Ruodan Shao

Prior research on the relationship between group versus individual targets and unethical behavior directed toward those targets is incomplete. Extending this line of research, the present paper examines whether individuals engage in more dishonest behaviors when interacting with a group (vs. an individual). Across six experiments and three supplemental studies (N = 2376), we found that individuals demonstrated more dishonesty toward groups as opposed to individual targets, which we label the plurality effect. This effect was observed across a variety of situations (both low-stakes and high-stakes contexts with real monetary payouts), including when providing advice to others with an incentive to be dishonest, in employment interviews, and in negotiations. Mediation tests revealed that participants experienced lower moral concern when the target was a group versus an individual, and this finding held after testing for alternative explanations. Group membership and collectivism jointly moderated the effect, such that the plurality effect was stronger for targets who are members of the decision makers outgroup (vs. ingroup) among decision makers with high (vs. low) collectivistic values.

Augmentation-based artificial intelligence (AI) artifacts are increasingly being incorporated into the workplace. The coupling of employees and AI tools, given their complementary strengths, expands and expedites employees’ access to information and affords important learning opportunities. However, existing research has yet to fully understand the learning-based benefits and challenges for employees in augmentation. Integrating insights from AI augmentation literature and cognitive load theory, we conducted a daily diary study to understand employees’ experience using augmentation-based AI at work on a daily basis. We theorized and found that, on the one hand, frequent usage of augmentation-based AI during a workday was associated with greater knowledge gain and subsequently better task performance at the end of the workday. On the other hand, using augmentation-based AI frequently also led employees to experience information overload, which in turn impaired their performance and recovery at the end of the workday. In addition to elucidating the countervailing mechanisms, we identified employee openness to experience as a dispositional factor, and positive affect as a momentary state that shaped the effects of using augmentation-based AI over the workday. Our research has implications for understanding AI augmentation dynamics from a learning-based perspective, as well as AI’s impact on employees at large.

Customer mistreatment events play a major role in employees’ subsequent customer service behaviors. We extend this line of research by developing a self-verification account of the relationship between customer mistreatment and customer-directed OCBs (OCB-Cs) by examining theoretically prescribed novel mechanisms (i.e., self-verification) and boundary conditions (i.e., self-esteem, entity customer appreciation) for this relationship. We conducted a programmatic series of studies using daily diary (Study 1), audio vignette (Study 2), and behavioral experiment (Study 3) designs to test the proposed model. The overall pattern of results showed that customer mistreatment led employees to feel less self-verified, especially among those with higher trait self-esteem. These employees in turn were more likely to withhold OCB-Cs, especially among those perceiving lower levels of entity customer appreciation. Overall, these results extend our understanding of the role of the self-concept in how employees experience and react to customer mistreatment.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has imposed significant threats to individuals’ physical health and has substantially changed the socioeconomic order and the nature of our work and life all over the world. To guide organizations to design effective workplace interventions to mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19, we take the occupational health psychology (OHP) perspective to propose a framework that highlights important areas for organizations to intervene in order to better protect workers’ physical health and safety and to promote workers’ psychological well-being. Specifically, we integrate the prevention-based public health model with the Total Worker Health (TWH) and OHP-based approaches to propose a comprehensive set of primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions that target different groups of employees with varied exposure risks to the new coronavirus. We believe these proposed interventions can contribute positively to the development of healthy and safe work. Implications of these proposed interventions for workers, organizations, and policy makers are also

Conservation of resources (COR) theory proposes that mistreatment by customers (termed “customer mistreatment”) can deplete employees’ resources, lessen their ability to regulate their behaviors, and result in them engaging in customer-directed deviant behavior. However, COR has been criticized for its lack of precision regarding how this process unfolds. Integrating the person-situation interactionist perspective with COR theory, the present paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of COR theory by explicating how individual characteristics and work context—namely, psychological detachment and supervisory unfairness—can combine to attenuate/exacerbate the relationship between customer mistreatment and employees’ customer-directed deviant behavior. Using a multilevel field study with 1,092 daily-based surveys among 157 Korean call-center representatives, our results show that frontline employees’ emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between customer mistreatment and customer-directed deviant behavior that occurs on the next working day. When faced with customer mistreatment, employees with lower (vs. higher) psychological detachment were more likely to be emotionally exhausted and engage in customer-directed deviant behavior on the next working day. Moreover, their emotional exhaustion predicted customer-directed deviant behavior more so when their supervisors treated them unfairly (vs. fairly). Taken together, the results show that the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion was strongest among employees with low (vs. high) psychological detachment and who reported more (vs. less) supervisory unfairness. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has imposed significant risks to our health and affected our social and economic order, information on COVID-19 becomes readily accessible via various mass media and social media. In the current research, we aim to understand the impacts of employees’ exposure to COVID-19 information on their workplace behaviors. Integrating Terror Management Theory (TMT; Becker, 1973; Greenberg et al., 1986) with Generativity Theory (Erikson, 1963, 1982), we proposed and investigated two psychological mechanisms (i.e., death anxiety and generativity-based death reflection) that account for the effects of employees’ COVID-19 information exposure on their work withdrawal and helping behaviors toward coworkers. We also examined organizational actions [internal and external corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities] that served as a context for employees to make sense of their COVID-19 information exposure. We conducted two studies with samples of full-time employees (N1 = 278; N2 = 382) to test our predictions. Results in both studies showed that employees’ exposure to COVID-19 information was positively related to their death anxiety and generativity-based death reflection, which in turn predicted their work withdrawal and helping behaviors, respectively. Further, employees’ perceived internal CSR of their organization mitigated the positive association between COVID-19 information exposure and their death anxiety, weakening the positive indirect effect of COVID-19 information exposure on their work withdrawal. Our study offers new insights to the understanding of work and employment in the COVID-19 pandemic and sheds light on how individuals’ death-related experiences shape work-related behaviors.

