Sut I Wong

Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS

Springer Nature Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76902-3

This book examines the relationship between people and technology in the digital workspace from management, sociological and psychological perspectives

Humanizing the Digital Workspace: Creativity, Innovation and Leadership in the Age of Technology Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-76902-3

We examine how the combined effect of leader’s personal need for structure and digital self-efficacy influence employees’ autonomy experiences during digital workplace changes. In addition, we test the impact of employee work tenure as a second-stage moderator in this relationship. In this chapter, we aim to explain how the cognitive framework of the leader in terms of digital self-efficacy and need for structure can influence his or her reaction to dynamic and uncertain situations at work (i.e., digital work changes). We argue and empirically establish that leaders’ low adaptive capacity (i.e., low digital self-efficacy and high need for structure) can negatively affect the autonomy perceptions of employees. In addition, employee’s work tenure co-shapes the relationship between leaders’ cognitive framework and employee’s autonomy. Our findings emphasize the need to differentiate between these leaders who have the capacity to deal well with digital changes from those who struggle; they also point to the importance of the leader’s high digital self-efficacy, especially for employees with high work tenure, for nurturing employees’ autonomy. Given that the need for autonomy is central to employees’ happiness and well-being, understanding how leaders’ cognitive framework affects autonomy is an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of leaders’ well-being supportive behaviors at large.

Journal of Management Information Systems 41(4) s. 1111-1141 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2024.2415776

The recent and swift move to virtual working has highlighted a need for greater understanding of how to best communicate remotely for work, how well team members are able to identify the correct communication mediums for their tasks and how team members align on how to complete these tasks. Drawing on Media Synchronicity Theory (MST), we examine communication-based subgroup dynamics in terms of faultline strength—the degree to which a team is hypothetically divided by lines of communication media they use—and subgroup imbalance regarding the influence of communication-based subgroup dynamics on virtual team sociability, and subsequently, team coordination. Results from a field study (Study 1) with 292 team members belonging to 37 virtual teams, and an experiment (Study 2) with 385 participants provided support for the hypotheses. Our findings contribute to existing theory by underscoring the idea that it is not simply virtuality, but the misalignment of the use of communication mediums among team members that plays a key role in the development of communication challenges in virtual teams. The study takes a novel approach by addressing how faultline strength within virtual teams that can cause communication challenges. Consequently, organizations are encouraged to pay attention to guidelines of the use of virtual communication tools and team composition to enhance communication and collaboration within virtual teams.

Scandinavian Journal of Management 40(4) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2024.101371

Robot utilization is expected to result in significant changes in the way organizations and teams operate. The increasing prevalence of robots in the workplace offers an opportunity to research robot utilization and employee response behaviors to this phenomenon. A timely research question is, “What reactionary behaviors would organizational leaders and employees exhibit as they begin to regard robots as coworkers and teammates?”. The purpose of this commentary is to offer theoretical perspectives on leader response behaviors when leading human-robot teams as well as to understand employee reactions to working alongside a robot teammate. Drawing on paradox and Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theories and through postulation statements, we show the (contradictory) duality of leader and employee behaviors under conditions of high/low job demands in a human-robot team environment. In doing so, this discussion bears implications for research on team leadership, job crafting, the presence of behavioral robotics, and for the practice of organizational leadership.

International Journal of Electronic Business Doi: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEB.2024.10066123

This paper focuses on how technostress relates to job stress, and subsequently results in burnout in digitised workplaces. We also propose that job autonomy can buffer the negative effect of technostress. We test our model in a four-wave longitudinal study of working professionals from a nationally representative quota sample (n = 198 employees contributing 792 observations). The results of the study supported our hypothesised model, highlighting that autonomy represents a crucial job design element that mitigates the effects of technostress on burnout over time. Our contributions complement existing research on technostress, specifically narrowing in on short- versus long-term negative outcomes of this phenomenon, and advancing research on stress and burnout in traditional work settings that adopted the high technology use. From a practical perspective, we provide guidelines for organisations on how to maintain the most appropriate ways of designing contemporary jobs that are inherently embedded in technology.

