Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

Research on the workplace implications of leader family ostracism (LFO) remains limited. Drawing on the work–home resources (W‐HR) model and the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we develop and test a model explaining how LFO depletes personal resources and shapes both leader and employee outcomes in service settings. In Study 1, an experimental design with hotel managers revealed that leaders experiencing family ostracism reported greater work alienation and engaged in more laissez‐faire leadership. Study 2, a multi‐wave, multisource field study in the service sector, replicated these findings and extended the model by showing that LFO indirectly undermines frontline employees' customer stewardship behaviour via work alienation and laissez‐faire leadership. Moreover, the leader's political skill buffered the negative effects, weakening both the direct and indirect paths. These findings highlight the cross‐domain spillover of family‐based exclusion into workplace dynamics, emphasizing the critical role of personal resources and leader capabilities in shaping service performance.

Employees are increasingly striving for perfection at work. Commonly deemed to be associated with more advantages than disadvantages for employees and organizations, this perfectionism is oftentimes societally and organizationally demanded, appreciated or rewarded. To date, however, research findings on this topic are inconclusive. Taking new theoretical developments in perfectionism research into account, we propose that the current view that perfectionism is an adaptive pursuit at work is probably distorted. Building on the recently developed Model of Excellencism and Perfectionism and using a daily diary design (N = 127 participants providing n = 1018 days of data), we examined how excellencism and perfectionism relate to employee effort, performance and well‐being in daily work. As expected, results of multilevel path modelling showed that daily excellencism relates positively to both effort intensity and persistence and, via effort, to in‐role performance. Unexpectedly, effort and, thus, excellencism, were unrelated to fatigue. Daily perfectionism did not show unique relationships over and above the respective relationships of daily excellencism. Accordingly, contrasted with excellencism, perfectionism seems to be an unneeded pursuit at work. As we discuss, the findings of our study are of both theoretical and practical criticality.

Despite the substantial progress reported in the job‐crafting literature, knowledge about how proactive leaders encourage daily job‐crafting behaviours in their followers remains limited. This study explores how proactive leaders foster daily job‐crafting behaviours among their followers. Grounded in role modelling theory, we propose a multilevel dual‐process model that connects leaders' proactive personalities with followers' daily job crafting through two mechanisms: leaders' own job crafting (informative function) and their empowering behaviours (inspirational function). We further hypothesize that proactive leaders employ more empowering strategies when interacting with proactive followers. To validate these hypotheses, we collected daily diary data from 96 leader‐follower dyads over 10 consecutive workdays. The results show that proactive leaders not only engage in job crafting themselves but also exhibit empowering behaviours towards proactive followers, enhancing followers' job‐crafting activities. This indicates that the confluence of proactive traits in both leaders and followers amplifies a leadership style that emphasizes empowerment, granting followers greater autonomy in their job‐crafting endeavours.

This study investigates how employees engage in two distinct job crafting strategies by either leveraging their existing strengths (job crafting towards strengths, JC‐strengths) or pursuing personal development (job crafting towards development, JC‐development) through the lens of exploitation and exploration. We propose that JC‐strengths, as an exploitative strategy, enhances task performance, whereas JC‐development, as an explorative strategy, boosts creative performance. We further propose that job autonomy enables both JC‐strengths and JC‐development by affording discretion in how work is shaped, while a strong performance‐pay link serves as a directional signal by reinforcing exploitation‐oriented crafting (JC‐strengths) and discouraging exploration‐oriented crafting (JC‐development) in the presence of job autonomy. Conducting a 10‐day daily survey among 115 employees, our findings confirmed the hypothesized distinct effects of JC‐strengths and JC‐development on task and creative performance on a daily basis, respectively. Moreover, daily job autonomy was found to be significantly related to daily JC‐strengths, especially when coupled with a high performance‐pay link. However, the expected effect of daily job autonomy on daily JC‐development and the cross‐level moderating effect of performance‐pay link on this relationship were not significant.

Leader word‐action misalignment has important implications for employees' attitudes and behaviour, but we do not know how it affects leaders themselves. Adopting an actor‐centric perspective and integrating insights from research on moral emotions to further develop behavioural integrity theory, we investigate how leaders respond to their own word‐action misalignment and how locus of control moderates the relationship between leader word‐action misalignment and leader shame, to affect leader avoidance behaviour and task performance. We test the hypothesized relationships in three studies conducted using both experimental and time‐separated designs. Across the studies we found that leader word‐action misalignment was positively related to leader shame and that locus of control moderated the relationship such that the relationship between leader word‐action misalignment and leader shame was stronger for leaders with lower internal locus of control. We also found support for the hypothesized conditional indirect effect of word‐action misalignment on leader avoidance and task performance: word‐action misalignment was associated with more leader avoidance behaviour and lower leader performance, mediated by leader shame, and more strongly so for leaders with lower internal locus of control. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of taking an actor‐centric perspective in the study of leader word‐action misalignment.

