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Turning strain into gain: leveraging manager compassion to promote team innovation and customer satisfaction in response to teams’ emotional exhaustion
European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology
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The extant literature has underlined the pivotal role of individuals in innovation implementation. However, we are still missing a holistic understanding of the individual‐level factors necessary for idea implementation. Based on a systematic content analysis review of 125 articles, we identify six categories of individual‐level factors that have been found to promote the successful implementation of innovations: expertise, motivation, cognitive factors, personality traits, attitudes and social skills. Drawing on previous theoretical developments, we present an extended model of creativity and innovation in organizations and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the idea implementation stage. Finally, we draw some potentially important implications for research and practice and offer directions for future research.
In recent years, scholars in organizational behavior and public health have recognized the value of multilevel modeling. This article draws from both of these fields to illustrate the benefits of incorporating a multilevel perspective into the study of occupational stress. The authors identify key multilevel issues in occupational stress in terms of (a) individual-level analyses, (b) group-level analyses, and (c) cross-level analyses. They integrate the theoretical points with statistical models to help illustrate how one can test multilevel occupational stress propositions.
Empathy is a primary driver of social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial action. However, empathizing individuals can arrive at different conclusions about what targets need. This variance in entrepreneurs’ empathy for targets is important because it will help explain the type of interventions they initiate to help targets and the production of a range of benefits and costs for the targets and the entrepreneur. This study builds on and extends the theory of empathic interpersonal emotion regulation to construct an empathy-driven entrepreneurial-action model of well-being. We explore how an entrepreneur’s empathy orientation for entrepreneurial action—the patterned way entrepreneurs focus their attention on a target’s problems and then seek to enact this position through entrepreneurial action to help the target—shapes the organizing of an entrepreneurial intervention and the likely outcomes. We theorize entrepreneurial orientation of entrepreneurial action manifests as a hedonic paternalistic, counter-hedonic paternalistic, hedonic cooperative, or counter-hedonic cooperative. This empathy-driven entrepreneurial-action model of well-being contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature and inter-personal theories of empathy.
Importance
Extraordinary strain from COVID-19 has negatively impacted health care worker (HCW) well-being.
Objective
To determine whether HCW emotional exhaustion has increased during the pandemic, for which roles, and at what point.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This survey study was conducted in 3 waves, with an electronic survey administered in September 2019, September 2020, and September 2021 through January 2022. Participants included hospital-based HCWs in clinical and nonclinical (eg, administrative support) roles at 76 community hospitals within 2 large health care systems in the US.
Exposures
Safety, Communication, Organizational Reliability, Physician, and Employee Burnout and Engagement (SCORE) survey domains of emotional exhaustion and emotional exhaustion climate.
Main Outcomes and Measures
The percentage of respondents reporting emotional exhaustion (%EE) in themselves and a climate of emotional exhaustion (%EEclim) in their colleagues. Survey items were answered on a 5-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree); neutral or higher scores were counted as “percent concerning” for exhaustion.
Results
Electronic surveys were returned by 37 187 (of 49 936) HCWs in 2019, 38 460 (of 45 268) in 2020, and 31 475 (of 41 224) in 2021 to 2022 for overall response rates of 74.5%, 85.0%, and 76.4%, respectively. The overall sample comprised 107 122 completed surveys. Nursing was the most frequently reported role (n = 43 918 [40.9%]). A total of 17 786 respondents (16.9%) reported less than 1 year at their facility, 59 226 (56.2%) reported 1 to 10 years, and 28 337 (26.9%) reported 11 years or more. From September 2019 to September 2021 through January 2022, overall %EE increased from 31.8% (95% CI, 30.0%-33.7%) to 40.4% (95% CI, 38.1%-42.8%), with a proportional increase in %EE of 26.9% (95% CI, 22.2%-31.8%). Physicians had a decrease in %EE from 31.8% (95% CI, 29.3%-34.5%) in 2019 to 28.3% (95% CI, 25.9%-31.0%) in 2020 but an increase during the second year of the pandemic to 37.8% (95% CI, 34.7%-41.3%). Nurses had an increase in %EE during the pandemic’s first year, from 40.6% (95% CI, 38.4%-42.9%) in 2019 to 46.5% (95% CI, 44.0%-49.1%) in 2020 and increasing again during the second year of the pandemic to 49.2% (95% CI, 46.5%-51.9%). All other roles showed a similar pattern to nurses but at lower levels. Intraclass correlation coefficients revealed clustering of exhaustion within work settings across the 3 years, with coefficients of 0.15 to 0.17 for emotional exhaustion and 0.22 to 0.24 for emotional exhaustion climate, higher than the .10 coefficient typical of organizational climate (a medium effect for shared variance), suggestive of a social contagion effect of HCW exhaustion.
Conclusions and Relevance
This large-scale survey study of HCWs spanning 3 years offers substantial evidence that emotional exhaustion trajectories varied by role but have increased overall and among most HCW roles since the onset of the pandemic. These results suggest that current HCW well-being resources and programs may be inadequate and even more difficult to use owing to lower workforce capacity and motivation to initiate and complete well-being interventions.
