop a situational judgment test and a behavior description interview, both assessing Big Five personality traits and Honesty-Humility to systematically compare these new measures with traditional self-report inventories regarding their criterion-related validity to predict four performance criteria: task performance, adaptive performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior. Data will be collected in a simulated selection procedure. Based on power analyses, we aim for 200 employed study participants, who will allow us to contact their supervisors to gather criterion data. The results of this study will shed light on the suitability of different personality measures (i.e., situational judgment tests and behavior description interviews) to predict an expanded range of performance criteria.

Aiming at the Organizational Sustainable Development: Employees’ Pro-Social Rule Breaking as Response to High Performance Expectations

Despite the continuous increase in empirical research on pro-social rule breaking (PSRB), why organizational members conduct this behavior volitionally still requires further exploration. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, our study investigated the impact of leaders’ high performance expectations on employees’ PSRB, following a hypothetical model with work stress as the mediator and perceived organizational support as the moderator. A three-waved time-lagged survey covering 208 dyad data of supervisor-subordinate from 41 teams of five enterprises in Shanghai, China, provided support for our hypotheses. After analyzing, we found that high performance expectations increased employees’ work stress, and further influenced employees’ PSRB substantially via stress, where the relationship was moderated by perceived organizational support. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed from a sustainability perspective.

The influence of school principals’ leadership behaviour and act of fairness on innovative work behaviours amongst teachers

Background: Although innovative work behaviours (IWBs) of teachers are important for individual school’s effectiveness and national economic sustainability, only fewer studies on leader-related behaviours drive IWBs of teachers in public schools in Lesotho.Research purpose: Drawing from the theories of leadership, affective commitment, social exchange and justice, the study examined the influence of school principals’ leadership styles and fairness on achieving IWBs amongst teachers.Motivation for the study: The teachers’ IWB amongst schools plays a key role in endorsing and producing innovative and adaptable future-oriented human capital. However, only scant research is available on the role of school leadership behaviour on teachers’ IWB in public schools. This happens despite the agreement amongst scholars and practitioners that critical thinking imparted by innovative teachers is a valuable source of creative labour force, a critical component for sustained national economic growth.Research approach/design and method: Data collected from 210 teachers in Lesotho (response rate = 71%) were analysed by means of correlation and multiple regression analyses to examine the hypothesised relationships.Research findings: The results indicated that the general supervisor-support factor (consisting of the perception of leadership and fairness of a principal) had a positive and significant effect on IWBs of teachers. Contrary to expectations, the affective commitment of teachers to their schools did not relate significantly to their IWBs.Practical/managerial implications: The article discusses these findings, suggests their theoretical and practical implications and outlines the prospects for future research on factors that may influence IWBs of teachers in schools. In order to improve teachers’ IWBs, this paper recommends that school principals be provided with training on how to articulate a compelling vision; coach, mentor and develop their subordinates; challenge them to think creatively; treat them with honesty and respect; and follow school policies, procedures and regulations all the time.Contribution/value add: This study adds to the scant literature regarding the role of school principals in nurturing IWBs of teachers in public schools.

Change Engagement, Change Resources, and Change Demands: A Model for Positive Employee Orientations to Organizational Change

The purpose of this conceptual article is to introduce the construct of change engagement and a model that also consists of change-related organizational resources, change-related job resources and demands, and change-related personal resources. We propose that change engagement is a construct that is theoretically and practically useful for understanding employee reactions to and adoption of organizational change. Drawing from existing models of employee engagement, we add to the change literature by identifying salient change-related organizational resources, job resources, job demands, and personal resources in a previously validated framework that brings together the literature on both engagement and change. By using the proposed change engagement framework, practitioners and researchers will potentially be able to effectively diagnose, manage, and optimize employee change readiness and enthusiasm for ongoing change. Furthermore, the change engagement model (CEM) provides practitioners and researchers with a comprehensive and practically useful model that will be easy to comprehend and communicate. The model can be applied to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of discrete change initiatives, as well as to ongoing change. The model is therefore well-suited to contemporary organizational contexts where change is widely recognized to be a constant.

Who will go the extra mile? Selecting organizational citizens with a personality-based structured job interview

Employees' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) are important drivers of organizational effectiveness. Yet, there exist no established tools for selecting employees with a propensity to engage in OCB. Given that personality traits describe typical behavioral tendencies and are established OCB predictors, we propose that personality assessment is a useful approach for selecting employees who are likely to exhibit OCB. To test this proposition, we developed a structured job interview measuring the Big Five traits and then compared this interview to a personality self-report measure to determine which method of personality assessment works best for selecting organizational citizens. Employees (N = 223) from various occupations participated in the structured job interview and completed the personality self-report in a simulated selection setting. We then obtained supervisor ratings of employees' OCB. Results supported the assumption that structured job interviews can be specifically designed to assess the Big Five personality traits and, most importantly, to predict OCB. Interview ratings of specific personality traits differentially predicted different types of OCB (i.e., OCB-compliance, OCB-helping, and OCB-initiative) and explained incremental variance in OCB over and above personality self-reports and verbal cognitive ability. Taken together, these findings expand our knowledge about dispositional predictors of OCBs, personality assessment in selection, and the design of job interviews.