Harvard Business Review

Political Psychology 45(6) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12952

Identity leadership involves leaders creating and promoting a sense of shared group membership (a sense of 'we' and 'us') among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between political leaders' identity leadership and civic citizenship behavior (N = 6,787). It also examines the contribution of trust and economic inequality to this relationship. Political leaders' identity leadership (PLIL) was positively associated with respondents' people-oriented civic citizenship behaviors (CCB-P) in 20 of 26 countries and civic citizenship behaviors aimed at one's country (CCB-C) in 23 of 26 countries. Mediational analyses also confirmed the indirect effects of PLIL via trust in fellow citizens on both CCB-P (in 25 out of the 26 countries) and CCB-C (in all 26 countries). Economic inequality moderated these effects such that the main and indirect effects of trust in one's fellow citizens on CCB-C were stronger in countries with higher economic inequality. This interaction effect was not observed for CCB-P. The study highlights the importance of identity leadership and trust in fellow citizens in promoting civic citizenship behavior, especially in the context of economic inequality.

Technology in society 76 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102434

As the central part of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), Digital Transformation (DT) is being enthusiastically implemented in business organisations. Current DT literature has focused on business and strategy, but little attention has been paid to the organisation's human side. According to the resource-based view (RBV), employees are valuable resources in the DT process, and there is a need to understand how DT affects employee attitudes, psychology, and jobs. Taking a sample (n = 320) of employees working in I4.0, we empirically test our model linking DT with different aspects of employee attitude (job satisfaction, affective commitment), psychology (self-efficacy, resilience), and job-related factors (job engagement and autonomy). The findings reveal that DT significantly affects the attitude, psychology, and job-related factors of employees in I4.0. This study contributes to the dynamic capability theory by discussing the effect of DT on employees' attitudes, psychology, and jobs. This study presents critical implications from both theoretical and practical perspectives along with future research directions.

The Future of Work. Challenges and Prospects for Organisations, Jobs and Workers. s. 81-95 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31494-0_6

Leadership represents an emerging theme in the field of digitised workplaces, yet the understanding of leadership dynamics and effectiveness in this context remains limited. The aim of this chapter is to (1) provide an overview of the existing academic literature at the intersection of leadership and the future of work and (2) propose an integrative framework of established and current research and emerging trends. We apply a holistic, systematic and comprehensive review of this literature based on objective measures of impact. We consider the main theoretical foundations within the literature and provide an overview of prominent research clusters including both current and emerging themes. Practical implications are related to leadership and digitalisation, leadership in virtual work, leading virtual teams and leadership in the context of the Future of Work and the gig economy.

Human Resource Management Journal s. 1-18 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12478

Drawing from mindset theory, we predict that managers' fixed mindset about technological ability (FM-TA) will negatively influence the developmental support they provide to their employees and, in turn, their employees' engagement in digitalisation initiatives. Further, we predict that managers' FM-TA will have a disproportionate negative influence on female employees for whom negative stereotypes about technological ability exist. We test our hypotheses with two-wave field study data collected from 88 managers and 185 employees working in a Nordic banking institution. We find that managers' FM-TA relates negatively to their employees' experienced developmental support, and, in turn, their employees' efforts to approach new technology. Furthermore, our findings indicate that this negative, indirect relationship is more pronounced for female employees (estimate = −0.116, standard error [SE] = 0.052, p = 0.026) than male employees (estimate = −0.048, SE = 0.027, p = 0.071), although the interaction term (managers' FM-TA × employee gender) was not significant at the 95 percent confidence level (estimate = −0.266, SE = 0.0141, p = 0.058). Our study provides greater insight into the human resource management issues managers might have fostering employee engagement and inclusion in the digitalised workplace.

Human Resource Management Journal n/a(n/a) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12447

Previous research on distributed teams indicates that physical distance between team members is problematic for team functioning. We advance this research by investigating the role of team members' psychological experiences of isolation using both a longitudinal diary study and a time-lag field study, applying a Job Demand–Resource (JD-R) theory lens (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). With the diary study, we capture daily fluctuations of perceived isolation and its antecedents and consequences. Results show that (a) where distributed team members work, and (b) how much they communicate, contribute to the degree to which distributed team members may feel isolated. The combined results of the diary study and the time-lagged field study show that 1) perceived isolation, and 2) perceived isolation combined with high role ambiguity, contribute to experiences of helplessness. Subsequently, feelings of helplessness hamper the level of perceived team implicit coordination. Theoretical and practical implications for managing distributed teams are discussed.