This study aims to examine the relationships of managers' compassionate goals with innovation and performance in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). By integrating social exchange theory with social information processing theory, we hypothesize a serial mediation model in which organizational cooperation and firm innovation sequentially mediate a positive relationship between managers' compassionate goals and firm performance. However, we predict that this positive indirect effect would occur only when managers have low self‐image goals and there is a high innovation‐supportive work environment. Based on survey data from a sample of 116 SMEs in France, our results provide support for our predictions. This study contributes to the literature by disclosing the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationship of managers' compassionate goals with SMEs' innovation and performance. Theoretical and managerial implications of this study are discussed.
Based on dynamic capability and contingency theory, authors examined the direct connection between Service innovation, Marketing innovation and Customer satisfaction, and the interacting mechanism of competitive intensity. The research model and hypotheses were developed from extant studies. Respondents from 300 microfinance banks participated in the survey. Analyses in Smart PLS software showed that Service innovation positively and significantly affects Customer satisfaction. Marketing innovation promotes customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the influence of Service and Marketing innovation on Customer satisfaction is greater in a competitive environment. Therefore, microfinance bank managers must continue to invest in innovation-related capabilities (service and marketing) to keep their customers satisfied. Theoretical and managerial contributions are highlighted in the study.
JEL Classification: M10, M31
We draw from conservation of resources theory to examine how employees’ assessments of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) event strength may threaten their existing resources and their subsequent dependence on their supervisors, as well as voice behaviors that are critical to the organization’s survival in a disruptive environment. We propose that assessments of COVID-19 as a strong event are positively related to employees’ suffering, in turn increasing their sense of dependence on their supervisors and ultimately reducing their tendencies to display promotive and prohibitive voice. Furthermore, we propose that team compassion behavior can mitigate these negative indirect effects of COVID-19 event strength on employee voice by attenuating the positive effect of COVID-19 event strength on individual suffering. We designed a six-wave, multisource, time-lagged field study in a hotel chain based in a Southeast Asian country to capture employees’ and supervisors’ perceptions and behaviors before the onset of the pandemic (T1) and then following the country’s COVID-19 mandatory stay-at-home order (T2–T6). Our results highlight the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee–supervisor relationships, and the critical role of team compassion behavior as a contextual moderator to reduce the indirect negative effect of COVID-19 event strength on employee voice.
Because we work in teams more than ever, we should craft them fostering team members’ motivation, wellbeing, and performance. To that aim, we propose a multi-level model explaining the emergence of team burnout, articulating the interplay between individual and team level mechanisms around ten empirically testable research propositions. Drawing from the JD-R theory, we formulated an emergence model of team burnout by combining team effectiveness and occupational health literatures. Our model explains how cycles of attention, information integration, and information-affect sharing on burnout cues foster the emergence of team burnout. It also explains how team burnout moderates the relationship between team structural variables and team members’ burnout and how team burnout impairs team effectiveness through co-regulatory mechanisms. This model is timely because it addresses the importance of team burnout through a systematic effort connecting individual and team levels in explaining its emergence and the mechanisms through which it impairs team effectiveness.
The Pandemic taught us that accelerated new‐product development is more important than ever, and provided examples of firms developing breakthrough products in record time. This article outlines five approaches to accelerated development. The first two deal with adequately resourcing new‐product projects, namely the use of focused teams; and effective portfolio management to prioritize projects and reallocate resources. Newer digital tools are outlined that speed new‐products developments. Finally, two development methods are described that move development projects faster: Lean development and Agile development. Accelerated development also has hidden costs: undertaking less innovative projects, and cutting too many corners. Although important, the topic is under‐researched, and the limited research has yielded inconclusive results about acceleration’s expected benefits.
The goal of this study is to examine knowledge sharing as a boundary condition under which employee innovation can be enhanced in response to the job stress induced by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We argue that when stressed employees share knowledge, they can expand their knowledge base and thereby enhance their innovative potential. Consistent with our hypothesis, multiple regression analysis results based on a sample of 61 R&D employees of UK and US technology‐based firms show that knowledge sharing moderated the relationship between COVID‐19‐induced job stress and employee innovation, such that the relationship was negative when knowledge sharing was lower but became positive when knowledge sharing was higher. These findings highlight the importance of investing in knowledge‐based resources to promote innovation behavior at work during a pandemic.
Despite the important role of cognitive capital as a facet of social capital, there is little empirical work examining the causal effect of cognitive capital dimensions on sustaining customer satisfaction. Thus, there is a need to investigate the relationship between these constructs via employee self-efficacy. Our proposed hypothetical framework is tested in the tourism industry sector employing a quantitative research method. Drawing from social capital and social cognitive theories, we generated items from a piloted questionnaire which was administered to 600 top and middle managers in hotels and travel agents using drop and collect methods. We test our hypothetical model using SEM techniques with 490 usable cases. The survey results indicate that cognitive capital dimensions have direct and indirect relationships with sustained customer satisfaction. In addition, employee self-efficacy mediates between exogenous constructs and the endogenous construct. Surprisingly, these two exogenous constructs: shared norms and shared values do directly influence shared goals and enhance employee self-efficacy. Additionally, shared goals enhance employee efficacy which subsequently leads to sustained customer satisfaction. These findings shed light on the impact of intra-firm social interactions on customer experience in hotels and travel agents. Managers should use cognitive capital to improve the level of service employee self-efficacy and subsequently sustain customer satisfaction. The paper outlines theoretical and managerial implications and addresses possible directions for further research.