From LMX to Individual Creativity: Interactive Effect of Engagement and Job Complexity

This study explores how the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) is associated with employees' creativity via engagement, and the moderating role of a job characteristic related to knowledge (job complexity) in this relationship. A moderated mediation model was tested on a sample of 320 employees from emergent high-tech and knowledge-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Spain. The results supported an indirect influence of LMX on individual creativity through engagement. Additionally, this study found that job complexity accentuated the impact of engagement on creativity. More importantly, the findings confirmed that the intensity of the LMX-engagement-creativity relationship was moderated by job complexity. That is, the relationship was stronger when job complexity was high. Taken together, this study improves the understanding of the factors that contribute to increased employee creativity, an important outcome for high-tech and knowledge-based SMEs.

A Person-Centered Perspective on the Combined Effects of Global and Specific Levels of Job Engagement

This study examines how the different dimensions of job engagement combine within different profiles of workers ( n = 264). This research also documents the relations between the identified job engagement profiles, demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, working time, and organizational tenure), job characteristics (work autonomy, task variety, task significance, task identity, and feedback), attitudes (affective and normative commitment), and psychological health (emotional exhaustion and ill-being). Latent profile analysis revealed four profiles of employees defined based on their global and specific (physical, emotional, and cognitive) job engagement levels: Globally Disengaged, Globally Engaged, Globally but not Emotionally Engaged, and Moderately Engaged. Employees’ perceptions of task variety and feedback shared statistically significant relations with their likelihood of membership into all latent profiles. Profiles were finally showed to be meaningfully related to employees’ levels of affective commitment, normative commitment, emotional exhaustion, and ill-being.

Transformational leadership and employee voice: a model of proactive motivation

Purpose

Drawing on the model of proactive motivation, the purpose of this paper is to examine how transformational leadership influences followers’ voice behavior through three proactive motivation states, namely, “reason to,” “can do” and “energized to.” It also examines the moderating role of followers’ proactive personality in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee voice.

Design/methodology/approach

The online survey was distributed through Qualtrics using a two-wave design. In total, 1,454 participants completed the survey at Time 1, of those 447 also completed the survey at Time 2.

Findings

Transformational leadership influences employee voice via followers’ promotion focus, role-breadth self-efficacy and affective commitment. Followers’ proactive personality attenuates the impact of transformational leadership on voice, supporting the substitute for leadership hypothesis.

Research limitations/implications

Self-reported data are the main limitation of the present study. Other limitations include treating employee voice as a unidimensional construct and oversimplifying the impact of positive affect on voice.

Practical implications

The present study suggests that training managers to demonstrate more transformational leadership behavior, enhancing employees’ proactive motivation and hiring proactive individuals are strategies to facilitate employee voice.

Originality/value

The present study contributes to a better understanding of employee voice from a proactive motivation perspective. It also demonstrates that followers’ proactive personality is important “boundary condition” to transformational leadership.

Age-sensitive job design antecedents of innovative work behavior

Purpose

Integrating the lifespan perspectives on job design and creativity/innovation, the purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of chronological age in the relationship between cognitive job demands (i.e. job complexity and job innovation requirements) and individual innovative work behavior (IWB).

Design/methodology/approach

Multilevel regression analyses are employed to analyze survey data of 336 employee–supervisor dyads from 61 departments across three organizations.

Findings

Results demonstrate that age was a significant moderator of the cognitive job demands-IWB relationship. Under the condition of high job complexity, younger employees outperformed their older counterparts. Conversely, older employees attained the same level of IWB as younger colleagues when more job innovation requirements were placed upon them.

Practical implications

IWB needs to be stimulated following different paths and by making job design decisions with regards to cognitive job demands that are dependent on employee age.

Originality/value

Empirical evidence has been provided to support the lifespan perspective on job design, with a special focus given to the cognitive job demands–IWB relationship.

‘PLEASE LEAD ME, MY COMMITMENT IS LOW’: INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF COMMITMENT AND LEADERSHIP ON INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOUR

Even though the effects of leadership and affective commitment on innovative work behaviours (IWBs) have been thoroughly researched, little is known about the interactive effects of these factors on IWBs. Based on data collected from 263 respondents from public and private organisations in Lesotho, the present study examines if affective commitment moderates the relationship between leadership and IWB. Drawing on literatures across management and innovation research domains, the study proposes and finds evidence that affective commitment moderates the relationship between leadership and IWB such that the relationship is stronger for affectively committed employees, while being relatively weaker for less affectively committed employees. The results also reveal that while leadership and management level have the main effects on IWB, affective commitment has no effect on IWB. Overall, the study responds to calls for examining the joint effects of person and context characteristics on IWBs. Drawing on our results, we discuss implications for theory and practice.

