The Journal of applied psychology
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Comparative Study
The effect of culture on the curvilinear relationship between performance and turnover.
Although researchers have theorized that there exists a curvilinear relationship between job performance and voluntary turnover, their research has been tested in the United States or culturally similar Switzerland. Through a study of the performance-turnover relationship from a multinational service-oriented organization in 24 countries, we demonstrate that the general relationship between performance and turnover is similar across countries but the details of that relationship change across countries. Using 4 cultural dimensions--in-group collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation--we find that cultural factors alter the overall probability of voluntary turnover and influence the degree of curvilinearity in the performance-turnover relationship. Our findings have implications for research on the performance-turnover relationship, turnover research, and practice.
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Comparative Study
Does power distance exacerbate or mitigate the effects of abusive supervision? It depends on the outcome.
We predicted that the effects of abusive supervision are likely to be moderated by subordinate power distance orientation and that the nature of the moderating effect will depend on the outcome. Drawing upon work suggesting that high power distance orientation subordinates are more tolerant of supervisory mistreatment, we posited that high power distance orientation subordinates would be less likely to view abusive supervision as interpersonally unfair. ⋯ Across 3 samples we found support for our predicted interactions, culminating in a mediated moderation model demonstrating that social learning mediates the interaction of abusive supervision and power distance on subordinate interpersonal deviance, while ruling out alternate self-regulation impairment or displaced aggression explanations. Implications for the abusive supervision literature are discussed.
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By integrating literature on group faultlines, organizational cultures, and value congruence, this research presents a framework that explains how cultural alignment across organizational levels may influence the relationship between faultlines and performance. The hypotheses were tested using representatively sampled multisource qualitative and quantitative data on 138 teams from a Fortune 500 company. The present findings demonstrate that although informational faultlines were detrimental for group performance, the negative relationship between faultlines and performance was reversed when cultures with a strong emphasis on results were aligned, was lessened when cultures with a weak emphasis on results were aligned, and remained negative when cultures were misaligned with respect to their results orientation. These findings show the importance of recognizing alignments not only within groups (group faultlines) but also outside groups (cultural alignments between the group and departments) when considering their implications for group performance.
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Past research suggests that task conflict may improve team performance under certain conditions; however, we know little about these specific conditions. On the basis of prior theory and research on conflict in teams, we argue that a climate of psychological safety is one specific context under which task conflict will improve team performance. ⋯ The results support the conclusion that psychological safety facilitates the performance benefits of task conflict in teams. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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When leaders interact in teams with their subordinates, they build social capital that can have positive effects on team performance. Does this social capital affect team performance because subordinates come to see the leader as charismatic? We answered this question by examining 2 models. First, we tested the charisma-to-centrality model according to which the leader's charisma facilitates the occupation of a central position in the informal advice network. ⋯ Formal leaders who were central within team advice networks were seen as charismatic by subordinates, and this charisma was associated with high team performance. To clarify how leader network centrality affected the emergence of charismatic leadership, we designed Study 2 in which, for 79 student teams, we measured leader networking activity and leader charisma at 2 different points in time and related these variables to team performance measured at a third point in time. On the basis of this temporally separated data set, we again found support for the centrality-to-charisma model.