Compassion is in high demand within organizational research, with important implications for leadership, well-being, and productivity. However, thus far only meditation-based interventions have been implemented to increase compassion in organizations. Our aim was to explore whether compassion could be increased among managers through improving their emotional skills. We implemented a quasi-randomized controlled trial with pre-test and post-test design of a new emotional skills cultivation training among managers, measuring the treatment group (N = 68), the control group (N = 90), and their followers (N = 85 and N = 72). Compared to the control group, the managers exhibited significantly increased sense of emotional skills, with some evidence for an improved sense of compassion. We also found that emotional skills mediated the impact of participating in the intervention group and compassion. Additionally, servant leadership behaviors in the intervention group improved following the intervention. These results demonstrate that instead of being something innate, compassion is a skill that can be increased through training emotional skills, with observable benefits for the organization.
Although formal communication from an organization’s management is crucial during a crisis to reduce the uncertainties of employee, less is known about the moderating role of social support that could make employees rely less on formal communication to reduce those uncertainties. Grounded in uncertainty reduction theory, this research examines the role of crisis communication on the perceived uncertainties and emotional exhaustion of employees who work at private international universities that have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, this research explores the moderating effect of social support in terms of supervisor support and coworker support on the association between crisis communication and perceived uncertainties. Questionnaire data were collected from 300 employees from two private international universities in Thailand. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used for data analysis. The analysis shows that perceived uncertainties mediate the negative association between crisis communication and emotional exhaustion. Moreover, the moderating effect analysis shows that the association between crisis communication and perceived uncertainties is significantly moderated by coworker support, but not by supervisor support. Simple slope analysis also clearly shows that the negative association between crisis communication and perceived uncertainties only presents in employees with a low level of coworker support. For employees with high coworker support, crisis communication does not associate negatively with perceived uncertainties. This research implies that the informal communication that employees obtain from social support could play a compensatory role for their need to rely on formal communication to reduce uncertainties during the crisis.
This paper offers a novel theoretical account of why and when top management team (TMT) gender diversity lends strategic advantage. Building on social role theory, we develop a moderated-mediation model showing: a) TMT psychological safety mediates the effect of TMT gender diversity on firm ambidextrous strategic orientation (ASO) (why) and b) firm slack moderates this mediated effect (when). We tested our model in the context of Chinese high-tech small-and medium-sized enterprises. After confirming gender differences in social role-based proclivities at the TMT level, a multi-wave survey study of 373 members from 120 TMTs showed that TMT gender diversity positively affects ASO via TMT psychological safety, and this mediated effect is stronger when firm slack is lower than higher. We further interviewed 23 top managers to supplement key quantitative results. Our study advances upper echelons research on TMT gender diversity in two ways. First, it highlights the gender-specific interpersonal benefit of TMT gender diversity, which is markedly distinct from the cognitive-variety argument associated generically with TMT demographic diversity. Second, it considers both men and women in TMTs in a more balanced manner, thereby offering an alternative account to the female-focused theorization of the positive strategic implications of TMT gender diversity. ABSTRACT This paper offers a novel theoretical account of why and when top management team (TMT) gender diversity lends strategic advantage. Building on social role theory, we develop a moderated-mediation model showing: a) TMT psychological safety mediates the effect of TMT gender diversity on firm ambidextrous strategic orientation (ASO) (why) and b) firm slack moderates this mediated effect (when). We tested our model in the context of Chinese high-tech small-and medium-sized enterprises. After confirming gender differences in social role-based proclivities at the TMT level, a multi-wave survey study of 373 members from 120 TMTs showed that TMT gender diversity positively affects ASO via TMT psychological safety, and this mediated effect is stronger when firm slack is lower than higher. We further interviewed 23 top managers to supplement key quantitative results. Our study advances upper echelons research on TMT gender diversity in two ways. First, it highlights the gender-specific interpersonal benefit of TMT gender diversity, which is markedly distinct from the cognitive-variety argument associated generically with TMT demographic diversity. Second, it considers both men and women in TMTs in a more balanced manner, thereby offering an alternative account to the female-focused theorization of the positive strategic implications of TMT gender diversity.
Background
Crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, risk overwhelming health and social care systems. As part of their responses to a critical situation, healthcare professionals necessarily improvise. Some of these local improvisations have the potential to contribute to important innovations for health and social care systems with relevance beyond the particular service area and crisis in which they were developed.
Findings
This paper explores some key drivers of improvised innovation that may arise in response to a crisis. We highlight how services that are not considered immediate priorities may also emerge as especially fertile areas in this respect.
Conclusion
Health managers and policymakers should monitor crisis-induced improvisations to counteract the potential deterioration of non-prioritised services and to identify and share useful innovations. This will be crucial as health and social care systems around the world recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and head into another potential crisis: a global economic recession.