Workgroup accord and change-oriented behavior in public service organizations: Mediating and contextual factors

Workgroup relationships are characterized by interdependence and intensity and can produce powerful norms that shape how work is performed. This study focuses on the effect of workgroup accord, defined as positive exchange, cooperation, and consensus among workgroup members, on change-oriented behavior in public service organizations. Change-oriented behavior denotes discretionary corrective or creative initiatives on the part of employees, and workgroup accord is hypothesized to increase change-oriented behavior both directly and indirectly via organizational commitment. The theoretical model is operationalized using survey data collected from employees of the Australian Public Service. The results of regression analysis are consistent with the hypothesis that workgroup accord positively influences organizational commitment, which in turn facilitates change-oriented behavior. However, a negative direct effect renders the total effect of workgroup accord on change-oriented behavior non-significant. Additionally, the findings suggest that innovation climate and employee performance agreement efficacy each positively moderate the negative relationship between workgroup accord and change-oriented behavior.

How do empowering conditions lead to empowered behaviours? Test of a mediation model

Purpose

Behavioural outcomes of empowerment are not often studied comprehensively and in a specific manner in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to test a research model that specifies how two empowering conditions (empowering leadership and job autonomy) influence specific behavioural outcomes expected from empowered subordinates (discretionary-empowered behaviours and participation in decision making). A mediated model through psychological empowerment is hypothesised.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional questionnaire study relying on 141 dyads of subordinates-supervisors was conducted. Subordinates provided information on psychological empowerment and empowering leadership, while supervisors assessed job autonomy and behavioural outcomes.

Findings

Structural equation modelling analyses lent partial support to the hypothesised model. Psychological empowerment completely mediated the relationships between empowering leadership and behavioural outcomes. However, psychological empowerment was a partial mediator of the relationships between job autonomy and behavioural outcomes. A strong direct link was found between job autonomy and participation in decision making.

Originality/value

This study enables to extend the empowerment literature by showing how job design and leadership factors contribute to boost two types of specific empowered behaviours. The contribution is particularly original in the case of subordinates’ participation in decision making that is not often considered as a subordinate’s empowered behaviour.

Status matters: The moderating role of perceived newcomer status in leader and coworker influences on challenging organizational citizenship behaviour

Organizations often fail to encourage employees, especially newcomers, to come forward with their suggestions and implement changes to improve the status quo, that is, to engage in challenging organizational citizenship behaviour (C-OCB). In order to be able to stimulate these behaviours from the outset and throughout a career a better understanding of contextual antecedents of C-OCB is needed. This study investigates how leaders and coworkers might facilitate C-OCB of employees ( N = 266) with varying perceived newcomer status.

Results revealed positive main effects of coworker variables (team-member exchange and coworkers’ C-OCB) but not of empowering leadership on C-OCB. Perceived newcomer status had a negative main effect on C-OCB and moderated the effects of both coworker variables: the positive effect of team-member exchange on C-OCB was stronger for those with higher compared to those with lower perceived newcomer status. Conversely, the positive effect of coworkers’ C-OCB on participants’ C-OCB was stronger for those with lower compared to those with higher perceived newcomer status. These findings provide evidence for the important role of coworkers in addition to leaders for understanding C-OCB.

Examining perceived organizational politics among Indian managers

Purpose

This paper aims to test the effects of perception of organizational politics (POPS) on work outcomes–work engagement, innovative work behaviour and turnover intention. Mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of locus of control (LOC) on perceived organizational politics–outcome (innovative work behaviour and turnover intention) relationship was investigated.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were gathered from a sample of 302 full-time managerial employees in India. Results suggest that perceived organizational politics is significantly related to intention to quit and innovative work behaviour, and this relationship is partially mediated by work engagement. LOC moderates the organizational politics–work outcomes (work engagement and innovative work behaviour) relationship.

Findings

The current research demonstrates that availability of a work environment, where there are unfair decisions, nepotism and favoritism, is an impediment to engagement, innovative work behaviour and retention of managers. It behooves of top management therefore focusing on reducing POPS and subsequent deficits in motivation by providing clear feedback regarding which behaviours their organization desires.

Research limitations/implications

The study focused on POPS as reported by the employees and not on actual political behaviours. As the study did not cover all sectors, the results of this study should be interpreted with caution.

Originality/value

The study extended the current research stream of perceived organizational politics research to one of the underrepresented developing Asian countries, India. The study also contributes in terms of its sample characteristics. Managerial employees working across different sectors, served as the setting of our empirical study.