Despite a growing body of literature around menopause at work, our understanding of how menopause symptoms may impact employees over time is limited. Using a longitudinal sample of 679 cis‐women, we predicted that the changes in the severity of psychological and physical menopause symptoms would lead to changes in burnout and perceived job performance over a period of 6 months. Drawing from resource theories, we further explored whether the usefulness of flexible work may moderate these relationships. Our findings showed that women who experienced greater intensification of menopause symptoms experienced an increase in burnout, and women whose symptoms became less intense experienced a decrease in burnout. We also found that those who found flexible work more useful experienced a positive change in their perceived job performance, despite suffering from the intensified physical symptoms. Those who perceived such flexible work to be less useful, however, did not exhibit a significant change in their performance over time. In‐depth qualitative findings on a sub‐sample of 53 women provided nuanced explanations for these results, including exposing a double‐edged sword of working flexibly to manage menopause symptoms and potentially detrimental unintended consequences of flexible work during menopause transition.

Despite increasing interest in the topic, research on managerial responses to voice is underdeveloped. In this article, we differentiate voice implementation from voice appreciation to add much‐needed nuance to our understanding of how voice targets respond to voice behaviour. We define voice implementation as the extent to which a voice target undertakes voluntary effort with the goal of enacting a suggestion from a voicer, including attempting to put a suggestion into action and/or advocating for the idea to those with the power to enact the suggestion. A 5‐item scale based on this definition demonstrated strong content validity, construct validity, and criterion‐related validity, including significantly improving prediction of the likelihood of future voice behaviour beyond voice appreciation and endorsement. This measure of voice implementation allows for greater precision in understanding how voice targets respond to employee voice and what behaviours may encourage increased voice behaviour.

Customer mistreatment is a prevalent phenomenon in service industries. However, limited studies have focused on leaders' reactions to witnessed customer mistreatment. Drawing upon literature on customer mistreatment, trait activation theory and empathy, we present a comprehensive theoretical framework to explore when and how service managers react to witnessed customer mistreatment. We propose that witnessed customer mistreatment is highly relevant to leaders' trait empathy and they jointly influence leaders' cognitive processes, specifically their interdependent self‐construal, and emotional responses, specifically distress. These reactions, in turn, shape leaders' positive and negative interpersonal behaviours. Across two experiments and a multi‐level, multi‐source and multi‐wave field study, we found that leaders with trait empathy were more likely to construe the self interdependently and experience distress after witnessing customer mistreatment. An interdependent self‐construal then led to more servant leadership behaviour and less incivility, whereas distress resulted in more incivility. In summary, our findings suggest that service managers with trait empathy may both alleviate and exacerbate the detrimental effects of customer mistreatment. Implications for mitigating customer mistreatment from the perspective of service managers are discussed.

Research on the relation of employees' demographic characteristics with organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has yielded inconsistent findings, possibly due to examining demographics in isolation. Drawing on expectancy–instrumentality–valence theory and adopting an intersectional lens, we propose that employees' demographics (age and managerial status) interact to predict OCB. We hypothesized that older employees in a managerial position but also younger employees in a non‐managerial position are more likely to engage in OCB than individuals with other demographic combinations. This hypothesis is based on the notion that older employees in a managerial position tend to feel more responsible for their team because they genuinely care, whereas younger employees in a non‐managerial position tend to act more responsibly because they are motivated to progress in their professional careers. Study 1 (N = 444) confirmed that younger non‐managers exhibit more OCB than older non‐managers. Study 2 (N = 471), pre‐registered, showed that older managers enact more OCB than their younger or non‐manager counterparts, through increased construal of power as responsibility. Further analyses including gender as an additional demographic characteristic revealed a less consistent role of gender in these relationships. This research underscores the importance of using an intersectional lens to better understand the role of employee demographics in OCB.

This weekly diary study advances research on strategic renewal by extending its scope into the home domain and integrating the Work–Home Resources (W‐HR) model. Drawing on 6 weeks of multilevel data from 147 matched dual‐earner couples in the United States, we examine how employees' strategic renewal at home fosters strategic renewal at work through the mediating effects of weekly flow at home and self‐efficacy. We also test the moderating roles of family and organizational climates for creativity. Our findings revealed that proactive home‐based renewal behaviours initiate gain spirals of personal resources, enhancing work outcomes and partner perceptions of work–family balance. This study contributes to theory by conceptualizing strategic renewal as a cross‐domain behaviour and identifying flow and self‐efficacy as dynamic mediators, while highlighting the amplifying effects of contextual climates in both domains.