This editorial outlines the articles included in the special thematic symposium on corporate social responsibility and employees and highlights their contributions to the literature. In doing so, it highlights the novel theoretical and empirical insights provided by the articles, how the articles inform and expand the methods and research designs researchers can use to study phenomena in this area, and identifies promising directions for future research.

Drawing on social learning and self-determination theories, this study investigates the mediating effects of controlled motivation for knowledge sharing and moral identity in the relationship between ethical leadership and employee knowledge sharing. We conducted a field study with 337 full-time employees to test our hypotheses. Results supported the mediating effects of both controlled motivation and moral identity in accounting for the relationship between ethical leadership and employee knowledge sharing. Our study is among the first to examine whether and why ethical leadership predicts employee knowledge sharing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Growing evidence suggests that employees’ perceptions of their employer’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) relate positively to employee work engagement. This is an important connection given the impact of work engagement on both employee health and organizational productivity, as well as the importance of CSR for society. In this paper, however, we argue that the CSR perceptions–work engagement relationship cannot be assumed to be universal and that both individual and contextual factors will place meaningful boundary conditions on this effect. Integrating motivation and cross‐cultural theories, we propose that the relationship between employees’ CSR perceptions and their work engagement will be stronger among employees who perceive higher CSR‐specific relative autonomy (i.e., employees’ contextualized motivation for complying with, advocating for, and/or participating in CSR activities) and that this amplification effect will be stronger among employees who are higher on individualism (studied at the individual‐level of analysis). These predictions were mostly supported among a sample of 673 working adults from five different regions (Canada, China [mainland], France, Hong Kong, and Singapore) and while controlling for first‐party justice perceptions, moral identity, employee demographics, and employer/nation characteristics. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This paper provides a historical review of the conceptualization and measurement of organizational justice. We demonstrate how, over time, a dominant norm for conceptualizing and measuring justice has emerged. We posit that although consistent conceptualization and measurement across justice studies can enable the accumulation of knowledge, if the dominant approach is incomplete, this can impede the accumulation of knowledge and risk construct reification. We suggest that these risks are high given that (a) contemporary approaches to measuring fairness perceptions fail to capture the full domain of organizational justice as it was initially conceptualized by early scholars; (b) despite a foundation of “classic” theories, our field has yet to systematically map the justice domain; and (c) the normative operationalizations of organizational justice are based on observations that predate the 21st century workplace. We offer suggestions for future research and new approaches to assessing workplace fairness. Our paper’s goal, ultimately, is to reconsider how justice is conceptualized and measured so that the findings obtained from future empirical justice studies can go beyond the constraints of the current paradigm.

The multifoci perspective of justice proposes that individuals tend to target their (in)justice reactions toward the perceived source of the mistreatment. Empirical support for target-specific reactions, however, has been mixed. To explore theoretically relevant reasons for these discrepant results and address unanswered questions in the multifoci justice literature, the present research examines how different justice sources might interactively predict target-specific reactions, and whether these effects occur as a function of moral identity. Results from a sample of North American frontline service employees (N = 314, Study 1) showed that among employees with lower levels of moral identity, low supervisor justice exacerbated the association between low customer justice and customer-directed sabotage, whereas this exacerbation effect was not observed among employees with higher levels of moral identity. This 3-way interaction effect was replicated in a sample of South Korean employees (N = 265, Study 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Taking a resource-based self-regulation perspective, this study examined afternoon emotional exhaustion as a mediator linking the within-person relations between morning work–family conflict and later employee displaced aggression in the work and family domains. In addition, it examined resource-related contextual factors as moderators of these relations. The theoretical model was tested using daily diary data from 125 employees. Data were collected at 4 time points during each workday for 3 consecutive weeks. Multilevel modeling analysis showed that morning family-to-work conflict was positively related to afternoon emotional exhaustion, which in turn predicted displaced aggression toward supervisors and coworkers in the afternoon and displaced aggression toward family members in the evening. In addition, morning workplace interpersonal conflict exacerbated the impact of morning work-to-family conflict on afternoon emotional exhaustion, whereas perceived managerial family support alleviated the impact of morning family-to-work conflict on afternoon emotional exhaustion. These findings indicate the importance of adopting a self-regulation perspective to understand work–family conflict at work and its consequences (i.e., displaced aggression) in both work and family domains.