Creativity and Innovation Management Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12518

This paper examines the psychological mechanism by which digital workers translate self-rated creativity into other-rated creativity (novelty and usefulness). Specifically, we explore digital workers' creative self-efficacy as an explanatory mechanism while we investigate psychological entitlement as a boundary condition. We test our research model on a sample of digital platform workers (245 working professionals on Amazon Mechanical Turk) and 167 digital experiment participants. The results of both studies converge in supporting the moderated-mediation model leading up to novelty as a criterion of creativity, but not usefulness. Implications for the study of creativity and digital work are discussed.

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2022- s. 6330-6330

Information Technology and People Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-04-2021-0310

Purpose The present study investigates whether individuals having a fixed digital mindset (comprises fundamental beliefs about technological ability and organizational resources as work becomes more digitalized) experience greater helplessness working in virtual teamwork environments. The authors examine how perceived internal human resource management (HRM) alignment moderates the positive relationship expected between individuals' fixed digital mindset and feelings of helplessness. Together, the paper aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the personal and contextual factors that influence an individual's experience of helplessness in virtual team settings. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the hypotheses using time-lagged survey data collected from 153 information technology (IT) engineers working in virtual teams in Europe. Findings The authors find that individuals with higher levels of fixed digital mindset experience greater helplessness in virtual teamwork environments than individuals with lower levels. Furthermore, the authors find that having higher-fixed beliefs about organizational resources is positively related to helplessness when individuals perceive that the broader HRM system is misaligned with the virtual teamwork environment. Research limitations/implications The data were obtained from IT engineers in Europe, which is potentially limiting the generalizability of the authors' findings to other work contexts and cultures. Practical implications The authors' study helps leaders in virtual teamwork environments to better understand and manage the personal and contextual factors that could affect individuals' well-being and effective functioning in such settings. Originality/value The authors' research contributes to the scant literature investigating the personal characteristics important in virtual teamwork environments and the contextual factors important for aligning virtual teamwork designs with the organizational system. The authors extend this research by looking at personal and contextual factors together in a single model.

Applied Psychology Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12381

Innovation is considered essential for today's organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers' innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet, despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) The relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) the mechanisms through which leadership impacts FIB; and (c) the degree to which relationships between leadership and FIB are generalizable across cultures. To address these lacunae, we propose an integrated model connecting four types of positive leadership behaviors, two types of identification (as mediating variables), and FIB. We tested our model in a global data set comprising responses of N = 7,225 participants from 23 countries, grouped into nine cultural clusters. Our results indicate that perceived LMX quality was the strongest relative predictor of FIB. Furthermore, the relationships between both perceived LMX quality and identity leadership with FIB were mediated by social identification. The indirect effect of LMX on FIB via social identification was stable across clusters, whereas the indirect effects of the other forms of leadership on FIB via social identification were stronger in countries high versus low on collectivism. Power distance did not influence the relations.

International Journal of Electronic Commerce s. 1-23 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10864415.2021.1942674

With crowdsourcing increasingly contributing to organizations’ innovative performance, it becomes more and more important for them to cultivate the creativity of their crowdsourcing communities. While digital feedback is the main, if not the only, two-way channel of communication between the platforms and the crowdworkers, little is yet known about how to use digital feedback to manage and foster the creative performance of crowdworkers. This study examines how the provision and nature of feedback, provided virtually through online interfaces, influence creative performance. We argue that the alleged positive relationship between the creative self-efficacy of crowdworkers and creative performance is conditional upon the joint effect of digital feedback valence and the degree to which crowdworkers focus on learning as achievement outcomes. We conducted a two-stage experimental study with 298 participants in a crowdsourcing setting. The results show that feedback provided in virtual settings, irrespective of whether the feedback is positive or negative, can be perceived as surveillance and thus hurt the creative performance of crowdworkers with high creative self-efficacy but low mastery goal orientation. However, the results also show that when receiving negative feedback, community members who have high creative self-efficacy and mastery goal orientation try harder in subsequent creative tasks. Accordingly, we advocate for nurturing platform cultures that emphasize both confidence in the contributor’s own competence and the abilities to learn and develop.

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2020- s. 5758-5758

Human Resource Management Journal s. 1-18 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12342

The present study investigates how individual and collaborative job crafting may help digital labourers to build resilience and career commitment in the gig economy. Results based on a time-lagged survey from 334 digital labourers indicate that those who engaged in higher individual job crafting reported subsequently higher resilience at the outset. Moreover, high collaborative job crafting compensated for low individual crafting efforts in reaching higher resilience and subsequently higher career commitment in the gig economy. Theoretical and practical implications for sustainable careers in the gig economy are discussed.

