The Journal of applied psychology
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Comparative Study
Explaining the justice-performance relationship: trust as exchange deepener or trust as uncertainty reducer?
Past research has revealed significant relationships between organizational justice dimensions and job performance, and trust is thought to be one mediator of those relationships. However, trust has been positioned in justice theorizing in 2 different ways, either as an indicator of the depth of an exchange relationship or as a variable that reflects levels of work-related uncertainty. ⋯ To explore these issues, we built and tested a more comprehensive model of trust mediation in which procedural, interpersonal, and distributive justice predicted affect- and cognition-based trust, with those trust forms predicting both exchange- and uncertainty-based mechanisms. The results of a field study in a hospital system revealed that the trust variables did indeed mediate the relationships between the organizational justice dimensions and job performance, with affect-based trust driving exchange-based mediation and cognition-based trust driving uncertainty-based mediation.
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By integrating literature on group faultlines, organizational cultures, and value congruence, this research presents a framework that explains how cultural alignment across organizational levels may influence the relationship between faultlines and performance. The hypotheses were tested using representatively sampled multisource qualitative and quantitative data on 138 teams from a Fortune 500 company. The present findings demonstrate that although informational faultlines were detrimental for group performance, the negative relationship between faultlines and performance was reversed when cultures with a strong emphasis on results were aligned, was lessened when cultures with a weak emphasis on results were aligned, and remained negative when cultures were misaligned with respect to their results orientation. These findings show the importance of recognizing alignments not only within groups (group faultlines) but also outside groups (cultural alignments between the group and departments) when considering their implications for group performance.
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Past research suggests that task conflict may improve team performance under certain conditions; however, we know little about these specific conditions. On the basis of prior theory and research on conflict in teams, we argue that a climate of psychological safety is one specific context under which task conflict will improve team performance. ⋯ The results support the conclusion that psychological safety facilitates the performance benefits of task conflict in teams. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
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Comparative Study
Tainted visions: the effect of visionary leader behaviors and leader categorization tendencies on the financial performance of ethnically diverse teams.
Despite the increasing prevalence of ethnic diversity, findings regarding its effects on team performance remain contradictory. We suggest that past inconsistencies can be reconciled by examining the joint impact of leader behavior and leader categorization tendencies in ethnically diverse teams. We propose that leaders who exhibit high levels of visionary leader behavior and also have the tendency to categorize their team members into in- and out-groups will facilitate a negative effect of ethnic diversity on team communication and financial performance, whereas leaders who exhibit visionary behaviors but do not tend to categorize will lead ethnically diverse teams to positive outcomes. We find support for these ideas in a study of 100 retail outlets.
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Comparative Study
Does power distance exacerbate or mitigate the effects of abusive supervision? It depends on the outcome.
We predicted that the effects of abusive supervision are likely to be moderated by subordinate power distance orientation and that the nature of the moderating effect will depend on the outcome. Drawing upon work suggesting that high power distance orientation subordinates are more tolerant of supervisory mistreatment, we posited that high power distance orientation subordinates would be less likely to view abusive supervision as interpersonally unfair. ⋯ Across 3 samples we found support for our predicted interactions, culminating in a mediated moderation model demonstrating that social learning mediates the interaction of abusive supervision and power distance on subordinate interpersonal deviance, while ruling out alternate self-regulation impairment or displaced aggression explanations. Implications for the abusive supervision literature are discussed.