Friend or foe? The impact of relational ties with comparison others on outcome fairness and satisfaction judgments

Do Multiple I-Deals in a Team Help or Hinder Team Outcomes? A Resource Scarcity Perspective

Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are individualized employment arrangements negotiated and agreed upon by individual employees and their organization. This study addresses an emerging conundrum in i-deals research—whether the prevalence of i-deals in teams helps or hinders team outcomes. Because teams in which i-deals are prevalent receive more resources and status, they may be more cohesive and engage in more supportive behaviors. On the other hand, because i-deals differentiate among team members, teams in which i-deals are prevalent may be less cohesive and less inclined to engage in OCB. To solve this puzzle, we draw from a resource scarcity perspective to posit that understanding intra-team i-deal dynamics requires taking into account both organizational-level (i.e., organizational i-deal scarcity) and team-level (i.e., team power structure) factors. Using data from 40 organizations, 166 teams, and 1016 employees, we disentangle the complex interplay among the prevalence of i-deals in a team, organizational i-deal scarcity, and intra-team power structure in predicting both team cohesion and intra-team OCB.

The Role of Social Media in an Inspirational Approach to Product Design and Designer Performance

Social media has encouraged a large number of organizations to design their work patterns to facilitate their employees through social media adoption. This study examines the effects of enterprise social media and public social media on the novelty-focused product design, and efficiency-focused product design that eventually explain the performance of the designers. Empirical analysis based on time-lagged, multi-source data set indicate that both enterprise social media and public social media are an important source of product designer's inspiration which are positively related to novelty-focused design and efficiency-focused product design. Results further indicate that efficiency-focused product design has a stronger impact on designer performance than novelty-focused design. Theoretical implications and practical implications are discussed in the later sections.

Horizontal-Leader Identification in Construction Project Teams in China: How Guanxi Impacts Coworkers’ Perceived Justice and Turnover Intentions

Based on social comparison theory and organizational justice, this research explores how Guanxi with the horizontal leader (HL) influences coworker turnover intention. We used the snowball sampling method to collect survey data from 203 employees in 22 project teams. Overall, Guanxi with the HL had an indirect influence on turnover intention through perceived distributive justice pertaining to HL identification. Additionally, procedural justice had a negative, cross-level moderating effect on the relationship between Guanxi with the HL and perceived distributive justice. However, the individual-level moderating role of interactional justice was not supported. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Equity Theory Ratios as Causal Schemas

Equity theory approaches justice evaluations based on ratios of exchange inputs to exchange outcomes. Situations are evaluated as just if ratios are equal and unjust if unequal. We suggest that equity ratios serve a more fundamental cognitive function than the evaluation of justice. More particularly, we propose that they serve as causal schemas for exchange outcomes, that is, they assist in determining whether certain outcomes are caused by inputs of other people in the context of an exchange process. Equality or inequality of ratios in this sense points to an exchange process. Indeed, Study 1 shows that different exchange situations, such as disproportional or balanced proportional situations, create perceptions of give-and-take on the basis of equity ratios. Study 2 shows that perceptions of justice are based more on communicatively accepted rules of interaction than equity-based evaluations, thereby offering a distinction between an attribution and an evaluation cognitive process for exchange outcomes.