The Journal of applied psychology
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In the present set of studies, the authors examine the idea that self-sacrificial leadership motivates follower prosocial behavior, particularly among followers with a prevention focus. Drawing on the self-sacrificial leadership literature and regulatory focus theory, the authors provide results from 4 studies (1 laboratory and 3 field studies) that support the research hypothesis. Specifically, the relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and prosocial behavior (i.e., cooperation, organizational citizenship behavior) is stronger among followers who are high in prevention focus. Implications for the importance of taking a follower-centered approach to leadership are discussed.
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Inferences about the relationships between scores on selection tests and measures of job performance are often made on the basis of an assessment of the match between the content of the test and the content of the job. However, there is little evidence that these test-to-job comparisons have any bearing on the criterion-related validity of selection tests. The authors show that conclusions reached in analyses of cognitive tests-that content matching is largely irrelevant to criterion-related validity-can be generalized to most sets of selection tests (e.g., psychomotor and performance tests, interview ratings, biodata scores, knowledge tests, work sample tests) that are positively correlated with one another and with the criterion. When the universe of potential predictors shows positive manifold, almost all possible sets of test batteries will yield similar outcomes and show similar validities, regardless of whether the content of these tests matches the content of the job.
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The authors examined relationships among collective efficacy, group potency, and group performance. Meta-analytic results (based on 6,128 groups, 31,019 individuals, 118 correlations adjusted for dependence, and 96 studies) reveal that collective efficacy was significantly related to group performance (.35). In the proposed nested 2-level model, collective efficacy assessment (aggregation and group discussion) was tested as the 1st-level moderator. ⋯ The 2nd and 3rd meta-analyses indicated that group potency was related to group performance (.29) and to collective efficacy (.65). When tested in a structural equation modeling analysis based on meta-analytic findings, collective efficacy fully mediated the relationship between group potency and group performance. The authors suggest future research and convert their findings to a probability of success index to help facilitate practice.
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The authors tested the hypothesis that goal-focused leadership enables conscientious workers to perform effectively by helping them to accurately understand organizational goal priorities. Data collected from 162 workers in a private sector document processing organization supported the hypotheses that goal-focused leadership moderates the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance and that person-organization goal congruence mediates this moderated relationship. Specifically, conscientiousness was more strongly positively related to performance among workers who perceived that their supervisors effectively set goals and defined roles, responsibilities, and priorities than among workers who did not perceive this type of goal-focused leadership.
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Research on value congruence has attempted to explain why value congruence leads to positive outcomes, but few of these explanations have been tested empirically. In this article, the authors develop and test a theoretical model that integrates 4 key explanations of value congruence effects, which are framed in terms of communication, predictability, interpersonal attraction, and trust. ⋯ Polynomial regression analyses reveal that the relationships emanating from individual and organizational values often deviated from the idealized value congruence relationship that underlies previous theory and research. The authors' results also show that individual and organizational values exhibited small but significant relationships with job satisfaction and organizational identification that bypassed the mediators in their model, indicating that additional explanations of value congruence effects should be pursued in future research.