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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between team psychological capital (PsyCap) and team process improvement (TPI) by focusing on the mediating role of team self-managing behaviors (TSMBs) and the moderating effect of the team reward system.

Data were collected from 514 members and their immediate superiors nested in 135 action teams working for a Canadian public safety organization. Hypotheses were tested using a path analytic procedure.

Team PsyCap was positively related to TPI, and this relationship was mediated by TSMBs. In addition, the team reward system positively moderated the first stage of this relationship.

This study highlights the important role that motivational factors play in the effectiveness of action teams. Specifically, the present study reveals that the psychological resources of action teams interact with the level of recognition and reward they receive to predict members’ engagement in self-managing behaviors and in improvement processes.

Findings suggest that to promote the capacity for process improvement of actions teams, managers should focus on their positive psychological resources, their capacity to self-manage and on the level of recognition and reward they receive.

Considering the dynamic and complex environments within which action teams operate, the finding that team PsyCap promotes their optimal functioning is particularly noteworthy. Furthermore, this study clarifies why and when team PsyCap enhances TPI.

Using the substitute for leadership framework, the purpose of this paper is to verify whether employees’ perceived value congruence with their organization can act as a moderator of the relationship between transformational leadership and empowered behaviors. A triple moderation hypothesis, wherein value congruence could both enhance or substitute leadership practices depending on employee tenure, is tested.

Self-reported data were collected from 1,934 employees of a large public organization.

Hierarchical regressions show that value congruence enhances transformational leadership’s effectiveness in new employees, but plays either a substitute role or no role at all in more tenured employees.

Findings suggest that the substitutes for leadership framework are useful in understanding both the enhancing and substitute role of value congruence with regards to transformational leadership. This study also underlines this framework’s complexity and the need for additional research that goes beyond bivariate models to further our understanding of transformational leadership moderators.

The knowledge of when leadership practices are enhanced or substituted could help leaders focus their efforts to maximize empowered behaviors.

This study verifies the theorized moderating role of value congruence in transformational leadership, which has been largely ignored in research. Additionally this study shows that this role can fluctuate according to tenure.

The purpose of this paper is to theorize and test a model concerning the role of complaining behaviors in work teams. Despite the prevalence of workplace complaining, there is no consensus in the literature regarding the consequences of those behaviors and the extent to which they are harmful.

Using a multisource approach and a team-level design, the authors collected data from 82 teams (i.e. 394 members and their 82 immediate superiors) working in a Canadian public safety organization.

The results show that complaining behaviors are negatively related to two effectiveness outcomes (i.e. team performance and team process improvement) and that meaningfulness mediates these relationships. The results also reveal that task interdependence moderates the relationship between complaining behaviors and meaningfulness. More specifically, complaining behaviors have a stronger relationship with meaningfulness when the level of task interdependence is high.

The present study contributes to the literature on counterproductive behaviors by deepening the understanding of emergent states and outcomes stemming from workplace complaining, particularly in work teams. The findings of this study highlight the negative consequences that complaining behaviors may have in a team setting, the underlying mechanism involved in these relationships, and the moderating role of task interdependence.

The purpose of this paper is to address the theoretical ordering of the associations between work hours, psychological demands, decision latitude, and psychological distress.

A mediation model, predicting that the association between long work hours and psychological distress is mediated by psychological demands and decision latitude, was tested with a representative sample of 7,802 individuals in full‐time paid employment surveyed by a government agency. Structural equation modeling was used and the full mediation model was replicated for subsamples of men and women. The analysis controlled for demographic variables, work characteristics and socioeconomic status.

As expected, decision latitude is associated with less and psychological demands with more psychological distress. Long work hours are associated with more decision latitude and psychological demands. The association between long work hours and psychological distress is mediated by psychological demands and decision latitude. The mediation process was supported in male and female sub‐samples.

Considering the weak associations between work hours and psychological strain reported in previous research, the findings of this study support new theorizing about this association. Accordingly, long work hours may be viewed as a distal variable influencing the duration of exposure to psychological demands. The study reported here also underscores the need to further investigate the positive consequences of long work hours within the context of psychological contracts.

This is one of the few studies that conceptualize work hours as something other than an occupational risk factor or as a job demand with a direct impact on psychological strain. It thus provides a new basis for thinking about the process through which long work hours may influence psychological strain.

