Search results

The five studies included in this special issue focus on emotions and conflict management. These studies highlight how conflict management research can help managers, employees, and organizations more effectively manage the emotional aspects of conflict. This paper aims to summarize these studies.

Five studies were selected and combined in this single issue so that researchers could have an integrative review of recent research on emotions in the workplace. The studies were chosen to highlight the relationships between emotions and key conflict variables, such as task, relationship, and process conflict; trust; venting; and forgiveness. The studies were also chosen to represent a broad range of samples, including participants from more than 14 countries and cultures.

These studies indicate that a broad range of positive and negative emotions, such as anger, enthusiasm, excitement, guilt, and remorse, are significantly related in complex and varied ways to various aspects of conflict management. The studies highlight not only the importance of understanding specific emotions in conflict situations, but also the need to understand how and when the regulation of emotions can facilitate effective conflict management.

These cutting‐edge studies demonstrate how emotions are a needed and important addition to the field of conflict management research – above and beyond cognitions and behaviors. Such findings highlight the need for additional research on emotions in conflict situations. Although these studies represent many different countries, more research is needed that specifically compares and contrasts the influence of emotions on conflict management across various cultures.

This special issue is the first publication to focus on the influence of conflict management in many different countries and cultures.

Drawing on the challenge–hindrance stressor framework and the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” principle, this study examined the curvilinear effects of two emic social challenge stressors (guanxi beliefs and participative decision-making (PDM)) and the moderating effect of an etic social hindrance stressor (perceived organizational politics) on Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction.

A quantitative survey method was implemented, with the data provided by 355 Hong Kong nurses and 116 United States nurses. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the degree of measurement equivalence across Hong Kong and US nurses. The proposed model and the research questions were tested using nonlinear structural equation modeling analyses.

The results show that while guanxi beliefs only showed an inverted U-shaped relation on Hong Kong nurses’ job satisfaction, PDM had an inverted U-shaped relation with both Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction. The authors also found that Hong Kong nurses experienced the highest job satisfaction when their guanxi beliefs and perceived organization politics were both high.

The results add to the comprehension of the nuances of the often-held assumption of linearity in organizational sciences and support the speculation of social stressors-outcomes linkages.

Managers need to recognize that while the nurturing and development of effective relationships with employees via social interaction are important, managers also need to be aware that too much guanxi and PDM may lead employees to feel overwhelmed with expectations of reciprocity and reconciliation to such an extent that they suffer adverse outcomes and become dissatisfied with their jobs.

First, the authors found that influences of guanxi beliefs and PDM are not purely linear and that previous research may have neglected the curvilinear nature of their influences on job satisfaction. Second, the authors echo researchers’ call to consider an organization’s political context to fully understand employees’ attitudes and reactions toward social interactions at work. Third, the authors examine boundary conditions of curvilinear relationships to understand the delicate dynamics.

To address the increasingly turbulent environments that businesses face, the purpose of this study is to build on prior research to propose a comprehensive model aimed at enhancing business school education in Latin America.

The authors modified and adapted prior meta-analytic research on workplace training programs to create a model that is applicable to the context of business school education in Latin America.

The creation of this model enabled the identification of many propositions that can guide future research.

In addition to insightful research propositions, the authors also provide specific suggestions on the methods for data collection and analysis.

This model can serve as a comprehensive summary of important factors that education leaders can use to enhance the success of business education in Latin America.

In addition to helping to improve business education in Latin America, this model can guide research that will benefit other types of education programs in science, technology, medicine, etc.

The authors used findings to build this integrated mode and adapted and refined the model to fit the setting of higher education institutions.

This introduction aims to summarize five studies included in this themed issue that focus on conflict management and performance outcomes. These studies highlight how conflict management research can help organizations perform more effectively.

The five selected studies were combined into this single issue so that readers can compare and contrast scholarships from many countries and cultures, including Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Norway, and Taiwan to see how conflict management research relates to actual performance outcomes around the world.