This study aims to examine to what extent the employability of followers and their managers is equally supported by organizational learning climates. Studies often assume that managers and their followers benefit equally from these climates. However, this assumption overlooks the distinct roles and positions that managers hold in comparison with their followers. Managers typically have more freedom to engage in learning activities, make decisions about their professional development and leverage organizational resources to support their growth. Consequently, they may have better positions to reap the benefits of learning climates than followers, whose roles may be constrained by organizational hierarchies. Using an actor–partner interdependence model, in a dyadic study among 205 manager‐follower dyads, we investigated how three specific learning climates—appreciation, facilitation and error avoidance—relate to managers' and followers' employability. Our findings revealed that managers' employability benefits from all three climates. Contrastingly, followers' employability is enhanced only by a facilitating learning climate. These results suggest that learning climates primarily enhance managers' career potential, while followers depend more on direct facilitation to improve their employability.

Although PO fit has its origins in the work stress literature, existing research has failed to explain the stress‐protective qualities of PO fit. In this research note, we aim to clarify the negative relationship between PO fit and exhaustion and cynicism, two key symptoms of burnout, using a three‐wave panel lagged design (N = 193). Specifically, we argue that PO fit fosters a work environment that cultivates organizational trust, which, in turn, helps reduce symptoms of burnout. In addition, we suggest that job crafting towards interests and strengths makes PO fit more effective in containing burnout symptoms. Our results provide evidence for the mediating role of organizational trust in the relationship between PO fit and both exhaustion and cynicism symptoms of burnout. In addition, we find evidence that job crafting based on interests (but not strengths) influences the effectiveness of PO fit in reducing exhaustion (but not cynicism).

Workplace coaching can enhance the performance and well‐being of coachees. To identify key psychological mechanisms that contribute to the effectiveness and most proximal outcomes of coaching, we adopt a behavioural process perspective. This study investigates verbal dynamics in workplace coaching sessions with small business owners and their partners, so‐called copreneurs. Using personality systems interaction theory, we examine which verbal statements and working alliance‐indicative statements and patterns elicit goal‐oriented self‐regulation statements from coachees—an in‐session indicator of active engagement with goal achievement. We included 20 heterosexual copreneurial couples, with one to three sessions analysed per couple, yielding a total of 29 videotaped coaching sessions. Using lag sequential analysis (N = 28,603 behaviours), we showed that working alliance verbalizations did not elicit coachees' self‐regulation statements. Instead, coaches' provision of support and open questions elicited female coachees' self‐regulation but not male coachees' self‐regulation. Furthermore, we support the active coachee notion by emphasizing the facilitative effect of coachees' verbal engagement, such as self‐disclosure and problem‐focused or informative statements, on self‐regulation statements. These findings contribute to our theoretical understanding of the verbal mechanisms that determine the effectiveness of coaching and key factors for practice, including gender differences and the importance of an active coachee.

To date, empirical studies of customer incivility have primarily focused on exploring the negative reactions of victims. We shift the predominant focus from victims to observers (coworkers of the victims) and establish a link between customer incivility and observers' service performance. According to attribution theory, we propose that customer incivility could exert differential effects on observers' service performance, which depend on observers' blame attribution. Specifically, when observers make employee‐directed blame attribution, customer incivility is more likely to trigger observers' self‐reflection, which in turn increases their service performance. Conversely, when observers make customer‐directed blame attribution, customer incivility is more likely to evoke observers' moral anger, which in turn decreases their service performance. The scenario experimental design (Study 1) and time‐lagged survey design (Study 2) provide support for our hypotheses. By developing a dialectical framework that integrates opposing attributional pathways, this study advances the customer incivility literature and provides insightful implications to service managers.

