The “glass ceiling” metaphor represents the frustration experienced by women in the 1980s and 1990s who entered the workforce in large numbers following equal opportunity legislation that gave them greater access to education and employment. After initial success in attaining lower management positions, the women found their career progress slowing as they reached higher levels of their organizations. A formal definition of the glass ceiling specifies that a female disadvantage in promotion should accelerate at the highest levels of the organization, and researchers adopting this formal definition have found mixed evidence for glass ceilings across organizations and across countries. Researchers who have expanded the glass ceiling definition to encompass racial minorities have similarly found mixed results. However, these mixed results do not detract from the metaphor’s value in highlighting the stereotype-based practices that embed discrimination deep within organizational structures and understanding why women continue to be underrepresented in senior organizational roles around the world. In particular, researchers investigating the glass ceiling have identified a variety of obstacles (including glass cliffs, glass walls, and glass doors) that create a more complete understanding of the barriers that women experience in their careers. As organizations offer shorter job ladders and less job security, the career patterns of both women and men are exhibiting more downward, lateral, and static movement. In this career context, the glass ceiling may no longer be the ideal metaphor to represent the obstacles that women are most likely to encounter.
Article
The Glass Ceiling in Organizations
Carol T. Kulik and Belinda Rae
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The Glass Cliff
Clara Kulich and Michelle K. Ryan
A wealth of research has previously shown that gender stereotypes and discrimination keep women from climbing the corporate ladder. However, women who do break through the “glass ceiling” are likely to face new barriers. Research on the glass cliff phenomenon shows that, when women reach positions of power, they tend to do so in circumstances of crisis and instability. A number of archival, experimental, and qualitative studies have demonstrated that women are more likely to rise in the professional hierarchy in difficult, and for these women, potentially harmful, situations. For example, compared to their male peers, women are seen as more desirable for managerial or political leadership positions in times of instability and crises, or following scandals. Such appointments expose women to a higher risk of failure, criticism, and psychological distress, thus a danger of falling off an “invisible” cliff.
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Global Diversity Management
Jawad Syed and Memoona Tariq
Diversity management refers to organizational policies and practices aimed at recruiting, retaining, and managing employees of diverse backgrounds and identities, while creating a culture in which everybody is equally enabled to perform and achieve organizational and personal objectives. In a globalized world, there is a need for contextual and transnational approaches to utilize the benefits that global diversity may bring as well as the challenges that organizations may face in managing a diverse workforce. In particular, it is important to take into account how diversity is theorized and managed in non-Western contexts, for example in BRICS countries (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Muslim-majority countries. The literature confirms the need for organizational efforts to be focused on engaging with and managing a heterogeneous workplace in ways that not only yield sustainable competitive advantage but also are contextually and socially responsible. Organizations today are expected to take positive action, beyond legal compliance, to ensure equal access, employment and promotion opportunities, and also to ensure that diversity programs make use of employee differences, and contribute to local as well as global communities.
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Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Work Motivation in Human Resource Management
Dorien Kooij and Anja Van den Broeck
Work motivation is defined as a set of energetic forces, internal or external to individuals, that help to initiate work-related behavior and determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration. It is one of the most studied and discussed topics in industrial and organizational psychology and extensively documented in meta-analyses and literature reviews. The content approaches to motivation show that (a) both mastery- and performance-approach goals are related positively to performance (achievement goal theory); (b) a promotion focus is positively associated with positive worker outcomes, while a prevention focus has less beneficial outcomes and relates negatively or not at all to such outcomes (regulatory focus theory); and (c) intrinsic motivation and basic need satisfaction are positively related to positive worker outcomes (self-determination theory). Context motivational theories indicate that (a) extrinsic incentives are associated with poorer well-being and creativity yet better employee performance (reinforcement theory) and (b) job characteristics explain up to 87% of the variance in worker outcomes (work design theories). Finally, the process approaches to motivation reveal that (a) expectancy theory is more useful in explaining choice behavior rather than energy investment or persistence; (b) setting specific difficult goals increases performance, even more so when feedback is also given, and that goal commitment is particularly important for goal achievement (goal setting theory); (c) goals allow people to more effectively process information, but the role of self-efficacy is less clear (self-regulation theories); and (d) perceived behavioral control is essential for intentions to behave (theory of planned behavior). Most of this research on work motivation has employed rather traditional research methods, such as cross-sectional self-reported studies that disconnect with work motivation theory focusing on dynamic processes over time.
