Dejun Tony Kong’s research while affiliated with University of Colorado Boulder and other places

What is this page?


This page lists works of an author who doesn't have a ResearchGate profile or hasn't added the works to their profile yet. It is automatically generated from public (personal) data to further our legitimate goal of comprehensive and accurate scientific recordkeeping. If you are this author and want this page removed, please let us know.

Publications (30)


Bifactor model of leader humour
Model of organizational humour motives (MOHM)
Rethinking Interpersonal Humour in Organizations: Clarifying Constructs and Charting A Path Forward
  • Article
  • Full-text available

May 2025

·

27 Reads

Cecily D. Cooper

·

·

Dejun Tony Kong

Organizational humour research is accelerating; however, scholars seem to disagree on how to conceptualize and operationalize interpersonal humour. A widely used approach draws from personality psychology and conceptualizes humour as a typology of four styles. This “humour styles” approach possesses conceptual shortcomings and introduces important questions about construct validity. Specifically, the humour styles tend to conflate inferred motives and outcomes within the definition of each style, raising concerns about circularity and tautology. Moreover, its typological foundation – originally developed for an intrapersonal context – becomes less tenable when applied interpersonally. To support the progression of humour scholarship, we begin by clarifying the core construct of humour, which serves as the basis for a broader conceptual critique of the humour styles approach. This critique is then illustrated through a multi‐study research program (N = 1086; six samples). We conclude by proposing the MOHM model (Model of Organizational Humour Motives) as a conceptually grounded alternative to guide future research on interpersonal humour. This research contributes to humour scholarship by clarifying the core humour concept, critiquing a popular approach (which is reducing construct clarity), and offering a forward‐looking framework to inspire more precise and impactful research on humour in organizational settings.

Download

Human Resource Practices and Employee Trust: A Systematic Review With a Guiding Framework

April 2025

·

27 Reads

Journal of Management

Human resource (HR) practices hold great promise in fostering employee trust, and insights into how HR practices relate to employee trust are critical to evidence-informed management. However, extant research findings are fragmented and dispersed across disciplines and use a confusing plethora of concepts, limiting insights. To address these problems, we conducted a systematic review to offer a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of “what,” “how,” and “when” HR practices influence employee trust toward four referents (supervisor, management, peers, and organization). Specifically, we identify the evidence-based patterns regarding “what” HR practices are related to employee trust toward “what” referents, “how” HR practices are related to employee trust, and “when” HR practices are more or less related to employee trust. We find that while bundles of HR practices are positively associated with vertical trust toward management, lateral trust toward peers, and organizational trust, individual HR practices have differential associations with trust toward the four referents, which in turn predict different outcomes. We discuss research limitations and opportunities and provide a framework and set of methodological recommendations to guide a new wave of future research. We propose a broader set of theories to enrich understanding of “how” HR practices lead to employee trust, further clarifications on the HR and trust concepts examined, and explore additional moderators. These efforts will further integrate trust and HR research and generate more rigorous knowledge to inform management of employee trust through HR practices.


Conceptual model.
Study 1 results.
Study 2 results.
“I Just Need to Say Something”: A Self‐Determination Model of Voice
Andrew Li

·

Dejun Tony Kong

·

·

[...]

·

Existing voice research tends to focus on the positive outcomes associated with promotive voice and the negative outcomes associated with prohibitive voice. We adopt a self‐determination theoretical lens to examine what voicers stand to gain by engaging in both types of voice despite the potential backlash against them for their voice behavior (particularly prohibitive voice). We conducted two experience‐sampling studies that examined the fluctuation of voice on a daily (Study 1) and weekly (Study 2) basis. In Study 1, we found that while promotive voice was positively associated with the voicer's psychological need satisfaction, prohibitive voice was not. In addition, the association between promotive voice and the voicer's psychological need satisfaction was stronger than that of prohibitive voice and the voicer's psychological need satisfaction. In Study 2, we found that both promotive voice and prohibitive voice were indirectly related to the voicer's authentic self‐expression and helping behavior through the mediating mechanism of psychological need satisfaction, although the indirect effects of promotive voice were stronger than the indirect effects of prohibitive voice.