Journal of Organizational Behavior 42(5) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2512

Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, and measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Overall, the findings suggest that relationships between silence and cultural dimensions are more complex than commonly assumed. We discuss the explanatory power of nations as (cultural) units of analysis, our social scientific approach, the predictive value of cultural dimensions, and opportunities to extend silence research geographically, methodologically, and conceptually.

South East European Journal of Economics and Business 16(1) s. 107-119 Doi: https://doi.org/10.2478/jeb-2021-0009

Digital transformation has put tremendous pressure on employees to innovate with the use of information technology (IT). This paper explores the extent to which digital literacy and personal innovativeness contribute to individual’s innovative work behavior (IWB). To test our hypotheses, we apply double bootstrapping mediation analyses paired with relative importance analysis on a dataset collected from employees (N = 167) in a pharmaceutical company. The results showed the existence of a double-mediation chain whereby digital practices and attitude toward digitalized innovation mediate the positive relationship between digital literacy and IWB. Surprisingly, said chain was not supported for personally innovative individuals, indicating that digital literacy plays a relatively more important role in stimulating attitudes toward digitalized innovation and IWB. Our findings add further specificity to research on digital natives and may help organizations understand the role of digital literacy and personal innovativeness in organizationally-relevant outcomes, such as IWB.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) 18(22) Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182212081

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burnout. We tested this model with unique datasets from the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project with participants from all inhabited continents. We compared two datasets from 2016/2017 (n = 5290; 20 countries) and 2020/2021 (n = 7294; 28 countries) and found very similar levels of identity leadership, team identification and burnout across the five years. An inspection of the 2020/2021 data at the onset of and later in the COVID-19 pandemic showed stable identity leadership levels and slightly higher levels of both burnout and team identification. Supporting our hypotheses, we found almost identical indirect effects (2016/2017, b = −0.132; 2020/2021, b = −0.133) across the five-year span in both datasets. Using a subset of n = 111 German participants surveyed over two waves, we found the indirect effect confirmed over time with identity leadership (at T1) predicting team identification and, in turn, burnout, three months later. Finally, we explored whether there could be a “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect for identity leadership. Speaking against this, we found a u-shaped quadratic effect whereby ratings of identity leadership at the upper end of the distribution were related to even stronger team identification and a stronger indirect effect on reduced burnout

International Journal of Electronic Commerce 25(1) s. 7-28 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10864415.2021.1846851

Distributed team arrangements are becoming “the new normal”. The present study considers the evolution of electronic commerce into an area where operational interaction and coordination of work occurs when previously only commerce occurred. As more teams are moving online, the need to understand the conditions supporting team coordination is becoming increasingly prevalent. By examining the moderating roles of initiated and received task interdependence on the relationship between perceptions of self-management and coordination in distributed teams, we aim to advance research in the area of e-commerce and benefit distributed teams in current and future practice. Results based on a survey of 101 professionals working in distributed teams indicate that the level of team self-management is positively related to perceived coordination when the level of initiated task interdependence within a team is high, as well as when the level of received task interdependence is low. These findings further indicate that initiated and received team task interdependence represent difference team coupling structures that can enable or hinder team coordination. Theoretical and practical implications for the boundary conditions to sustain coordination in self-managing teams are discussed.

ICIS 2021 Proceedings

We report findings from a case study of a large agile information systems development (ISD) organization´s sudden transformation to distributed, digital work in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It seeks to understand how knowledge creation and sharing changes. The findings show various forms of distance being introduced, digital tool usage, increased task orientation, and variations across teams. To analyze the findings, we use the concepts of large-scale collaborations and sociability. Large-scale collaboration offers a socio-technical perspective on tackling distributed knowledge sharing and creation in the presence of multiple, loosely coupled partners using digital tools for collaboration. We show what the digital tools afford using the concept of sociability. We discuss how distributed digital practices make teams more task-oriented and that creating and maintaining sociability, a key issue for knowledge sharing in agile ISD organizations, require relation-oriented communication during practical problem solving using digital tools.