Therefore, to properly test motivational theory and advance the field of work motivation, future research should use longitudinal (experimental) field studies, person-centered approaches, and experience sampling method studies to allow for the evaluation of motivational and behavioral variability as a function of time, work events, and individual and situational factors. In terms of content, future research should go beyond the study of separate work motivation theories and integrate them to better understand the content, process, and context of work motivation. Such an integrated theory should include the work context in a more structured and explicit way, also taking into account that contextual variables may operate in isolation or interactively to affect motivation and that workers also influence the work context. As such, time and individual perspectives thereof should also be better incorporated in such integrated work motivation theories.
Finally, there are a few “do’s” and “don’ts” for practitioners to enable them to practice evidence-based human resource management. First, following self-determination theory, one should bear in mind that not all motivation is good: Some types, especially those reflecting autonomous motivation (i.e., related to intrinsic motivation or experienced meaningfulness), generally lead to better outcomes than other, more controlled types (e.g., based on rewards or guilt induction). Second, goal setting theory is a useful perspective when developing performance management systems.
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The Impact of Diversity Training Programs in the Workplace and Alternative Bias Reduction Mechanisms
Alexandra Kalev
Corporations often start their diversity journey by providing their managers or all workers with diversity training. These trainings were first offered as race-relations sessions in the 1960s and are among the most popular tools for diversity managers. Diversity training programs have changed their content during the decades, but they usually include live or online explanations about unlawful discrimination and bias, often supplemented by discussions of cultural differences and business needs for diversity. Despite their popularity and often high costs, a large body of research conducted over decades shows that most diversity training programs do not lead to long-term improvements in participants’ bias, attitudes, behavior, or workforce diversity. Some studies also show that training has negative effects on bias and diversity.
Factors that impede the success of diversity training or make them backfire include the hardwiring of cognitive biases and people’s complex reactions to direct attempts to change their biases, as well as the broader systemic biases rooted in everyday organizational routines. These suggest that common diversity training simply may not be the right tool for reducing bias and generating the changes needed for increasing workplace diversity. Some studies suggest that trainings’ effects could be improved by carefully designing them. This includes: avoiding training features that increase participants’ alienation, such as mandatory attendance, quizzes, and legalistic content; designing long-term training such that meaningful learning can be achieved; calibrating training to specific organizational challenges rather than using off-the-shelf content; and including ongoing collaborative contact with members of underrepresented groups and integrating training as part of broader diversity and accountability efforts. More research is needed to determine whether these types of training indeed produce sustained improvements in bias and diversity.
Alternative bias reduction mechanisms can be found in popular management models that increase collaboration between workers, such as cross-functional teams and cross-training. Such collaborative teams and training improve corporate performance and, as a byproduct, also reduce bias. Cognitive biases are affected by the work contexts in which individuals operate. Highly segregated workplaces, where White people and men meet women and people of color (or other underrepresented groups) primarily in marginalized jobs, deepen group boundaries and strengthen stereotypes. When organizations create cross-functional collaborations using self-directed teams and cross-training, workers from different groups have more opportunities to collaborate and, as studies show, biases and group boundaries are reduced, and leadership diversity increases.
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Interpersonal Trust in Organizations
Jingjing Ma, John M. Schaubroeck, and Catherine LeBlanc
Interpersonal trust refers to confidence in another person (or between two persons) and a willingness to be vulnerable to him or her (or to each other). In contemporary organizational science, research conducted within organizations has extensively investigated personal, dyadic, and contextual factors that motivate interpersonal trust (i.e., trust between two persons) and the consequence of interpersonal trust for the trustor and the trustee. This line of work distinguishes between two orientations that researchers have taken when conceptualizing interpersonal trust: unidirectional trust and bidirectional trust. Unidirectional trust refers to a focus on one person’s trust in another without regard to the reciprocation of that trust. Unidirectional trust research investigates trust in another party at a higher hierarchy level (e.g., followers’ trust in the leader), a lower hierarchy level (e.g., the leader’s trust in followers), or at the same hierarchy level (e.g., employees’ trust in coworkers). Bidirectional trust focuses on the shared trust in a dyad. Research on bidirectional trust helps to provide insights about the complex pattern and evolution of interpersonal trust over time. However, research investigating bidirectional trust is relatively limited compared to unidirectional trust. Besides research on interpersonal trust within the same work unit, there is also a recent trend toward investigating interpersonal trust across work unit and organizational boundaries. Another important line of literature regarding interpersonal trust is the investigation of the causes and consequences of interpersonal trust violations and the effectiveness of remedies (e.g., apologies) for these violations.