Women’s and men’s authorship experiences: A prospective meta-analysis

February 2025

·

176 Reads

Journal of Management

The opaqueness of author naming and ordering, when coupled with power dynamics, can lead to a number of disadvantages in academic careers. In this commentary, we investigate gender differences in authorship experiences in a large prospective meta-analytic study (k = 46; n = 3,565; 12 countries). We find that women’s and men’s authorship experiences differ significantly with women reporting greater prevalence of problematic behaviors. We present seven actionable recommendations for improving the receipt and reporting of intellectual credit. Such actions are needed to ensure fairness in authorship, which is one of the most powerful factors in academics’ career outcomes.



A Roadmap for Navigating Phenomenon-Based Research in Management

September 2024

·

319 Reads

·

11 Citations

Journal of Management

McNamara and Schleicher (2024) have identified four principal paths for contributing to the Journal of Management (JOM): theoretical insights, phenomenon-driven research, research methodologies, and review papers. This editorial focuses on phenomenon-based research, emphasizing its potential for enhancing management knowledge by offering a nuanced understanding of real-world phenomena. Unlike traditional approaches, phenomenon-based research prioritizes the complexity of phenomena over the immediate generation of theoretical contributions. Grounded in established theory, phenomenon-based research utilizes the phenomenon itself as the primary source of insight, facilitating the development of relevant organizational frameworks. We propose a multistep framework encompassing phenomenon selection, framing, data collection, and study constraints, highlighting criteria—Pertinence, Reach, Insightfulness, Magnification, and Expediency (PRIME)—to guide scholars in identifying meaningful phenomena. Additionally, we discuss constraints that may limit research, including cultural, logistical, ethical, academic, and resource-related challenges (CLEAR). By addressing these considerations, we encourage management scholars to explore diverse and impactful phenomena, ultimately aiming to position JOM as a leading platform for phenomenon-based research and its contributions to real-world organizational challenges. This editorial advocates for a balanced approach that values both theory-driven and phenomenon-driven research in advancing management scholarship.




CEO regulatory focus and environmental resource scarcity on employee downsizing

May 2024

·

21 Reads

Management Decision

Purpose This study aims to address the question of why managers make different decisions in employee downsizing when their firms face external threats. Our research intends to shed light on whether and how CEOs' cognition (motivational attributes associated with regulatory focus) influences their decision-making and firms’ strategic actions on downsizing under high resource scarcity in the industry environment. Design/methodology/approach We used a longitudinal panel of 5,544 firm-year observations of US firms from 2003 to 2015 to test our conceptual model. The data was obtained from various sources, including corporate earnings call transcripts and archival databases. We used panel logistic regressions with both fixed and random effects in our research design. Findings Our results suggest that CEOs' motivational attributes could influence their employee downsizing decisions in response to external threats. We find that CEOs who are more promotion-focused (a stronger drive towards achieving ideals) are less likely to lay off employees during high resource scarcity. Conversely, CEOs with a higher prevention focus (a greater concern for security) do not have a meaningful impact on employee downsizing during periods of external resource scarcity. Originality/value Previous research has argued that a significant external threat would diminish individuals' impact on firm strategies and outcomes. Our findings challenge this idea, indicating that CEOs with a stronger drive towards achieving ideals are less inclined to lay off employees when resources are scarce in the environment. This study contributes to behavioral strategy research by providing new insights into how upper echelons’ cognition can influence their decision-making and firms’ employee downsizing.