AI & Society: Knowledge, Culture and Communication Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01241-w

Distributed agile teams are increasingly employed in organizations, partly due to the increased focus on digital transformation. However, research findings about the performance of such teams appear to be inconsistent, calling for more research to investigate the conditions under which distributed agile teams may thrive. Given that task coordination is particularly challenging when team members are not co-located, the present study investigates the roles of the two types of task interdependence, i.e., initiated versus received task interdependence. Survey results from 191 participants working in distributed agile teams within three companies in Norway confirm our hypotheses. Specifically, we show that high initiated task interdependence is associated with higher role clarity of others, while received task interdependence is associated with higher role clarity of self, and that both subsequently result in higher team performance in distributed agile teams. Thus, we argue that each type of task interdependence contributes in a unique way to team performance in distributed agile teams.

Human Relations 74(4) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726720956689

This article examines career transitions in creative industries that involve geographical relocation from large metropolitan creative cities to small, remote and marginal urbanities. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews with freelancers who have relocated to peripheral Southern European locales, the article explores the ways in which creative workers make sense of and justify their career transitions away from the metropolis, while reassessing reflexively over their lifespan the shifting meaning of their career success. We propose the adoption of Nussbaum’s capability approach in the study of such career transitions as a means of strengthening current theorizing about the role played by urban contexts in individual conceptualizations of career success and meaningful professional identities. Applying this analytical lens, we tease out the ways in which our informants perceived the influence exerted by different urban contexts on their capacity to enact a set of capabilities for the attainment of well-being and quality of life at different stages in their careers while striving to preserve a stable professional identity as creative workers. We argue that a good life evaluation, which includes a reflexive and comprehensive reassessment of the capabilities to live life well while pursuing a creative career, underlies creative workers’ shifting interpretations of geographical career transition that contravene conventional measures of career upward mobility, development and growth.

Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 93(4) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12317

Digital Labor, taking up flexible but small-scale employment arrangements on online intermediary platforms, with few constraints on how much, when, and where work is performed, are becoming the new work reality for many individuals. Scholars have argued that this type of work is inherently demeaning. We seek to explore the worker’s perspective and how their long-term perspective aligns or misaligns with their actual workarrangement. We draw on career construction theory and hypothesize a job–career congruence model suggesting that when workers’ cognitive presentations of their microwork as jobs or careers are incongruent, they are less likely to experience their work as meaningful. The results from a two-stage field study of 803 workers from two microworking platforms support the negative effect of an incongruent job–career schema on workers’ experience of meaningful work. Additionally, results demonstrate that even workers who are proactive in nature, seem unable to excel in these fluid work settings when their job-career schema are not aligned.

Human Resource Management Review 31(1) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2020.100762

In our introduction to this special issue on the gig economy, we provide some context to how and why this phenomenon should be studied, with a particular emphasis on Human Resource Management. We then describe the four articles that comprise the special issue, and we note some common themes. Our introduction concludes with some suggestions for future research on the gig economy.

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2020- s. 5431-5431

California Management Review 62(4) s. 105-124 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0008125620931839

Employees’ beliefs about technological change, their “digital mindsets,” are likely to influence their engagement in, or withdrawal from, their company’s digital transformation initiatives. Employees’ beliefs regarding the malleability of personal ability (fixed/growth mindset) and their beliefs about the availability of situational resources (zero-sum/expandable-sum mindset) influence the extent to which they see new technologies as providing opportunities for professional growth or as encroaching on their ability to display competency. This article examines the implications for managing digital transformation.

Handbook of Business Legitimacy. Responsibility, Ethics and Society Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68845-9_82-1

The increasing trend of Internet technology platforms and its offerings of digital labor have revolutionized the world of work. Companies that compete in this so-called gig economy are breaking away from traditional work arrangements and using a business model that challenges current employment and labor laws. While gig economy employers boast the benefit of work flexibility, their workers face compromised fairness in regard to compensation, working conditions, and career development. This chapter discusses how the gig economy redefines the future of work, by focusing on the current state of gig workers, and then explores opportunities for ways in which the gig economy can mutually benefit the employers and its workers

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) 16(11) s. 1-21 Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16111979

In this study, we propose that when employees become too engaged, they may become burnt out due to resource depletion. We further suggest that this negative outcome is contingent upon the perceived motivational psychological climate (mastery and performance climates) at work. A two-wave field study of 1081 employees revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between work engagement and burnout. This finding suggests that employees with too much work engagement may be exposed to a higher risk of burnout. Further, a performance climate, with its emphasis on social comparison, may enhance—and a mastery climate, which focuses on growth, cooperation and effort, may mitigate the likelihood that employees become cynical towards work—an important dimension of burnout.

