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1 – 10 of 576Matt C. Howard, Wade Forde, Jacob Whitmore and Elise V.Z. Lambert
Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, and it is included in the Dark Triad with Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Narcissism relates to many detrimental outcomes, but a…
Abstract
Purpose
Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, and it is included in the Dark Triad with Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Narcissism relates to many detrimental outcomes, but a growing stream of research has investigated beneficial outcomes of the Dark Triad. The authors continue this stream of research by assessing the relation of narcissism with social courage behaviors, which are prosocial actions with personal social risks. The authors propose that this relation is mediated by self-deceptive enhancement and subjective invulnerability and also test these relations while including the other Dark Triad dimensions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors perform two survey studies to investigate our research questions. The first utilizes a cross-sectional approach, whereas the second utilizes a time-separated approach.
Findings
The results of this study show that narcissism has an indirect effect on social courage via both mediators, and it also produced a significant direct effect. Machiavellianism and psychopathy did not produce any reliable effects on social courage – whether direct or indirect.
Practical implications
The authors support that a “dark” trait relates to a “bright” outcome, but also that a bright outcome relates to a dark trait. These findings link the narcissism and social courage to novel theoretical frameworks, such as those associated with ethical decision making and self-regulation, which opens many directions for future research on both constructs.
Originality/value
The current article addresses two recent calls for novel research: the study of courage as well as positive outcomes of negative traits. It also adds much-needed nuance to current research on narcissism and courage.
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Matt C. Howard and Philip E. Holmes
One of the strongest and most important outcomes of trait social courage is employee voice, but researchers have only studied this relationship with unidimensional…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the strongest and most important outcomes of trait social courage is employee voice, but researchers have only studied this relationship with unidimensional conceptualizations of voice. The purpose of this paper is to apply Van Dyne et al.’s (2003) three-dimensional conceptualization of voice, which also distinguishes three dimensions of silence, to provide a nuanced understanding of the relationship of social courage with voice and silence. The authors also test for the moderating effect of three contextual influences: top management attitudes toward voice and silence, supervisor attitudes toward voice and silence, as well as communication opportunities.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a four-timepoint survey with each measurement occasion separated by one week. A total of 134 participants completed all four timepoints.
Findings
The results support that social courage positively relates to prosocial voice and silence, whereas it negatively relates to defensive voice and silence as well as acquiescent voice and silence. In other words, social courage positively relates to beneficial voice and silence as well as negatively relates to detrimental voice and silence. The results also failed to support any moderating effects, suggesting that the relationships of social courage are very resilient to outside forces.
Practical implications
These findings both test prior results and discover new relationships of social courage, which can further stress the importance of courage. The authors also draw direct connections between the influence of social courage on the surrounding workplace environment – as well as the influences of the environment on social courage. While the current paper provides insights into social courage, it also directs future researchers toward new insights of their own.
Originality/value
Courage is an emergent research topic within organizations. While many authors have assumed that courage is important to work, the current paper is among the few to empirically support this notion.
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Matt C. Howard and Mandy Kasprzyk
The current article integrates four prominent directions of modern research on workplace social courage. We (1) apply a novel framework, psychological contract theory, to identify…
Abstract
Purpose
The current article integrates four prominent directions of modern research on workplace social courage. We (1) apply a novel framework, psychological contract theory, to identify (2) work engagement and moral disengagement as potential antecedents of social courage, (3) unethical pro-organizational behaviors as a possible duplicitous outcome of these antecedents and (4) moderating effects of moral disengagement on the relations of work engagement with these outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
We perform a two-wave survey study (n = 347), wherein antecedents are measured at Time 1 and outcomes are measured at Time 2 (one week later).
Findings
We support that work engagement and moral disengagement significantly relate to both workplace social courage and unethical pro-organizational behaviors. We also support that moral disengagement moderates the relation of work engagement with unethical pro-organizational behaviors but not workplace social courage.
Practical implications
We highlight that work engagement can be a possible avenue to promote workplace social courage, but organizations should monitor any interventions because it may also promote unethical pro-organizational behaviors for those who are morally disengaged. We also contend that the current results support the “resiliency of courage” by discovering a nonsignificant moderating effect, providing further support for this broadly replicable aspect of workplace social courage.
Originality/value
We discuss how these findings support psychological contract theory as a viable lens to understand workplace social courage, and we call on future researchers to apply the theory to identify further relations of the construct.
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Matt C. Howard and Emory Serviss
The authors argue that many core findings are not as established as often assumed in the study of corporate volunteering programs, and they assess this possibility by reporting a…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors argue that many core findings are not as established as often assumed in the study of corporate volunteering programs, and they assess this possibility by reporting a meta-analysis of both organizational and employee participation that includes relations with antecedents and outcomes at both organizational and employee levels.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors perform a meta-analysis of 57 sources, including 30 peer-reviewed articles, 16 theses/dissertations, 8 unpublished manuscripts, 2 conference presentations and 1 book chapter.