According to the self‐determination theory (SDT), individuals flourish when they satisfy their psychological needs. We expand this proposition by testing whether employees satisfy their own needs and improve their own work engagement by providing support to their co‐workers. Moreover, we argue that it matters when and to whom the support is provided. We contend that the indirect effect of autonomously motivated support provision on the provider’s work engagement through the provider’s need satisfaction is stronger (1) during episodes that the receiver’s emotional demands are high (vs. low), (2) when the receiver’s learning goal orientation is high (vs. low), or (3) when the receiver’s prove performance goal orientation is low (vs. high). We collected data among 97 dyads of police officers (N = 194 participants) during two time blocks on one working day (N = 227–491 episodes). Multi‐level analyses confirmed that support provision related positively to the provider’s episodic work engagement through episodic need satisfaction. As hypothesized, this indirect relationship was stronger during emotionally demanding episodes, or when the receiver was characterized by a low prove performance goal orientation. Learning goal orientation did not moderate the support provision–work engagement relationship. These findings expand SDT by indicating that individuals satisfy their own daily needs by providing support, and by showing that it matters when and to whom support is provided.
Practitioner points
• Providing help benefits both the beneficiary and the helper
• Managers should encourage the daily exchange of social resources between employees
• The exchange of social support between co‐workers is crucial when employees face demanding clients
How do authoritarian leaders in modern organizations influence work team emotional climate and performance? Defining authoritarian leadership as an ambient, demanding, and controlling leadership style, we conducted a survey study of 252 leaders and 765 subordinates matched in 227 work teams in three large public Japanese organizations. The results indicate that authoritarian leaders are more likely to create a team climate of emotion suppression, which induces a higher level of team emotional exhaustion that negatively impacts team performance. Furthermore, we found that authoritarian leaders’ own emotion suppression enhances the above sequential mediation effects, i.e. the more emotion suppression the authoritarian leader him/herself exercises, the stronger the team climate of emotion suppression, the higher the level of team emotional exhaustion, and the lower the team performance. These findings suggest that leadership effectiveness may be improved if leaders can reduce their authoritarian behaviors and identify appropriate channels for employees to release emotions in the workplace.
This study is designed to contribute to a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the unit-level relationship between employee well-being (job satisfaction and burnout, in the form of emotional exhaustion and cynicism) and service quality in two main ways. First is by adopting a person-oriented approach to identify distinct well-being profiles as a way of capturing the conjoint effect of satisfaction and burnout on service quality. And second is by employing an adapted form of multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) to examine the extent to which the distribution of employee well-being profiles in a work group affects the level of service quality provided by the group, as perceived by customers. These issues were examined using combined employee-customer data based on a sample of 396 employees and 1233 customers from 91 restaurant and reception work units of 42 hotels in Spain. In line with theoretical expectations and consistent with a strong win-win model of the unit level relationship between employee well-being and service quality, the results showed that work groups with a more positive distribution of well-being profiles, that is, with a greater proportion of employees with high levels of job satisfaction combined with low levels of burnout (emotional exhaustion and cynicism), significantly outperformed work groups with a less favourable internal distribution of well-being profiles. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Mindfulness-and, more generally, meditation-based interventions increasingly gain popularity, effectively promoting cognitive, affective, and social capacities. It is unclear, however, if different types of practice have the same or specific effects on mental functioning. Here we tested three consecutive three-month training modules aimed at cultivating either attention, socio-affective qualities (such as compassion), or socio-cognitive skills (such as theory of mind), in three training cohorts and a retest control cohort (N = 332). While attentional performance improved most consistently after attention training, compassion increased most after socio-affec-tive training and theory of mind partially improved after socio-cognitive training. These results show that specific mental training practices are needed to induce plasticity in different domains of mental functioning, providing a foundation for evidence-based development of more targeted interventions adapted to the needs of different education, labor, and health settings.
In an extension of the existing paradigm on the benefits of innovative behavior for organizations, this study addresses the negative effects of innovative behavior. Guided by psychological detachment theory, we propose that both displaying innovative behavior and witnessing others’ innovative behavior make it difficult for workers to psychologically distance themselves from innovation matters, engendering strain reactions (e.g., sleep problems, hostility). Those with more proactive personalities may be more likely to experience these detachment difficulty problems after displaying or witnessing innovative behavior. To test these premises, we conducted two studies. In the pilot study (N = 104 employee‐coworker dyads), we gathered both quantitative and qualitative data to show that innovative behavior predicts detachment difficulty above and beyond other job behaviors. In the main study, we collected data from 257 employee‐coworker dyads over five weeks and analyzed them with an actor‐partner interdependence model. The results are generally supportive, suggesting that further investigation of the unintended consequences of innovative behavior is warranted.