Oppositional Courage for Racial and Ethnic Minorities: A Source of White Employees’ Upward Moral Comparison

March 2024

·

20 Reads

·

3 Citations

Journal of Management

When advantaged group employees courageously stand up for the rights of their colleagues with marginalized identities, research suggests that they communicate a powerful, public “message of value” to such individuals. Yet, this beneficiary-focused perspective, while valuable, does not address the self-meanings that third-party observers may derive from such oppositional courage (OC) and the implications for their behavior toward the courageous actor. Drawing on the social comparison literature, we propose that perceptions of OC can be a source of upward moral comparison information for advantaged group observers. Thus, on the one hand, we argue that perceptions of OC can convey to observers that they lack the moral character of the courageous actor, which is associated with feelings of moral inferiority and, in turn, a motivation to negatively gossip about the actor. On the other hand, we suggest that perceptions of OC can also signal to observers their moral capacity to actively contribute to an equitable, inclusive workplace, which is associated with feelings of moral elevation and, in turn, a motivation to positively gossip about the actor. Central to our theory, we argue that these different reactions depend on observers’ own self-confidence to engage in similar courageous action—what we refer to as oppositional courage self-efficacy. Using data from White employees, we conducted one pilot study (i.e., a critical incident analysis) and two main studies (i.e., an experiment and a three-wave survey), on OC for racial and ethnic minorities and found support for our hypotheses. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research.


Citations (13)


... The paper investigates real-world strategic decision-making under NRS from a phenomenon-driven approach (Lumineau et al., 2025). To this end, it uses a multiple-case study method, ideal for refining less-theorized areas like NRS and SC management, by integrating existing theoretical constructs and empirical data, allowing for theory elaboration (Ketokivi and Choi, 2014). ...

Reference:

Managing dependence on scarce natural resources: how institutional logic and autonomy shape supply chain strategies
A Roadmap for Navigating Phenomenon-Based Research in Management
  • Citing Article
  • January 2025

SSRN Electronic Journal

... Finally, we call for more phenomenon-based theorizing (see Lumineau et al., 2025) to open up the possibility for entirely new digital strategy phenomena to emerge. The existing lenses used by strategy and management scholars might not be ready for developments afforded by new digital technologies. ...

A Roadmap for Navigating Phenomenon-Based Research in Management

Journal of Management

... 10 Hace más de una década apareció la definición formal de la CPO y un instrumento para medirla (un cuestionario de seis ítems que usa escalas Likert de siete puntos de desacuerdo-acuerdo). 11 Desde entonces, la investigación en este campo ha crecido y abarcado diversas disciplinas: se cuentan unos 140 estudios cuantitativos que han explorado docenas de antecedentes, correlatos y consecuencias. 12 Un análisis bibliométrico identificó 89 artículos y 4523 referencias en 49 revistas, aportados por 254 autores (pertenecientes a 184 instituciones en 23 países), entre 2010 y 2021. 13 El número de publicaciones ha crecido significativamente desde 2019. ...

Defiance, Compliance, or Somewhere in Between: A Qualitative Study of How Employees Respond to Supervisors’ Unethical Requests

Human Performance

... The DPM-AC offers an integrative organizing framework for thinking about inferred humour motives that is both simple and comprehensive. Furthermore, inspired by the humouras-social information (HASI) organizing framework (Kong, 2023), we embed agentic and communal motives in a larger process model that also includes affective processes as well as key contingencies of humour (see Figure 2). Our model of organizational humour motives, or MOHM, (1) cleanly separates motives and functions of humour from humour expression and (2) provides a theoretically based concise conceptualization of the process by which humour expression is evaluated and reacted to in organizations. ...

Humor Research in Management: Humor as Social Information (HASI)
  • Citing Article
  • September 2023

Current Opinion in Psychology

... Moreover, literature categorizes external stakeholders into primary and secondary groups, each impacting a firm's green innovation efforts differently (Freeman et al., 2007;Hoskisson et al., 2023). Primary stakeholders, such as investors and employees, engage in direct market transactions and have primarily economic demands (Charan & Murty, 2018;Shubham & Murty, 2018). ...