Findings
Of the antecedents, organizational size only had a small relation with organizational participation, but the effect of corporate social responsibility orientation was very large on organizational participation. Demographic characteristics as well as personality traits had a small relation with employee participation, whereas the effect of volunteering attitudes was large on employee participation. Of the outcomes, organizational participation did not significantly relate to customer perceptions. Employee participation had nonsignificant or small relations with well-being, commitment, job satisfaction and positive behaviors; however, organizational participation also significantly related to all employee-level outcomes, and the effect was significantly stronger than employee participation for two of four outcomes.
Practical implications
Organizations can better understand the true influence of corporate volunteering programs, aiding their bottom line and employee well-being.
Originality/value
Several commonly assumed antecedents and outcomes do not relate to corporate volunteering participation, and future research should be redirected to more influential effects. The authors’ discussion highlights theories that may be particularly beneficial for the study of corporate volunteering, including social identity theory and role expansion theory.
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Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American…
Abstract
Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.
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Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American…
Abstract
Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.
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The traditional and still dominant logic among nearly all empirical positivist researchers in schools of management is to write symmetric (two-directional) variable hypotheses…
Abstract
Synopsis
The traditional and still dominant logic among nearly all empirical positivist researchers in schools of management is to write symmetric (two-directional) variable hypotheses (SVH) even though the same researchers formulate their behavioral theories at the case (typology) identification level. Cyert and March’s (1963), Cyert, R. M., & March, J. G. (1963). A behavioral theory of the firm. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall), Howard and Sheth’s (1969, Howard, J. A., & Sheth, J. N. (1969). The theory of buyer behavior. New York, NY: Wiley), and Miles, R. E., & Snow, C. C.’s (1978, Miles, R. E., & Snow, C. C. (1978). Organizational strategy, structure, and process. [A. D. Meyer, collaborator; H. J. Coleman Jr., contributor]. New York, NY: McGraw Hill) typologies of organizations’ strategy configurations (e.g., “Prospectors, Analyzers, and Defenders”) are iconic examples of formulating theory at the case identification level. When testing such theories, most researchers automatically, nonconsciously, switch from building theory of beliefs, attitudes, and behavior at the case identification level to empirically testing of two-directional relationships and additive net-effect influences of variables. Formulating theory focusing on creating case identification hypotheses (CIH) to describe, explain, and predict behavior and then empirically testing at SVH is a mismatch and results in shallow data analysis and frequently inaccurate contributions to theory. This chapter describes the mismatch and resulting unattractive outcomes as well as the pervasive practice of examining only fit validity in empirical studies using symmetric tests. The chapter reviews studies in the literature showing how matching both case-based theory and empirical positivist research of CIH is possible and produces findings that advance useful theory and critical thinking by executives and researchers.
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Florian Ritter, Anja Danner-Schröder and Gordon Müller-Seitz
In this study, the authors applied a routine dynamics perspective to examine how agile routines enhance efficiency while allowing flexibility in a world of flux. Hence, the…
Abstract
In this study, the authors applied a routine dynamics perspective to examine how agile routines enhance efficiency while allowing flexibility in a world of flux. Hence, the authors conducted an ethnographic case study in the IT sector, following a scrum team. The findings indicate that agile routines create affordances for addressing temporal orientations toward the past, present, and future. Within the scrum framework, each routine has a designed temporal orientation, such that the planning meeting is oriented toward the future. Actors enacted this single, temporal orientation through temporal demarcating patterns. However, in some instances, other temporal orientations conflicted with the dominant one. In those cases, actors enacted temporal integrating patterns that embraced multiple temporal orientations. The authors contribute to research on routine dynamics by demonstrating how (1) temporal demarcating enables organizational benefits, (2) temporal integrating enables learning from and anticipating problems, and (3) temporal spaces emerge within routine enactments to solve problems at hand.
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Scientists are constructing knowledge about global warming by adapting evidence-based disciplines to reflect the Precautionary Principle. It is equally important to communicate…
Abstract
Scientists are constructing knowledge about global warming by adapting evidence-based disciplines to reflect the Precautionary Principle. It is equally important to communicate the complexities and uncertainties underpinning global warming because inappropriate vehicles for giving accounts could result in defensive decisions that perpetuate the business-as-usual mindset: the method of communication affects how the risk associated with global warming is socialised. Appropriately constructed accounts should facilitate reflective communicative action. Here Beck's theorisation of risk society, Luhmann's sociological theory of risk and Gandhi's vehicle of communicative action (or satyagraha) are used to construct a risk-based accountability mechanism, whilst providing insight into Schumacher's concept of total accountability. These accountability constructs will be illustrated through the lived experiences of South Australian citrus horticulturists in the context of a richly layered narrative of competing discourses about global warming. The reiterative process of theory informing practice is used to construct a couple of dialogical vehicles of accountability.