Emotion regulation at work is important; however, effective emotion regulation is difficult, necessitating timely intervention. We developed an ecological momentary emotion regulation intervention that incorporated two cognitive reappraisal strategies. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we assessed the impact of the cognitive reappraisal intervention on employees' workplace affective experiences and, in turn, counterproductive work behaviour (CWB) and overall job performance. Participants in the between‐person intervention and control groups (N = 88 and N = 88, respectively) completed two cognitive reappraisal or control activities daily for three workweeks and reported on their daily work outcomes. Results revealed that the cognitive reappraisal intervention significantly mitigated negative affect and enhanced positive affect, which in turn reduced CWB and improved overall job performance, respectively. Furthermore, a follow‐up 1 month after the end of the intervention revealed no “fade out” of the intervention effect. Finally, among the two cognitive reappraisal strategies tested, results revealed that reappraising the situation was more effective than reappraising the emotion. Substantively, the study provides valuable evidence linking reappraisal‐based emotion regulation interventions to sustained improvements in job performance. Methodologically, the study provides a causal yet in situ demonstration of the effectiveness of workplace ecological momentary interventions.

Although leaders in organizations may set stretch goals (i.e., extremely difficult goals that seem unattainable given employees' current capabilities) to motivate employee development, the extreme difficulty of such goals may also demotivate them. Understanding when stretch goals may foster rather than hinder employee development is critical. By exploring the contingent role of leader goal support, this research delves into the motivational and demotivational effects of stretch goals. The results of an experimental study and a multi‐wave field study suggest that employees are more likely to appraise stretch goals as challenges when leader goal support is higher, and more likely to appraise stretch goals as hindrances when leader goal support is lower. Challenge and hindrance appraisals, subsequently, lead to proactive skill development and withdrawal behaviour, respectively. That stretch goals were more directly related to hindrance than challenge appraisals in both studies should caution leaders in organizations against using stretch goals often. When stretch goals are used, they should be complemented with high leader goal support.

Research on thriving has garnered significant scholarly attention. Yet, knowledge is lacking on the role that polychronicity plays in leveraging the hard work and dedication of frontline employees to acquire and utilize new knowledge and skill sets needed to thrive at work, and the condition under which this is expected to occur. We draw on the socially embedded model of thriving to examine how frontline employees' polychronic proclivities elicit their thriving at work (i.e. learning) through work engagement mechanism and the boundary condition of the unintended (negative) consequence of training. We examine our hypotheses based on a unique multi‐wave and multi‐source data from 261 frontline hotel employees and their colleagues in 10 four‐star hotels in Ghana. Results indicate polychronicity's direct and indirect (via work engagement) effect on the learning facet of thriving at work. The strength of the direct effect of polychronicity on work engagement is offset and the indirect effect is attenuated by the unintended (negative) effect of the training frontline employees receive from their hotel organizations. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, with limitations and several suggestions made for future research endeavours.

Ageing populations have often been stereotyped as inherently technologically illiterate, exacerbating concerns that older workers suffer diminished occupational proficiency in later life, especially as working life becomes increasingly digitalized. This presumed incompatibility with work is especially true of older people with dementia. Research on extending working lives has largely ignored people with dementia, instead focussing more broadly on ageing populations. This oversight propagates the misassumption that a dementia diagnosis inevitably necessitates unemployment. We propose a new digital futures perspective, wherein digitalization extends and enhances the working lives of people with dementia, complementing and enhancing employee abilities, by optimizing person–environment fit. To do so, we combine conceptual insights from disability studies, arguing that cognitive impairments become disabling in unsupportive contexts, and dementia studies, advocating coproductive praxis whereby workers with dementia are centred in organizational disability strategy. Coproduction can resist digital ageism, wherein older people are commonly excluded from decision‐making and development based on misleading social stereotypes. We then exemplify how digital technologies such as voice‐command and LLMs can optimize environments to both extend and enhance the working lives of older adults with cognitive impairment. We also advocate greater research in this area that meaningfully includes people with dementia throughout.

The extant literature on authentic leadership (AL) has neglected to consider how the experience of AL may be particularly challenging for minoritized leaders. This research advances knowledge by contextualizing AL for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) leaders who represent a unique minoritized group. Using qualitative data from 23 LGBT individuals in various leadership positions, we examine, via an abductive approach, how they try to enact AL within their role. Our first contribution, developed through template analysis, is that we enhance knowledge about the challenges and opportunities that AL presents for LGBT leaders. Our second contribution is that we build upon our template to create a new framework that advances a contextualized understanding of AL for LGBT leaders. In doing so, we introduce three theoretical propositions and identify important avenues for future research that further explore how context shapes AL behaviour, how AL is subjectively interpreted and experienced by leaders themselves, as well as in how AL scholarship can better consider issues around inclusion. Our results highlight the importance of organizations in helping LGBT leaders manage the unique challenges they experience with AL, such as through tailored leadership development and a positive diversity climate.