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The literatures on creativity and innovation are each premised on the same important assumption that has gone largely unquestioned: Creativity and innovation are outcomes that are almost inherently positive. Decades of research on creativity in organizations have been motivated by the assumption that creative ideas can be implemented to realize innovations that will inevitably increase profit, strengthen competitive advantage and ensure firm survival. The assumption that creativity and innovation have positive downstream consequences has constrained existing research by forcing a myopic focus on creativity and innovation as dependent variables. Thus, in a significant departure from the existing literature, we turn the tables to conceptualize creativity and innovation as independent variables that can have a sweeping and frequently negative impact on a wide range of other important outcomes. We conclude by calling for a new stream of research to more soberly evaluate the direct costs, side effects and long-term consequences of creativity and innovation.
This study explores how and when ethical leadership predicts three forms of team-level creativity, namely team creativity, average of member creativity, and dispersion of member creativity. The results, based on 230 members of 44 knowledge work teams from Chinese organizations, showed that ethical leadership was positively related to team creativity and average of member creativity but was negatively related to dispersion of member creativity. Consistent with the predictions of uncertainty reduction theory, psychological safety climate mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and the three forms of team-level creativity. Furthermore, supervisor support for creativity positively moderated the effect of ethical leadership on psychological safety climate and the indirect effects of ethical leadership on the three forms of team-level creativity through psychological safety climate. The analysis offers significant theoretical and practical implications on ethical leadership and creativity in organizations.
Background
Studies of the value of compassion on physical and mental health and social relationships have proliferated in the last 25 years. Although, there are several conceptualisations and measures of compassion, this study develops three new measures of compassion competencies derived from an evolutionary, motivational approach. The scales assess 1. the compassion we experience for others, 2. the compassion we experience from others, and 3. self-compassion based on a standard definition of compassion as a ‘sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to try to alleviate and prevent it’. We explored these in relationship to other compassion scales, self-criticism, depression, anxiety, stress and well-being. Methods
Participants from three different countries (UK, Portugal and USA) completed a range of scales including compassion for others, self-compassion, self-criticism, shame, depression, anxiety and stress with the newly developed ‘The Compassionate Engagement and Actions’ scale. ResultsAll three scales have good validity. Interestingly, we found that the three orientations of compassion are only moderately correlated to one another (r < .5). We also found that some elements of self-compassion (e.g., being sensitive to, and moved by one’s suffering) have a complex relationship with other attributes of compassion (e.g., empathy), and with depression, anxiety and stress.A path-analysis showed that self-compassion is a significant mediator of the association between self-reassurance and well-being, while self-criticism has a direct effect on depressive symptoms, not mediated by self-compassion. DiscussionCompassion evolved from caring motivation and in humans is associated with a range of different socially intelligent competencies. Understanding how these competencies can be inhibited and facilitated is an important research endeavour. These new scales were designed to assess these competencies. Conclusions
This is the first study to measure the three orientations of compassion derived from an evolutionary model of caring motivation with specified competencies. Our three new measures of compassion further indicate important complex relationships between different potentiation’s of compassion, well-being, and vulnerability to psychopathologies.
Although some research suggests that perceptions of HRM practices are associated with lower levels of employee well-being, other research shows just the opposite. In the present study, we attempt to reconcile these discrepant findings by incorporating the role of HRM attributions. Our model posits that when employees perceive that their organisation's HRM practices are intended to improve their job performance, they experience higher levels of job involvement, which leads to lower levels of emotional exhaustion. Conversely, when employees believe that their organisation's HRM practices are intended to reduce organisational costs, they experience work overload, which translates into higher levels of emotional exhaustion. Parallel mediation analyses of survey data collected from employees of a construction and consultancy organisation at two time periods (n = 180) supported this theoretical model.
Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, this study examines the effects of team burnout on the positive team and individual outcomes - team psychological safety and individual civility; mediated by workplace thriving among nurses. Data was collected in a multistage sampling from 447 nurses in three government hospitals through a questionnaire-based survey. Data were aggregated and analysed using the multi-level regression model. Resulted highlighted that a negative relationship exists between team burnout and team psychological safety and also between team burnout and individual civility. Team thriving was found to mediate the relationship between team burnout and civility. This study provides one of the initial empirical evidences of team level burnout and contributions to discussions on the measurement of burnout at the team level and its consequences. Furthermore, this study provides a practical understanding of the negative effects of nurses’ team burnout at the team and individual levels through the lens of the conservation of resource theory. This study fills a gap by using the COR theory and focusing on nurses in selected government hospitals in Ghana to examine team and individual level outcomes of burnout.
Despite the recent surge of research on leader humility, it is still unclear how and when teams benefit from it. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we propose a moderated mediation model that we test using multisource, time‐lagged data collected from 71 teams in a university‐affiliated hospital. We find that humble leaders indirectly enhance team innovation via greater team reflexivity. Additionally, we consider the average level of proactive personality of team members as a boundary condition of the positive effect of leader humility. Our results show that leader humility prompts team reflexivity only when team mean level of proactive personality is high, which in turn increases team innovation. Bridging research on leader humility with the team domain, our study offers important implications for both theory and practice.
Purpose
This research aimed to analyze the causality between the four perspectives in the balanced scorecard (BSC) performance and to analyze the different performance of the four perspectives for the two group schools studied.
Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative data were processed using Smart PLS 0.3 and an independent sample t -test. Qualitative data collected using open questionnaires on performance achievement strategies and constraints were analyzed using the Leximancer 4.51.
Findings
Results showed that innovation and learning performance influenced financial performance and internal business performance. However, innovation and learning performance did not affect customer satisfaction performance. Internal business performance affected financial performance. However, internal business performance did not influence customer satisfaction performance. Customer satisfaction performance did not influence financial performance. Customer satisfaction performance did not mediate the relationship between innovation and learning performance and financial performance. Internal business performance mediated the relationship between innovation and learning performance and financial performance. The two school groups exhibited differing innovation and learning performance, with no difference for the other three perspectives.
Practical implications
The implication of the study is the necessity to create synergy between all parties (school and authorities) to optimize school performance. Improvement in financial performance, especially related to transparency and accountability, will help to improve stakeholders' trust in schools. The government can use the BSC to evaluate public school performance to achieve comprehensive assessment results.
Originality/value
The use of the four perspectives in the BSC performance since public schools in Indonesia have never implemented it.
This research aims to explain whether leader perfectionism toward employees fosters or hinders employee creativity. From a self-regulation perspective, we theorize that depending on employees’ locus of control, leader perfectionism can influence two regulatory states of employees (i.e., engagement and emotional exhaustion) linearly or curvilinearly, which in turn affect their creativity in opposite directions. In a lab experiment and a multisource, multiwave field study, we found that for internals, leader perfectionism had a curvilinear effect on their engagement (but no effect on emotional exhaustion) and subsequent creativity such that the effect was positive but became weaker when leader perfectionism was extreme. By contrast, we found partial support across the two studies that for externals, leader perfectionism had a positive effect on their emotional exhaustion (but no effect on engagement), which undermined their creativity. We discuss the theoretical contributions of this research and its practical implications for organizations.
Although previous studies have found that positive group affective tone is generally good for team creativity, the reported effects of negative group affective tone (NGAT) are mixed. Drawing on the team goal orientation composition literature, we propose that team trait learning goal orientation (TTLGO; aggregated level of team members’ trait learning goal orientation) will moderate the relationship between NGAT and team creativity. Specifically, NGAT will be positively related to team creativity when TTLGO is high but becomes negative when TTLGO is low. We further theorize that team information exchange accounts for this moderating effect. Employing a multiple-source and time-lag design, we conducted two studies to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, we collected data from 270 information technology engineers working in 62 R&D teams in a software development company and examined the moderating effect of TTLGO on the NGAT-team creativity relationship. In Study 2, we replicated the findings of Study 1 and further tested the mediating role of team information exchange (i.e., Hypothesis 2) using data from 237 members of 43 diversified teams (e.g., R&D, advertising and marketing, technical services, and quality improvement). The results of these two studies support our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications for group affect and creativity literature are further discussed.
Research on employee engagement has demonstrated that human resource management (HRM) practices and systems are positively related to employee engagement. However, it is not clear what HRM practices or system of practices is most important for employee engagement or the theoretical mechanisms that intervene and explain the link between HRM and employee engagement. In this paper, I provide answers to these two important questions by developing a model of caring HRM and employee engagement based on the engagement, organizational climate, and strategic HRM literatures. The model indicates that a system of caring HRM practices (job design, training and development, flexible work arrangements, work-life balance, participation in decision making, health and safety, career development, and health and wellness programs) will result in an organizational climate of care and concern for employees that employees will respond to by caring for the organization which they will enact with higher levels of engagement. This model provides many avenues for future research and practice on HRM and employee engagement and introduces the notion of a caring HRM system and an organizational climate of care and concern for employees to the literature on employee engagement.
Researchers have examined the effects of individual job‐related anxiety on employee attitudes and behaviors but have yet to examine whether team job‐related anxiety would have similar or different effects. Building on prior research on negative group affective tone and creativity, we propose that team job‐related anxiety has an inverted U‐shaped curvilinear relationship with both team and individual creativity. Furthermore, we posit that team cooperativeness moderates those curvilinear relationships. Using a two‐wave research design and matched employee‐supervisor data from 290 employees nested in 65 teams, we found support for the proposed inverted U‐shaped relationships. Moreover, the intermediate level of team job‐related anxiety was associated with higher individual creativity in teams with higher cooperativeness. We conclude the study with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
Although prior research has addressed the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on perceived customer responses, it is not clear whether CSR affects market value of the firm. This study develops and tests a conceptual framework, which predicts that (1) customer satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between CSR and firm market value (i.e., Tobin's q and stock return), (2) corporate abilities (innovativeness capability and product quality) moderate the financial returns to CSR, and (3) these moderated relationships are mediated by customer satisfaction. Based on a large-scale secondary data set, the results show support for this framework. Notably, the authors find that in firms with low innovativeness capability, CSR actually reduces customer satisfaction levels and, through the lowered satisfaction, harms market value. The uncovered mediated and asymmetrically moderated results offer important implications for marketing theory and practice.