This research meaningfully connects the literatures on identification and business ethics by proposing the new construct of moral identification. Moral identification is defined here as the perception of oneness or belongingness associated with an organization that exhibits ethical traits (e.g., care, kindness, and compassion), which also involves a deliberate concern of the membership with an ethical organization. Integrating social identity theory with theory on the moral self, this research examines an overall theoretical model where moral identification plays a significant role in explaining employee attraction, motivation, and retention (i.e., 3 components of the overall theoretical framework). These components were examined separately in 3 empirical studies and findings from these studies first revealed that moral identification explained why job seekers with strong (vs. weak) moral identities were more attracted to a socially responsible organization (Study 1). Second, moral identification was associated with lower employee unethical proorganizational behavior (Study 2). Finally, moral identification was negatively related to employees’ turnover intentions. Organizations’ legal compliance moderated this relation such that it was stronger when organizations have higher (vs. lower) levels of legal compliance (Study 3). Taken together, these studies suggest that moral identification offers new insights in explaining both potential and current employees’ behaviors when morality is contextually relevant and subjectively meaningful. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

The authors proposed that customer service employees’ reactions to mistreatment by customers can vary between North American and East Asian employees due to differences in their cultural values. Customer mistreatment was predicted to be associated with direct, active, and target-specific reactions (i.e., sabotage directed toward the source of mistreatment) more so among North American employees as compared to East Asian employees. In contrast, customer mistreatment was predicted to relate to more indirect, passive, and target-general reactions (i.e., withdraw organizational citizenship behavior directed toward customers in general) among employees in East Asia as compared to employees in North America. A field study of customer service employees (N = 213) working in the same hotel chain in China and Canada found support for these predictions. Mediation analyses showed that individualism and collectivism accounted for these differences. Theoretical and practical implications are provided, and future directions are discussed.

The field of industrial–organizational (I–O) psychology has and will continue to experience periods of growth and change. Our field has shifted and transformed along with society, through the industrial revolution, the human relations movement, the globalization of business, and the information age. And here we are, in 2013, at the cusp of what seems to be the beginning of a new stage in our development, this time evidenced by the marked attention that both the science and practice arms of I–O psychology are placing on issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR, Aguinis, 2011; Cruse, 2010; Scott et al. 2013)

This article explores the moderating influence of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance) on the relationship between justice perceptions and both supervisor- and employer-related outcomes. The integration of justice theories with Hofstede’s national culture typology implies multiple, and potentially competing, propositions regarding the impact of culture on justice effects. To sort out these issues, the authors present meta-analytic findings summarizing data from 495 unique samples, representing over 190,000 employees working in 32 distinct countries and regions. Results indicate that justice effects are strongest among nations associated with individualism, femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and low power distance. The authors discuss these findings in terms of the practice of justice across cultures.

This research explored individuals’ reactions to perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) using a multimotive framework. In 2 studies, the authors explored the boundary conditions of CSR effects among job applicants and internal employees. A scenario‐based experiment (N = 81) showed that the effect of CSR perceptions on job applicants’ job pursuit intentions was mitigated by applicants’ first‐party justice experiences, whereas it was amplified by their moral identity (Study 1). Survey data from 245 full‐time employees (Study 2) further supported the interactive effects revealed in Study 1. Specifically, first‐party justice perceptions attenuated the positive relationship between employees’ CSR perceptions and their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB); and the relationship between CSR perceptions and OCB was more pronounced among employees high (versus low) in moral identity. Our findings bridge the CSR and organizational justice literatures, and reveal that the effects of individuals’ CSR perceptions are more complicated than previously thought. The findings shed light on micro (employee)‐level CSR phenomena and offer implications for both research and practice.

Multifoci justice pulls from research on social exchange theory to argue that despite the proliferation of rule sets in the literature (often referred to as the “types” of justice), individuals seek to hold some party accountable for the violation/upholding of such rules, and it is these parties (e.g., supervisors, the organization as a whole) that are most likely to be the recipients of attitudes and behaviors (i.e., target similarity effects). To explore these issues, we meta-analytically (k = 647, N = 235,682) compared the predictive validities of source- vs. type-based justice perceptions and found that (a) multifoci justice perceptions more strongly predicted outcomes directed at matched sources than did type-based justice perceptions, (b) multifoci justice perceptions more strongly predicted target similar than dissimilar outcomes, and (c) the relationships between multifoci justice perceptions and target similar outcomes were mediated by source-specific social exchange.