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Intersectionality Theory and Practice
Doyin Atewologun
Intersectionality is a critical framework that provides us with the mindset and language for examining interconnections and interdependencies between social categories and systems. Intersectionality is relevant for researchers and for practitioners because it enhances analytical sophistication and offers theoretical explanations of the ways in which heterogeneous members of specific groups (such as women) might experience the workplace differently depending on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or class and other social locations. Sensitivity to such differences enhances insight into issues of social justice and inequality in organizations and other institutions, thus maximizing the chance of social change.
The concept of intersectional locations emerged from the racialized experiences of minority ethnic women in the United States. Intersectional thinking has gained increased prominence in business and management studies, particularly in critical organization studies. A predominant focus in this field is on individual subjectivities at intersectional locations (such as examining the occupational identities of minority ethnic women). This emphasis on individuals’ experiences and within-group differences has been described variously as “content specialization” or an “intracategorical approach.” An alternate focus in business and management studies is on highlighting systematic dynamics of power. This encompasses a focus on “systemic intersectionality” and an “intercategorical approach.” Here, scholars examine multiple between-group differences, charting shifting configurations of inequality along various dimensions.
As a critical theory, intersectionality conceptualizes knowledge as situated, contextual, relational, and reflective of political and economic power. Intersectionality tends to be associated with qualitative research methods due to the central role of giving voice, elicited through focus groups, narrative interviews, action research, and observations. Intersectionality is also utilized as a methodological tool for conducting qualitative research, such as by researchers adopting an intersectional reflexivity mindset. Intersectionality is also increasingly associated with quantitative and statistical methods, which contribute to intersectionality by helping us understand and interpret the individual, combined (additive or multiplicative) effects of various categories (privileged and disadvantaged) in a given context. Future considerations for intersectionality theory and practice include managing its broad applicability while attending to its sociopolitical and emancipatory aims, and theoretically advancing understanding of the simultaneous forces of privilege and penalty in the workplace.
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Is There a Female Leadership Advantage?
Lynn R. Offermann and Kira Foley
Women have historically been underrepresented in leadership positions across private and public organizations around the globe. Gender inequality and gender discrimination remain very real challenges for women workers in general, and especially so for women striving for leadership positions. Yet organizational research suggests that female leaders may bring a unique constellation of leadership-related traits, attributes, and behaviors to the workplace that may provide advantages to their organizations. Specific cultural and organizational work contexts may facilitate or inhibit a female leadership advantage. Reaping the benefits of female leadership relies on an organization’s ability to combat the numerous barriers female leaders face that male leaders often do not, including gender-based discrimination, implicit bias, and unfair performance evaluations. Despite these challenges, the literature suggests that a reasoned consideration of the positive aspects of women’s leadership is not only warranted but is instructive for organizations hoping to reap the benefits of a diverse workforce.
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Labor History, Railroads, and Australia, 1880–1900
Bradley Bowden
Previously, most attention to managerial attitudes to railroad labor during the late 19th century has focused on industrial conflict in the United States, most particularly the so-called Pullman Boycott, a national stoppage that brought much of the American rail network to a halt in May–July 1894. Most historians—Alfred Chandler, Richard White, Gabriel Kolko, and Shelton Stromquist, to name a few—have associated this pattern of American conflict with falling freight rates caused by excessive competition between the United States’ privately owned railroads. If this assumption is correct, then one would expect both of the problems—labor conflict and falling freight rates—would be absent in New World societies where railroads operated under public rather than private ownership. Among New World societies, public ownership of the railways was arguably most significant in Australia, a continental society almost identical in geographical size with the mainland United States. Here, railroads played a similar role in national development. Despite this variance in ownership, however, Australian railroads were beset with similar problems to the United States. Per-ton freight rates declined in like fashion. As in the United States, Australian railroad managers responded to falling freight rates by savage wage cuts and staff redundancies. The commonalities between Australia and the United States points to a common causal factor. It is argued that this common causal factor was the falling world price for grain, most particularly wheat, the London benchmark wheat price falling from US $1.92 in 1871 to US $0.81 in 1891.