Customer loyalty is an important strategic objective for all managers. Research has investigated the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty in various contexts. However, these predominantly cross-sectional studies have focused on customer retention as the primary measure of loyalty. There has been little investigation into the impact on share of wallet. Using data from the Canadian banking industry, this research aims to (1) provide the first longitudinal examination of the impact of changes in customer satisfaction on changes in share of wallet and (2) determine the moderating effects of customer age, income, education, expertise, and length of relationship. Data from 4319 households using 12,249 observations over a five-year period indicate a positive relationship between changes in satisfaction and share of wallet. In particular, the initial satisfaction level and the conditional percentile of change in satisfaction significantly correspond to changes in share of wallet. Two variables, income and length of the relationship, negatively moderate this relationship. Other demographic and situational characteristics have no impact.
This day-level study examined the role of perceived organizational support (POS) in the context of employees’ negative work reflection during off-job time. We hypothesized that negative work reflection during off-job time should be indirectly related to reduced work engagement on the next workday through personal resources (i.e., vigour and self-efficacy) in the morning. In addition, we hypothesized that POS moderated the relationships between negative work reflection and personal resources and between personal resources and work engagement. In total, 100 employees completed one general survey and three daily surveys (in the morning, after work, and at bedtime) over five workdays. Results of multilevel path analyses showed that negative work reflection was neither directly associated with personal resources nor indirectly with work engagement via personal resources, although vigour and self-efficacy positively predicted increased work engagement. However, negative work reflection was negatively associated with self-efficacy when POS was low. POS did not predict work engagement, but moderated the relationships between personal resources and work engagement: Consistent with the resource substitution hypothesis, high levels of POS compensated for low levels of vigour and self-efficacy. Negative work reflection had a significant negative indirect effect on work engagement through self-efficacy only when POS was low.
This study seeks to investigate the effect of compassion in the public service workplace. Our compassion model is based on public service sector employees who receive compassionate feelings such as affection, generosity, caring, and tenderness from their supervisors. A longitudinal study of 166 public service employees, their supervisors and 333 of their clients (citizens) was conducted in Israel. In this longitudinal study, we found evidence that receipt of compassion from supervisors (at time 1) in the public service workplace was positively associated with employees' sense of work engagement, and negatively related to their work burnout (at time 2). Furthermore, receipt of compassion (at time 1) was also found to impact public service employees' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and knowledge sharing (at time 2) as rated by their supervisors, as well as their service-oriented performance of compassionate behavior toward clients (at time 2), rated by the citizens. Finally, we found evidence for compassion acting as a mechanism for coping with common stressful public service conditions such as demanding citizens and administrative workload, which are inherent in this sector. Compassion in the public service workplace may therefore be salient in effecting public service work performance, and as such should be consciously targeted by public sector managers and policy makers. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Public Management Research Association. All rights reserved.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between service innovation, customer value
creation (CVC) and customer satisfaction (CS) with specific emphasis to Ghanaian telecommunication operators.
Design/methodology/approach – Assuming a positivist philosophical approach with a quantitative data
analysis technique, the study samples 510 registered adult customers of at least one telecommunication network
in Ghana. An exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were
used to assess and confirm the proposed scales validity and the relationships of the research model.
Findings – The study unveiled that a service firm’s ability to achieve CS is dependent on how
telecommunication operators harness and deploy their service innovation activities. In addition, the study
showed that CVC mediates the relationship between service innovation and CS. Thus, service innovation
must create value for customers in order to enhance CS.
Practical implications – By relating the study findings to firms’ innovation strategies, managers can
improve the strength of their service offerings to achieve CS by spending more on consumer research, market
research and increased customer interactions.
Originality/value – Considering the uniqueness of this study in a Ghanaian context, the research draws on
two influential theories, which are signaling theory and expectation disconfirmation theory to examine the
differential role played by service innovation in enabling telecommunication operators in Ghana, to create
customer value in order to achieve CS amidst the constraints in the business environment.
Keywords- Innovation, Ghana, Customer satisfaction, Telecommunication industry, Service innovation,
Customer value creation
A substantial portion of innovation projects are terminated before their successful completion. However, how specifically innovators can be supported given the experience of a project termination is not well understood. Innovator resilience potential (IRP) has been proposed to be important for future innovative behavior and coping and is suspected to be influenced by project terminations and their characteristics. Building on these assumptions, three sources of social support are examined, as such the support from family and friends, from the leader, from the organization, and their relationship with IRP. Moreover, it is argued that IRP, in turn, is an important facilitator of the project commitment of innovators, who have experienced an innovation project termination. The authors examine these theoretical expectations based on two empirical studies. After probing the newly developed measure of IRP based on a sample of 146 software developers from a European software company, the authors test the hypotheses on a survey-based sample of 238 innovators, of whom 180 had experienced an innovation project termination. The results indicate that IRP positively relates to innovators’ current project commitment, particularly when they had experienced an innovation project termination before. Moreover, it is found that experiencing social support from the leader and the organization in the context of the termination positively relates to IRP, while no such a relationship was found for social support from family and friends. This hints at ways as to how to support innovators during and after an innovation project termination, showing that social support from work-related sources is most important in such situations.