These studies show that negotiations conducted by two‐person dyads resulted in higher outcomes when compared to negotiations conducted by multi‐person groups. In addition, when negotiators consider more than one issue at a time and use a constructive problem solving approach, they can reach better outcomes. In addition, higher self‐efficacy of the negotiator can increase objective negotiation outcomes, but only to a point beyond which more self‐efficacy can have a negative effect. One dimension of employee work performance, innovation, is shown to have several interesting relationships with other variables. Two studies found that innovative work behaviors had a positive relationship to workplace conflict. One study showed that task conflict seemed to relate to increased innovative work behaviors. Another study found a positive relationship between a broader measure of innovative work behaviors and conflicted with workers. The positive relationship between task conflict and innovative behaviors seemed to increase when there was more support for innovation. In addition, the positive relationship between innovative behavior and conflict with coworkers seem to decrease when there was more distributive justice in workplace rewards. These studies also showed significant relationships between conflict management and subjective outcomes, such as subjective perceptions of negotiations, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and relationships between coworkers.

These studies outline ways for organizations to design conflict management principles both to increase the objective outcomes of negotiations and to induce their employees to be more innovative at work.

All five studies used original data not reported elsewhere and gathered in various countries that have not been reported in prior studies.

This paper aims to examine whether the number of employment discrimination laws in a country influences voice and accountability.

The authors compared the number of employment discrimination laws in different countries to perceptions of voice and accountability.

Results indicate that the number of discrimination laws enacted in a country has a positive impact on the voice and accountability perceptions of citizens. Further, this relationship is found to be moderated by two contextual factors: cultural assertiveness and the percentage of females in the population. Specifically, the positive impact of the number of discrimination laws on voice and accountability perceptions was found to be stronger in highly assertive cultures and in countries with a lower percentage of females in the population.

This is the first study to show a relationship between the number of employment discrimination laws in a country and perceptions of voice and accountability.

Psychological ownership (PO) theory and extended self theory explain why someone feels like the owner of his/her job or organization. Yet, there is limited prior research examining whether PO differs as an individual versus collective phenomenon, and in different cultural contexts. The authors extend this literature by examining the dimensionality of PO, multiple outcomes and cultural values as boundary conditions.

Data from surveys of 331 supervisors from Mexico and the US were collected to examine the relationships between the theorized constructs. The authors apply two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis to alleviate endogeneity concerns and produce robust results.

Both individual and collective PO (IPO and CPO) are positively associated with organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and a new outcome, paternalistic leadership behavior. Cultural values are significant moderators with an individualistic orientation enhancing and a power distance orientation attenuating these relationships.

This study extends PO theory and extended self theory by investigating whether IPO and CPO have different outcomes considering contextual differences in cultural values. Additionally, the authors capture the frequency of paternalism instead of its mere occurrence.

This study systematically reviews the literature on psychological ownership theory since its inception 30 years ago. Psychological ownership describes why and how individuals inform their identities by taking ownership. The authors provide guidance and support to management scholars to access the field and make meaningful contributions to the literature.

A variety of bibliometric techniques for performance analyses and science mapping is implemented to examine quantitative bibliographic data of 178 studies on psychological ownership. The data are obtained from Web of Science. The VOSviewer science mapping framework is employed to perform the analyses.

Co-authorship, citation and keyword co-occurrence networks indicate the social structures, most influential authors, publications and journals, as well as topics of past research and avenues for future investigation in the field of psychological ownership. While the authors of the seminal studies Pierce et al. (2001, 2003) have shaped the field over the past decades, the future of psychological ownership research requires stronger collaborations across the globe to advance the field from the individual level to the group and organization level.

This study is the first to comprehensively analyze the management literature on psychological ownership from a historical perspective using a systematic approach, bibliometric procedures and quantitative data. Insightful guidance and avenues for future investigation are offered to move psychological ownership research forward.