Leadership & Organization Development Journal 40(3) s. 381-398 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-07-2018-0269

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the (in)congruence of leaders’ and followers’ cognitive characteristics (i.e. pessimism), followers’ identification with a leader and job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach: Data from 291 working professionals are analyzed, following a series of hierarchical linear modeling and mediated polynomial regression analyses. Findings: Polynomial regression analysis results indicate that alignment (congruence) between leaders’ pessimism and followers’ pessimism, when both are at high levels, is related to low levels of job satisfaction. Further, leader–follower congruence at lower levels of pessimism leads to high levels of job satisfaction through the mediator of followers’ perceived identification with a leader. Originality/value: By identifying (in)congruence of leader–follower pessimism as a key antecedent, and taking an explanatory mechanism of identification with a leader into account, the authors contribute to disentangling the conceptual paths that underlie the mode by which implicit leadership theory might explain instances of individual job satisfaction.

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) s. 973-982 Doi: https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2019.119

While coordination is assumed to contribute to distributed self-managing work team performance, our knowledge about the factors influencing coordination in such team settings is limited. In the present study, we investigate the moderating roles of initiated and received task interdependence on the relationship between self-management and coordination perceptions in distributed teams that rely on electronic communication tools to interact. A field survey study of 110 employees in 40 distributed teams demonstrated that when there are high levels of initiated task interdependence and low levels of received task interdependence, team self-management is associated with stronger perceived coordination in distributed teams. Based on these results, we discuss theoretical and practical implications for distributed self-managing teams.

Human Resource Management Journal 30(1) s. 100-113 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12265

Advocates of the boundaryless career perspective have relied to a great extent on the assumption that actors take responsibility for their own career development and that they consequently take charge of developing their career competencies. In this provocation piece, we debate the obstructions to and potential ways to promote boundaryless careers in the gig economy, which—despite appearing on the surface to offer suitable conditions for boundaryless careers—suffers from numerous conditions that hinder such careers. Thus, boundaryless careers in the gig economy could be an oxymoron. In particular, we conjecture that intraorganisational and interorganisational career boundaries restrict gig workers' development of relevant career competencies and thus limit their mobility. We then put forward the notion that we have to consider moving away from traditional, employer‐centric human resource management and introduce new forms of network‐based and self‐organised human resource management practices (in the form of collaborative communities of practice) in order to diminish these boundaries.

Computers in Human Behavior 92 s. 381-392 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.11.032

While the use of distributed teams enabled by digital technologies is burgeoning in contemporary organizations, leaders of distributed teams face different challenges than those of co-located teams. Our knowledge about how these differences play out, however, is not yet fully developed. To address this, the present study investigates how transformational leaders may develop high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships in distributed teams. Based on two field studies of distributed teams in three organizations, the present study examined how the joint effect of electronic dependence and team task interdependence may influence the relationship between transformational leadership and LMX quality. Across both studies, results from three-way interaction analyses demonstrated that transformational leadership related negatively to LMX quality when electronic dependence and task interdependence were both high. Based on the results, we discuss theoretical and practical implications for leaders with a relationship-based approach in distributed teams.

Human Resource Management Journal 28(2) s. 272-287 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12177

Previous empowerment research has focused on subordinate perceptions of empowering leadership and its outcomes. Met‐expectations theory suggests that subordinate expectations of leader behaviours are essential in forming their a posteriori evaluations. To address the lack of investigation of individual expectations in the empowerment literature, in this study, we explore how subordinates' empowerment expectations and perceptions combine to influence their job satisfaction and psychological empowerment based on three alternative, theoretically derived met‐expectation models, namely, the disconfirmation model, the ideal‐point model, and the experiences‐only model. The results of a 2‐stage study of 114 respondents indicate that employees are more satisfied with their work when perceived empowerment exceeds expectations. However, both empowerment perceptions and expectations positively contribute to higher psychological empowerment. We then discuss implications and directions for future research.

Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 91(4) s. 697-728 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12223

Recent theorizing applying the social identity approach to leadership proposes a four-dimensional model of identity leadership that centers on leaders’ management of a shared sense of “we” and “us”. The present research validates a scale assessing this model — the Identity Leadership Inventory (ILI). We present results from an international project with data from all six continents and from more than 20 countries/regions with 5,290 participants. The ILI was translated (using back-translation methods) into 13 different languages (available in the Appendix) and used along with measures of other leadership constructs (i.e. LMX, transformational, and authentic leadership) as well as employee attitudes and (self-reported) behaviors — namely identification, trust in the leader, job satisfaction, innovative work behavior, organizational citizenship behavior, and burnout. Results provide consistent support for the construct, discriminant, and criterion validity of the ILI across countries. We show that the four dimensions of identity leadership are distinguishable and that they relate to important work-related attitudes and behaviors above and beyond other leadership constructs. Finally, we also validate a short form of the ILI, noting that is likely to have particular utility in applied contexts.