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Leader–Member Exchange: A Commentary on Long-Term Staying Power and Future Research Directions
Terri A. Scandura and Kim Gower
In 1975, the phrase “vertical dyad linkage” (VDL) was introduced to begin examining the quality of the roles between the leaders and direct reports, and it was soon discovered that the linkages ranged between high quality and low quality. That linkage progressed into “leader–member exchange” (LMX) in 1982. In essence, research reached a point where it found a continuum of the quality of the relationship between the two members. High-quality relationships put the employees into the leader’s “ingroup,” while low-quality relationships left employees on the outside looking in. It followed that those in the ingroup would have some say in the decision-making, would have easier access to the leader, and would garner more respect and “liking.”
Researchers have used the LMX-7 to examine how the quality of superior/subordinate relationships affects individual, interpersonal, and organization factors like job satisfaction, communication motives, and organizational identification (as did the original LMX scale). Although the LMX-7 remains one of the most prominent psychometric measures of LMX, researchers still debate whether the construct should be considered unidimensional or multidimensional.
While the intricacies of LMX-7 versus LMX have been argued, and with teams becoming more of an organizational resource, team–member exchange (TMX) was found to be a supported extension of LMX. While at this point TMX is lacking in the volume and pace of research, due to the difficulties of measurement among a group of people who might have a variety of leaders during the process, the existing research has produced some results that are extremely relevant, now and in the future. Examples of what has been found when the team exchange relationship is high include reduced stress, increased psychological empowerment, increased creativity, increased team performance, increased individual performance, increased organizational citizenship behaviors, increased organizational commitment, and increased job satisfaction, just to name a few.
In sum, the investigation into LMX provides a history of the field of LMX and its many iterations and the role it plays in leadership studies. This research includes LMX antecedents, consequences, moderators, mediators, and outcomes, as any field in which over 4,500 papers have been published needs an effective way to highlight the progress and pathways.
Article
Longitudinal Designs for Organizational Research
James M. Diefendorff, Faith Lee, and Daniel Hynes
Longitudinal research involves collecting data from the same entities on two or more occasions. Almost all organizational theories outline a longitudinal process in which one or more variables cause a subsequent change in other variables. However, the majority of empirical studies rely on research designs that do not allow for the proper assessment of change over time or the isolation of causal effects. Longitudinal research begins with longitudinal theorizing. With this in mind, a variety of time-based theoretical concepts are helpful for conceptualizing how a variable is expected to change. This includes when variables are expected to change, the form or shape of the change, and how big the change is expected to be. To aid in the development of causal hypotheses, researchers should consider the history of the independent and dependent variables (i.e., how they may have been changing before the causal effect is examined), the causal lag between the variables (i.e., how long it takes for the dependent variable to start changing as a result of the independent variable), as well as the permanence, magnitude, and rate of the hypothesized change in the dependent variable. After hypotheses have been formulated, researchers can choose among various research designs, including experimental, concurrent or lagged correlational, or time series. Experimental designs are best suited for inferring causality, while time series designs are best suited for capturing the specific timing and form of change. Lagged correlation designs are useful for examining the direction and magnitude of change in a variable between measurements. Concurrent correlational designs are the weakest for inferring change or causality. Theory should dictate the choice of design, and designs can be modified and/or combined as needed to address the research question(s) at hand. Next, researchers should pay attention to their sample selection, the operationalization of constructs, and the frequency and timing of measures. The selected sample must be expected to experience the theorized change, and measures should be gathered as often as is necessary to represent the theorized change process (i.e., when the change occurs, how long it takes to unfold, and how long it lasts). Experimental manipulations should be strong enough to produce theorized effects and measured variables should be sensitive enough to capture meaningful differences between individuals and also within individuals over time. Finally, the analytic approach should be chosen based on the research design and hypotheses. Analyses can range from t-test and analysis of variance for experimental designs, to correlation and regression for lagged and concurrent designs, to a variety of advanced analyses for time series designs, including latent growth curve modeling, coupled latent growth curve modeling, cross-lagged modeling, and latent change score modeling. A point worth noting is that researchers sometimes label research designs by the statistical analysis commonly paired with the design. However, data generated from a particular design can often be analyzed using a variety of statistical procedures, so it is important to clearly distinguish the research design from the analytic approach.