Predicting primary and secondary Stakeholder Engagement: A CEO motivation-Means Contingency Model
  • Citing Article
  • March 2023

Journal of Business Research

... Other studies have found that female academics spend less time than male ones on research due to their higher teaching and/or service loads (Gibney 2017;Guarino and Borden 2017;Mitchell and Hesli 2013;O'Meara et al. 2017;Takahashi et al. 2018). Samaniego et al. (2023) demonstrated that cumulative research productivity related more strongly to compensation for male than for female researchers-although this effect was revealed exclusively in STEM disciplines. The question arises whether the correlation between productivity and compensation also exists at the beginnings of scientific careers when the researchers have authored fewer works. ...

Higher research productivity = more pay? Gender pay-for-productivity inequity across disciplines

Scientometrics

... First, we contribute to humour scholarship by offering a rigorous critique of a practice (i.e., conceptualizing humour vis-à-vis a styles approach) which undermines construct clarity and construct validity. Our goal is to help organizational humour researchers avoid the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological shortcomings that have plagued other areas, such as leadership (see both Eva et al., 2024, andVan Knippenberg andSitkin, 2013), leader-member exchange (see Scandura and Meuser, 2022), social exchange in organizations (see Cropanzano et al., 2017), social support at work (see Jolly et al., 2021), and work passion (see Astakhova et al., 2022). Second, in addition to acknowledging problems which may limit organizational humour scholarship, we delineate an alternative means of conceptualizing and studying interpersonal humour that would answer the questions of interest to researchers but in a more systematic way (i.e., using the MOHM model). ...

Passion for work passion research: Taming breadth and promoting depth

... Moreover, our sample contains only successfully funded projects. To address self-selection bias, we follow Smirnova (2008), Wesley et al. (2022) and Blaseg and Hornuf (2023) by using the Heckman (1979) correction with a two-stage logit regression. The coefficients of the Inverse Mills' Ratio are not statistically significant for all the tests presented in Table 3, indicating that the OLS coefficients are unbiased, and that the model converges to the linear specification. ...

Will the startup succeed in your eyes? Venture evaluation of resource providers during entrepreneurs' informational signaling
  • Citing Article
  • September 2022

Journal of Business Venturing

... (1) the perception of the internal organisational environment or situation (Ahmad et al., 2021;Kuntz et al., 2017;Lu et al., 2023;Marcazzan et al., 2022;Prayag et al., 2020;Sonnet, 2016;Stanton et al., 2017;Wut et al., 2022) and (2) the comprehension of the relationship between an organisation's internal and external environments (Kim, 2020;Knipfer & Kump, 2022;Kuntz et al., 2017). In addition to this, scientists highlight the areas that business leaders need to focus on in order to improve situational awareness: (1) the needs and expectations of employees which reveal the internal organisational potential (Kong et al., 2023;Ramachandran et al., 2024;Zhang & Liu, 2022) and (2) maintaining trust in management and the organisation by accepting and solving the organisational issues (Arroyo et al., 2024;Knight & Paroutis, 2017; M. C. Wang et al., 2021). ...

Appraising and Reacting to Perceived Pay For Performance: Leader Competence and Warmth as Critical Contingencies
  • Citing Article
  • April 2023

Academy of Management Journal

... While fewer studies examined gratitude in workplace settings, findings suggest that grateful employees experience less burnout (Nicuțȃ et al., 2023), higher job satisfaction (Chen et al., 2023), better workplace relationships, and greater affective well-being (Badri et al., 2022). However, most previous research has focused on individual outcomes such as well-being (Locklear et al., 2023). To better understand the implications of thankfulness in the workplace, it is essential to examine how other organization members or the organization as a whole could benefit from employees' gratitude. ...

Appreciating social science research on gratitude: An integrative review for organizational scholarship on gratitude in the workplace