At the Forefront, Looking Ahead: Research-Based Answers to Contemporary Uncertainties of Management s. 43-58 Doi: https://doi.org/10.18261/9788215031583-2018-04

Human Resource Management 57(6) s. 1455-1468 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21918

Computers in Human Behavior 82(May) s. 101-110 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.01.002

New forms of employment centered on the completion of simple and atomized tasks, such as online microwork, raise the question of the possible gratifications that could be derived from such work when compared to more traditional labor arrangements. Our research presented here focuses on how microworkers construct meaningfulness, based on the accounts of workers on the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk. We draw upon a relational job design perspective to explore why microworkers experience meaningfulness in their work. We found four sources of meaningfulness: rewards, self-improvement, moral, and social. These four sources vary in the degree to which they were internal or external in focus, and in their level of rationalization (concrete or abstract). This may explain why such types of employment are appealing despite a lack of organizational-support structures and points to the need to better understand cue provision in virtual, platform-enabled work settings.

Journal of Management 44(2) s. 757-783 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206315574597

International Journal of Human Resource Management 30(10) s. 1604-1634 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2017.1299194

Mergers and Acquisitions in Practice s. 138-161

Social Issues and Policy Review 10(1) s. 47-81 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12018

Kommunikasjon og ytringsfrihet i organisasjoner s. 123-146

International Journal of Human Resource Management 27(12) s. 1237-1251 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2015.1061579

Mastery-avoidance (MAv) goals are recognized to be detrimental as they arouse counterproductive work-related behaviours. In the current literature, MAv goals are assumed to be more predominant among newcomers and longer tenured employees. The alleged relationship provides important implications but yet has received scant empirical attention. In response, this study examines the proposed U-shaped curvilinear relationship between organizational tenure and MAv goal orientation. In addition, the potential moderating role of psychological empowerment on this curvilinear relationship is investigated. Based on data from 655 certified accountants, the results support the existence of the hypothesized curvilinear relationship. Also, it revealed that for employees who experience higher levels of psychological empowerment, the U-shaped relationship between organizational tenure and MAv goal orientation becomes flattened. Implications and future research are discussed.

Human Resource Management 56(5) s. 785-801 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21805

Capitalizing on creativity at work: Fostering the implementation of creative ideas in organizations s. 39-50

Leadership Quarterly 27(5) s. 713-725 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.03.001

The present study investigates employees' job crafting behavior in the context of perceived role overload, and identifies employees' perceived ability to deal with work change (i.e., “perceived adaptivity”) and leaders' need for structure as moderators positively influencing this relationship. A two-wave panel field study of 47 leaders and 143 employees in a Norwegian manufacturing firm found that perceived role overload related negatively to employees' job crafting, as hypothesized. Employees' perceived adaptivity alone did not increase job crafting in role overload situations, as predicted. Rather, the relationship between perceived role overload and job crafting was only positive when employees' perceived adaptivity was high and their leaders' need for structure was low. Thus, employees' job crafting in role overload situations depends on the interactive fit between employees' and leaders' adaptive capabilities. Implications for the socially embedded theory of job crafting and leadership practice are discussed.

Academy of Management Proceedings 1(15286) Doi: https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2015.15286abstract

Personnel Review 43(2) s. 246-271 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-01-2012-0008

The Journal of leadership studies 21(1) s. 29-42 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051813475666

Economic and Industrial Democracy: an international journal 35(3) s. 391-411 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X13484605

Leadership Quarterly 24(2) s. 363-377 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.01.003

Drawing on leader role set theory, we examine the relationship between the congruence of leaders’ and subordinates’ empowerment expectations and subordinates’ experiences of role ambiguity and intrinsic motivation. Based on cross-level polynomial regression analysis using 168 subordinates and 33 leaders, the results indicated that the relationship between congruence and role ambiguity and intrinsic motivation vary depending on whether leaders misevaluate subordinate empowerment expectations, as well as whether the expectations match. Specifically, subordinates had low role ambiguity and low intrinsic motivation when leaders’ and subordinates’ empowerment expectations matched at low levels and when leaders underestimated subordinates’ empowerment expectations. However, subordinates had low role ambiguity and high intrinsic motivation when expectations matched at high levels. Furthermore, role ambiguity was high and intrinsic motivation was low when the leaders overestimated subordinates’ empowerment expectations. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