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Machine Learning in Management
Elizabeth Degefe, Krishna Savani, and Abhishek Sheetal
Although modern machine learning techniques were developed decades ago, management researchers have started using them only in the 2010s. Researchers in management have used machine learning techniques to analyze numeric data, most commonly relying on neural networks and decision trees; they have also used AI techniques to analyze text data to classify topics or model topics.
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Managing Team Diversity in the Workplace
Maartje Schouten, Jasmien Khattab, and Phoebe Pahng
The study of team diversity has generated a large amount of research because of the changing nature of workplaces as they become more diverse and work becomes more organized around teams. Team diversity describes the variation among team members in terms of any attribute in which individuals may differ. Examples are demographic background diversity, functional or educational diversity, and personality diversity. Diversity can be operationalized as categorical (variety), continuous (separation), or vertical (disparity).
Initial research on team diversity was dominated by a main-effects approach that produced two main perspectives: social-categorization scholars suggested that diversity hurts team outcomes, as it decreases feelings of cohesion and increases dysfunctional conflict, whereas the information and decision-making perspective suggested that diversity helps team outcomes, as it makes more information available in the team to help with decision-making. In an effort to integrate these disparate insights, the categorization-elaboration model (CEM) proposed that team diversity can lead both to social categorization and to information elaboration on the basis of contextual factors that may give rise to either process. The CEM has received widespread support in research, but a number of questions about the processes through which diversity has an effect on team outcomes remain.
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Mediation: Causal Mechanisms in Business and Management
Patrick J. Rosopa, Phoebe Xoxakos, and Coleton King
Mediation refers to causation. Tests for mediation are common in business, management, and related fields. In the simplest mediation model, a researcher asserts that a treatment causes a mediator and that the mediator causes an outcome. For example, a practitioner might examine whether diversity training increases awareness of stereotypes, which, in turn, improves inclusive climate perceptions. Because mediation inferences are causal inferences, it is important to demonstrate that the cause actually precedes the effect, the cause and effect covary, and rival explanations for the causal effect can be ruled out.
Although various experimental designs for testing mediation hypotheses are available, single randomized experiments and two randomized experiments provide the strongest evidence for inferring mediation compared with nonexperimental designs, where selection bias and a multitude of confounding variables can make causal interpretations difficult. In addition to experimental designs, traditional statistical approaches for testing mediation include causal steps, difference in coefficients, and product of coefficients. Of the traditional approaches, the causal steps method tends to have low statistical power; the product of coefficients method tends to provide adequate power. Bootstrapping can improve the performance of these tests for mediation. The general causal mediation framework offers a modern approach to testing for causal mechanisms. The general causal mediation framework is flexible. The treatment, mediator, and outcome can be categorical or continuous. The general framework not only incorporates experimental designs (e.g., single randomized experiments, two randomized experiments) but also allows for a variety of statistical models and complex functional forms.
Article
Mentoring Research Through the Years: A Brief Review
S. Gayle Baugh
Mentoring relationships involve a more experienced individual who provides support for the career and personal development of a less experienced coworker. The focus of mentoring research has evolved over the years. Early on, investigators were interested in learning about the outcomes of the mentoring relationship for the protégé, who is the primary beneficiary of the relationship. Risks for the protégé were not acknowledged in the initial research on mentoring relationships. There were questions about how individuals identify appropriate mentoring partners and about the course of the relationship. Attention then turned to the motivations and potential benefits to the mentor, the other party in the relationship. However, scholars recognized that while there were positive outcomes from serving as a mentor, there were also costs associated with the role. Given that so much empirical focus was on the benefits of voluntary developmental relationships, scholars became interested in more formal, organizationally controlled approaches to encouraging mentoring relationships. However, mentoring relationships are not uniformly positive and beneficial to the parties so engaged. Just as would be the case in any relationship, there is a “dark side” to mentoring relationships that has emerged as the focus of empirical attention. Finally, the influence of diversity of the mentoring participants has been explored. That exploration has largely focused on gender issues, with limited attention devoted toward ethnicity. With the advent of greater diversity in the workforce in the United States and elsewhere, diversity represents an area ripe for investigation. Overall, despite the wealth of research on mentoring relationships, there are questions that remain under-researched or unexplored in each of the areas of research.