This study investigates the role of self‐leadership in mediating the relationship between paradoxical leadership and innovative work behaviour, with emphasis on the moderating impacts of leader‐member exchange (LMX). Study 1 featured 307 service industry employees in a 6‐month longitudinal survey, whereas Study 2 included 288 employees in an experimental design. The results indicate that paradoxical leadership significantly enhances innovation by balancing directive and empowering behaviours, with self‐leadership and high‐quality LMX relationships serving as critical mediators and moderators. Employees demonstrate higher innovation levels when they feel empowered and supported by their leaders. Empowering leaders with paradoxical skills and nurturing strong LMX relationships can spark innovation, boost employee creativity, and fuel a competitive advantage. This study adds compelling empirical support to the leadership and innovation literature regarding the transformative impact of combining seemingly contradictory leadership behaviours to foster an innovative and dynamic organizational culture.

Developing as a leader is widely recognized as a challenging endeavour that takes time. However, little research has been done to explain the process through which future representations of oneself as a leader relate to current leader identity and how future and current leader selves motivate action. Integrating possible selves theory with identity‐based motivation theory and across three independent studies, we test a serial‐mediation model in which a salient future leader self sequentially relates to leader identity, affective motivation to lead, and proactive leadership behaviour. Our Pilot Study (N = 186) was conducted at two time points over a year apart with employees from a manufacturing company. Study 1 (N = 265) included repeated measurement at three time points, each a month apart, with employees from different industries. Study 2 (N = 301) included repeated measurement at four time points, each 2 weeks apart, with employees from different industries. Cross‐lagged analyses provided support for our hypothesized process model and allowed us to examine reciprocal relationships. The theoretical implications for leadership and leader identity theory are discussed along with the practical implications for prospective leaders and their development in organizations.

Leadership approaches that positively affect employees and organizations, such as transformational leadership, are subject to questions regarding their costs to leaders. Recent studies have taken a more critical stance on transformational leadership, concerning its emotional costs on leaders themselves in the short term. Moving beyond the investigation of the transient effects of transformational leadership on leaders, we integrate a learning and adaptation perspective with social cognitive theory to explore transformational leadership behaviours as an agentic experience that develops leader self‐efficacy for emotional regulation over time. In turn, the enhanced self‐efficacy for emotional regulation promotes increases in leader work engagement. Using a latent change score approach with four‐wave (with a 1‐month interval), multisource field data from 243 leaders and 1807 followers, we found empirical support for our research model. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Drawing on a dual cognitive pathway model of creativity, we propose that transformational leadership and directive‐achieving leadership induce employees' cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence, respectively. These two cognitive processes differentially mediate the leadership–creativity relationship. Study 1 provides support for the mediation hypotheses, based on a sample of 189 Chinese and 138 Anglo‐Australian employee–peer dyads in a retail setting. Study 2, with a sample of 244 employees and their leaders from 66 research‐and‐development project teams, also tests the moderating effects of project stage. The findings show that transformational leadership has a stronger positive effect on cognitive flexibility in the early stage of a project, while directive‐achieving leadership has a stronger positive effect on cognitive persistence in the later stage. Cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence, in turn, are associated with individual creativity. This research provides important implications for how and when different leadership approaches promote creativity.

Self‐determination theory (SDT) postulates that all humans have basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. SDT scholars employ a necessity logic to define and interpret the roles of psychological need satisfaction for optimal human development. However, traditional regression techniques, often applied to test hypotheses derived from SDT, are unsuitable for testing necessity statements. To achieve a theory‐method alignment, we employed necessary condition analysis (NCA) to examine whether basic psychological needs at work are necessary for employees' intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, life satisfaction, and vigour at work. Study 1's cross‐sectional data (N = 550; Germany) and Study 2's time‐lagged data (N = 417; UK and US) generally support the necessary roles of need satisfaction. Notably, intrinsic motivation and vigour are especially constrained by basic psychological need satisfaction. This research advances SDT by providing more precise accounts of the theory from a necessity‐oriented lens. We also highlight the importance of management practices that can satisfy employees' basic psychological needs at work.

Research on applicant impression management (IM) has primarily been conducted in the context of interviews and personality assessments. A gap remains in understanding how applicants manage impressions on self‐report skill and biodata assessments, which are sometimes incorporated in the early stages of ‘skill‐based’ hiring processes. Moreover, there is limited research about IM behaviour over time. We present an exploratory study that identifies profiles of responses to self‐report skill inventories over time in a sample of 743 real‐world job applicants. The results identify four different longitudinal response profiles throughout the job search, indicating that individual differences influence how (or if) applicants manage impressions over time. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, including how employers can identify applicant IM by examining response patterns over time.