International Journal of Human Resource Management 23(11) s. 2221-2237 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2011.633276

Chinese Management Studies 5(3) s. 325-344 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/17506141111163390

International Journal of Human Resource Management Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2011.633276

Journal of China Tourism Research 6(3) s. 244-258

Journal of Macao Polytechnic Institute 4 s. 15-30

International Journal of Human Resource Management 19(7) s. 1351-1366

Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism 7(1) s. 45-64

Harvard Business Review

Online gig work has grown increasingly common in recent years — and yet there’s still limited understanding of how to effectively support these non-traditional workers. While gig workers can benefit from greater flexibility and autonomy than traditional employees, they also face unique challenges: less job security, fewer resources for career development, and often, a strong sense of alienation and difficulty finding meaning in their work. The authors conducted a study with more than 300 digital gig workers in which they found that job crafting at both the personal and group levels can help workers cultivate resilience in the face of these challenges. Given these findings, the authors recommend that gig workers work to craft their jobs individually, but that they also proactively engage with communities that can help them develop skills, identify new opportunities, and feel more connected. They also suggest that crowd work platforms themselves take steps to foster a sense of community among their workers in order to support their job crafting efforts, and ultimately ensure a more-resilient workforce.

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Magma forskning og viten 21(4) s. 40-48

Medarbeideres engasjement på jobb ansees som en nøkkelfaktor for bedrifters ytelse og prestasjoner. Gallup-undersøkelser viser imidlertid at urovekkende få medarbeidere opplever aktivt engasjement i sitt arbeid (Crabtree, 2013). Medarbeiderengasjement påvirkes av lederes kommunikasjon, der ikke bare hva, men også hvordan ledere kommuniserer spiller inn. Likevel mangler det empirisk forskning på forholdet mellom lederes kommunikasjonsferdigheter og medarbeiderengasjement, samt hvilken rolle kommunikasjonstrening spiller i dette forholdet. Denne studien undersøker derfor hvordan kommunikasjonstrening for ledere kan relateres til lederes kommunikasjonsytelse og medarbeiderengasjement. Studien benytter data samlet inn i perioden 2013-2015 blant ansatte i DNB. I denne perioden deltok 138 av selskapets ledere i et kommunikasjonstreningsprogram i regi av ZYNK Communication and Leadership AS. Resultatene fra undersøkelsen viste en sammenheng mellom kommunikasjonsytelse etter kommunikasjonstrening og nivået av medarbeiderengasjement blant ansatte. Dette indikerer at bedrifter kan dra nytte av å tilby sine ledere å utvikle sine kommunikasjonsferdigheter for økt medarbeiderengasjement.

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Flexible employment arrangements on multiple online intermediary platforms with few constraints as to how much, when and where work is performed is becoming the new work reality for many individuals. Arguments have been advanced that this type of work is inherently demeaning. In this article, we seek to explore the worker perspective regarding whether these types of gig labor arrangements are regarded as limited jobs or more as long-term careers. We draw on career construction theory and hypothesize a job-career congruence model that suggests that when workers’ cognitive presentation of their gig work as jobs or careers are incongruent, they are less likely to experience their work as meaningful and subsequently experience lower subjective well-being. The results from a two-stage field study of 803 workers from two different crowdsourcing platforms support these incongruent relationships and provides clarity regarding how gig work factors in to an individual’s life. In addition, we demonstrate that workers who are proactive in nature seem to excel more in these fluid work settings, which points to the necessity of self-leadership in such work arrangements to ensure prosperity.

3rd Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium

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Tagung der Fachgruppe Arbeits-, Organisations- und Wirschaftspsychologie

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The Asian Business & Management Conference 2011

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The 7th Asia Academy of Management (AAOM) Conference Proceeding: Asian Management: Challenges and Opportunities in Turbulent Times

The 7th Asia Academy of Management (AAOM) Conference Proceeding: Asian Management: Challenges and Opportunities in Turbulent Times

? s. 15-30

the International Conference of Tourism

Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, California, August 2008

the Second International Conference on Destination Branding and Marketing for Regional Tourism Development