Article
Minority Employees’ Ethnic Identity in the Workplace
Nasima M. H. Carrim
With an increase in the number of diverse groups of individuals (including ethnic minorities) entering organizations, managing diversity in the 21st-century workplace has become imperative. The workplace provides employees with opportunities to work interactively with others in diverse situations and to express their identities, including ethnic identity. Despite Western-based organizations’ adoption of strategies such as affirmative action in an effort to integrate diverse employees into their workplaces, members of ethnic minority groups may still experience great difficulties in obtaining instrumental and social support in these organizations. While some minorities may not outwardly manifest their ethnicity, in the majority of cases, ethnic identity forms a core identity of many individuals and employees do not leave this identity at the doorstep of the organization. In some countries, ethnic minorities have refused to assimilate into the majority workplace culture, and have maintained strong ethnic identities. By outwardly expressing their identities, ethnic minority employees face discrimination, stereotyping and micro-aggressive behaviors within the workplace, and in the majority of cases are relegated to dead-end lower level posts and face barriers to their career advancement. Also, having strong ethnic identities results in a conflict between minorities ethnic identities and the workplace culture. This is especially apparent in terms of religious beliefs and values. Embracing ethnic identity of migrants into organizational cultures is especially challenging for organizations these days, as many immigrants are highly skilled professionals that enter western corporations. They experience discrimination and not receiving support in order to advance their careers.
Article
Multicultural Identities at Work
Yih-Teen Lee and Nana Yaa Gyamfi
Cultural identity, a specific form of social identity that refers to a person’s degree of identification and sense of belonging to a specific cultural group, has been extensively examined as a kind of social identity over the past decades, especially in the fields of migration, cross-cultural psychology, and applied international management. Meanwhile, exposure to settings with different cultures typically triggers a process of acculturation, enabling individuals to develop multicultural identities, whereby people see things from multiple cultural groups’ perspectives, feel at one with the cultural groups, and act according to the norms of those cultural groups. Individual organizational members serve as the conduit by which culture influences and is influenced by organizational life. There exist various forms of multicultural identities with different psychological and behavioral implications on individuals. In terms of plurality, to date, extant studies accumulated extensive knowledge on biculturalism, which focuses on individuals having two distinct cultural identities and how these identities intersect and influence the individual. Beyond biculturalism obtained through birth, ancestry, or immersive foreign experience, individuals may become multicultural by being simultaneously immersed in more than two cultures: a situation common among children of immigrants (i.e., second-generation immigrants), children raised in multicultural households, third culture individuals who spend their formative years outside their passport country, and individuals living within multicultural societies.
A key to understanding multicultural identities is how these multiple identities are structured within individuals. Scholars largely agree that the structural pattern of identities affects the outcomes and degree of synergy among multiple identities. Widely accepted modes of structuring multiple identities include relative strength of identities involved and how multiple identities relate to each other. Scholars have built on these lines of thinking to examine specific forms of multicultural identities and their outcomes. Furthermore, research indicates that multiculturals possess unique identity resources relevant to organizational life, including cognitive strengths, relational capital and belonging, and leadership-related competencies.
Although there is evidence for responsiveness of multicultural identity to situational cues, there are also strong arguments made in favor of the agency of individuals over their multiple identities. The foregoing notwithstanding, individuals with multicultural identities must balance their agentic enactments of identity with societal requirements of legitimacy. In particular, business organizations play a vital role in providing identity workspaces and other enabling factors which legitimize multicultural identities. Additionally, business organizations play the role of balancing power, status and other dynamics between multicultural and non-multicultural members.