In this multi-method study, we investigate how social job demands (i.e., social interruptions) and resources (i.e., colleague support) in the service context influence employee (negative) (re)actions to customers through cynicism towards the job. In addition, we investigate why customers are less satisfied with the provided service when employees endorse a cynical attitude. To test the hypothesized process, we used observer ratings of the employee–customer interactions regarding the number of interruptions and employee negative (re)actions during service encounters, employee self-reports of overall colleague support and daily cynicism, and customer-ratings of service quality. Participants were 48 service employees and 141 customers. Results of multi-level structural equation modelling analyses showed that whereas the number of observed social interruptions during service encounters related positively to cynicism, social support related negatively. Cynical employees exhibited more negative (re)actions towards their customers (e.g., expressed tension, were unfriendly). Consequently, the more negative (re)actions employees showed towards their customers, the less satisfied customers were with the service quality. The study contributes to the literature by explaining what makes service employees cynical about their work, and why cynical employees provide low-quality services. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Purpose
Despite the importance of innovation in business performance, investigation into innovation in services is scanty and lacking consensus. In retailing, it is a topic that has been awakening considerable academic and business interest in recent years. In this study context, this work analyses innovation in retail experiences from two aspects – marketing innovation and technological innovation – to understand the role it exercises in satisfaction and subsequent recommendation.
Design/methodology/approach
Our objective is to investigate the direct and indirect influence of marketing and technological innovation on satisfaction and word-of-mouth through three core constructs: store image, consumer value and store brand equity. SEM methodology is applied on a sample of 820 retail customers of grocery, clothing, furniture an electronics store.
Findings
The results show that technological innovation is more important than marketing innovation in shaping image, value, and satisfaction. At the same time, store image is the variable that most influences customer satisfaction and that satisfaction is a very significant antecedent of word-of-mouth behaviour. Practical implications for retail managers and further research are presented.
Originality/value
The main value of our work has been to go deeper into the study of retail innovation, both in marketing and technologies, and its direct and indirect effects on satisfaction and subsequent recommendation through store image, consumer value and store brand equity. It is a new line of study, which is still fragmented and with little empirical evidence.
Although compassion is an important social resource exchanged in supervisory relationships, I highlight the negative influence of power difference on supervisors noticing their subordinates' hardships. I posit that the negative effect of power on supervisors' compassion can be mitigated through two feedback loops: the emotional feedback loop and the social exchange feedback loop. I conclude with the discussion of how compassion is a social resource and momentum can build that resource in supervisory relationships.
Preventing work injuries requires a clear understanding of how they occur, how they are recorded, and the accuracy of injury surveillance. Our innovation was to examine how psychosocial safety climate (PSC) influences the development of reported and unreported physical and psychological workplace injuries beyond (physical) safety climate, via the erosion of psychological health (emotional exhaustion). Self-report data (T2, 2013) from 214 hospital employees (18 teams) were linked at the team level to the hospital workplace injury register (T1, 2012; T2, 2013; and T3, 2014). Concordance between survey-reported and registered injury rates was low (36%), indicating that many injuries go unreported. Safety climate was the strongest predictor of T2 registered injury rates (controlling for T1); PSC and emotional exhaustion also played a role. Emotional exhaustion was the strongest predictor of survey-reported total injuries and underreporting. Multilevel analysis showed that low PSC, emanating from senior managers and transmitted through teams, was the origin of psychological health erosion (i.e., low emotional exhaustion), which culminated in greater self-reported work injuries and injury underreporting (both physical and psychological). These results underscore the need to consider, in theory and practice, a dual physical–psychosocial safety explanation of injury events and a psychosocial explanation of injury underreporting.
Marketing actions must create value for two key stakeholders: customers and investors. Nevertheless, these two stakeholders differ in their evaluations of firm actions in critical ways. As a result, most managers believe that there is a critical trade-off between serving customers and shareholders. Drawing upon the marketing–finance interface, the authors investigate how this trade-off unfolds to impact customer satisfaction and firm value in the context of innovation. Specifically, the present study demonstrates that creating value for customers and shareholders are not two completely distinct goals, as the business press and managers fear; innovation can create value for shareholders by satisfying customers. However, results also indicate that a crucial trade-off between satisfying consumers and creating value for investors is indeed present, as those same factors (i.e., firm’s branding strategy and level of market dominance, industry-level competitive intensity) that enhance the effects of innovation on customer satisfaction depress the effects of innovation on firm value, and vice versa. The authors discuss the implications of these important findings for research and practice.
This article elaborates the organizational literature’s process theory of compassion – an empathic response to suffering – which falls short of adequately explaining why and how compassion unfolds readily in some workplace situations or settings but not in others. We address this shortcoming by calling attention to the basic uncertainty of suffering and compassion, demonstrating that this uncertainty tends to be particularly pronounced in organizational settings, and presenting propositions that explain how such uncertainty inhibits the compassion process. We then argue that understanding the accomplishment of compassion in the midst of uncertainty necessitates regarding compassion as an enactment of courage, and we incorporate insights from the organizational literature on everyday courageous action into compassion theory. We conclude with a discussion of implications in which we underscore the importance of organizational support for the expression of suffering and the doing of compassion, and we also consider directions for future research.