The purpose of this paper, building on the work of Aubé et al. (2009, 2011) who developed a four-dimension model of counterproductive behaviors in team settings, is to examine the team-level consequences of these behaviors. More specifically, the authors investigate the mediating role of collaboration, a key component of teamwork, in the counterproductive behaviors–team performance relationships.

Using a multisource approach and a team-level design, data were gathered from 101 work teams (381 members and 101 immediate supervisors). The study was conducted within a Canadian public safety organization.

Results show that the four dimensions of counterproductive behaviors are negatively related to team performance. Moreover, results indicate that each of these relationships is completely mediated by a decrease of collaboration among members. Taken together, the results of this study show that the presence of counterproductive behaviors within teams constitutes a collective phenomenon which affects not only team members, but also the functioning and effectiveness of the team as a whole.

This study differs from previous studies mainly by adopting a multidimensional conception of counterproductive behaviors and focusing on consequences of these behaviors on the team as a system. In practical terms, the results suggest that the presence of counterproductive behaviors may require team-level interventions (e.g. team building) in addition to individual interventions with individuals involved.

This study aims to examine the role of team coaching in regard to team innovation by considering motivational and behavioral intervening mechanisms.

Based on a multisource approach, data was gathered from 97 work teams (341 members and 97 immediate supervisors) in a public safety organization.

Results of structural equation modeling analyses indicate that the relationship between team coaching and team innovation is mediated by team goal commitment and support for innovation. Specifically, team coaching has a direct effect on support for innovation and an indirect effect on this behavioral team process through team goal commitment. In turn, support for innovation may improve the implementation of successful team innovation.

In a global competitive context, innovation represents a key leverage to generate a competitive advantage. Team leaders who engage in coaching behaviors toward their subordinates are likely to foster innovation within their work team. Thus, organizations may benefit by designing and implementing interventions aimed at developing team leaders’ coaching skills and encouraging them to consider coaching as a core managerial responsibility.

On the whole, this study highlights the role of team coaching as a key leverage to stimulate successful innovation in work teams and the motivational and behavioral mechanisms that intervene in this relationship.

The aim of this article is to deepen the understanding of the relationships between perceived organizational support (POS) and the dimensions of organizational commitment (i.e. affective, normative and continuance commitment), and to test the moderating effect of locus of control and work autonomy.

This study, based on a cross‐sectional research design, was conducted in an organizational setting. The sample includes 249 prison employees. The data were collected through questionnaires.

The results show that POS is positively and significantly correlated with affective and normative commitment. In addition, the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses support the moderating effect of locus of control and work autonomy with regard to the relationship between POS and affective commitment.

This study highlights the importance of providing support to employees in order to foster their affective and normative commitment to the organization. Moreover, the results provide evidence in favour of managerial interventions aimed at enhancing perceived control and, consequently, minimizing the negative effects of a lack of organizational support on employees' affective commitment.

In addition to taking into account three dimensions of organizational commitment, this study underlines personality and job design factors that can modulate the relationship between POS and organizational commitment.

This paper aims to examine the content domain of employee business awareness, individual non‐managerial employee realization, perception or knowledge of the employing organization's business environment as demonstrated when involved in decision making or problem solving.

Interviews with 20 employees from two organizations yielded 81 critical incidents in which employees participated in workplace decision making or problem solving beyond their immediate task environment. These were examined using interpretative analysis.

This inductive approach generated 35 indicators of EBA organized according to three themes: the external environment, business strategy, and business processes.

EBA may represent a valuable knowledge resource worthy of further study.

EBA is a new construct that presents opportunities for innovation in research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of curvilinear patterns of relationships between workplace affective commitment and in‐role performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and burnout. As most commitment theories assume strictly linear relations with these outcomes, demonstrating that these positive associations do not hold above some ceiling point in the commitment continuum is potentially important for research and practice.

The possibility of nonlinear relations was examined in a sample of 273 hospital employees.

The results yielded strong support for the authors' hypotheses. Indeed, most of the relations observed (ten of 15) between affective commitment foci and work outcomes were curvilinear, revealing a ceiling to the positive association between commitment and outcomes. Although these results vary in strength across work outcomes and commitment targets, they reveal that affective commitment has negative associations with employee productivity and psychological health at extreme levels.

Methodologically, these results illustrate the need to systematically explore the true nature of relations among constructs, even in areas where it is assumed to be well known. Practically, these results suggest that, ultimately, moderate levels of commitment may be more beneficial than extremely high levels.