Article
Pay Transparency: Conceptualization and Implications for Employees, Employers, and Society as a Whole
Peter A. Bamberger
Pay transparency refers to the degree to which pay communication policies and practices governing employee pay knowledge facilitate or restrict the sharing of pay-related information. While relatively few enterprises have adopted transparent pay-communication practices, a variety of institutional factors, such as government regulations and social norms, are driving employers to provide their employees with greater pay knowledge. Consensus has emerged around the existence of three main dimensions or forms of pay transparency, namely pay-outcome transparency, pay-process transparency, and pay-communication transparency. Research findings indicate that pay-outcome transparency, which relates to the degree to which pay rate information is disclosed by the employer, has both beneficial and problematic consequences, depending on the outcome. For example, while pay-outcome transparency has been consistently found to be associated with enhanced individual task performance and reduced gender-based pay discrepancies, it has also been associated with higher levels of envy, diminished helping, heightened levels of counterproductive work behavior, and pay compression (which could elicit negative sorting effects). In contrast, pay-process transparency, which relates to the degree to which employees are informed about the parameters underlying reward-related decisions, has been found to have largely beneficial consequences and few unintended negative consequences. Finally, while it is least studied, pay-communication transparency, capturing the degree to which restrictions are placed on employees’ ability to share pay knowledge with others, is positively associated with employee perceptions of employer fairness and trustworthiness and can have significant implications for employee retention.
Article
Person–Environment Fit: Theoretical Perspectives, Conceptualizations, and Outcomes
Rein De Cooman and Wouter Vleugels
The idea of person–environment (PE) fit builds upon interactional psychology, which suggests that the interplay between personal and environmental attributes is the primary driver of human behavior. The “environment” in PE fit research can take many different forms, with organizational environments being one of the most important settings with which people may fit or misfit. Henceforth, PE fit is defined as the compatibility that occurs when individuals match the characteristics of the work environment they inhabit. The notion that individuals with personal needs, values, goals, abilities, and personalities and organizational environments with distinctive demands, supplies, values, and cultures are differentially compatible and that “fitting in” is an evolving process that triggers behavioral, cognitive, and affective responses has been well accepted since PE fit was introduced as an independent theory in the mid-1970s. Presently, the PE fit idea has established itself as a firm research framework and has surfaced in many different literatures, ranging from applied and vocational psychology to human resource management, resulting in a plethora of theories that cover many different views on, and various conceptualizations of, PE fit. From an individual (i.e., employee) perspective, fit theories suggest that fit is a sought-after and rewarding experience in and of itself, especially when multiple types of fit (e.g., fit with the job and with the organization) co-occur. However, from a team, organizational, and societal perspective, the advantages of high levels of fit must be weighed against its potential costs, including favoritism, conformity, and homogeneity, which may eventually result in organizational inertia and the reproduction of inequality.
Article
Pride in Organizations
Yuen Lam Wu, Prisca Brosi, and Jason D. Shaw
Pride is a self-conscious emotion evoked when individuals perceive themselves attaining an outcome that is congruent with their goals and being responsible for achieving a socially valued outcome. The experience of pride can influence one’s own behaviors but the accompanying expressions can also elicit behavioral changes in observers. Although pride is a positive emotion and provides individuals with psychological rewards and pleasant feelings, accumulated empirical findings show a broad range of consequences in response to both the experience and expression of pride in organizations. In attempts to explain the various outcomes, pride researchers have conceptualized the construct in different ways. Some researchers examine pride as a unified emotion that arises from the attainment of positive outcomes; others adopt a multifaceted view to explain its divergent consequences. The multifaceted view suggests that pride can be authentic or hubristic depending on whether the achievement is assumed to arise from one’s efforts or abilities, and promotive or preventive depending on whether the achievement is assumed to result from promotion-related eagerness or prevention-related vigilance. Pride may also be differentiated into specific facets based on whether it is elicited by the achievement of performance or moral standards. Furthermore, as the individual self is embedded in social contexts, pride can arise from group belongingness. Thus, the conceptualization of pride can extend beyond the individual level to cover group and organizational pride. This article concludes that pride is an important source of motivation for both individuals who experience it and those who express it in organizations. Yet, what outcomes or behaviors result depends crucially on the source of pride because pride leads individuals to repeat behaviors attributed as the original cause of the positive feeling. Although pride is commonly engendered by achievements and socially desirable outcomes, it can also arise from immoral behaviors when those behaviors are assumed to benefit the organization. The outcomes of pride experience and expression are also contingent on individual and contextual boundary conditions.
