7 Getting There from Here: Research on the Effects of Work–Family Initiatives on Work–Family Conflict and Business Outcomes

Abstract

Many employing organizations have adopted work–family policies, programs, and benefits. Yet managers in employing organizations simply do not know what organizational initiatives actually reduce work–family conflict and how these changes are likely to impact employees and the organization. We examine scholarship that addresses two broad questions: first, do work–family initiatives reduce employees’ work–family conflict and/or improve work–family enrichment? Second, does reduced work–family conflict improve employees’ work outcomes and, especially, business outcomes at the organizational level? We review over 150 peer‐reviewed studies from a number of disciplines in order to summarize this rich literature and identify promising avenues for research and conceptualization. We propose a research agenda based on four primary conclusions: the need for more multi‐level research, the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach, the benefits of longitudinal studies that employ quasi‐experimental or experimental designs and the challenges of translating research into practice in effective ways.     

Ignoring Leaders who Break Promises or Following God: How Depersonalization and Religious Faith Inform Employees’ Timely Work Efforts

This study investigates the relationship between employees’ perceptions of psychological contract breaches and their failure to meet work-related deadlines, with a particular focus on the mediating role of the depersonalization they assign to organizational authorities and the moderating role of their religious faith. Results based on multisource data, collected among employees and their supervisors in Pakistani organizations, show that an important factor that underpins the connection between beliefs about broken organizational promises and a diminished propensity to finish work on time is that employees depersonalize organizational leaders. This mediating effect is mitigated by employees’ religious faith. For organizations, this study thus identifies a key mechanism – exhibiting indifference to the people in charge – by which employees’ frustrations about resource-depleting contract breaches may inadvertently escalate into ineffective time management, and it identifies some workers among whom this counterproductive dynamic is less likely, namely, employees who can draw from their religious faith.     

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behaviours: The Contingent Role of Public Service Motivation

In this paper we examine whether the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) is contingent on public service motivation (PSM). We propose that PSM may reduce the motivational influences of transformational leaders’ behaviours on followers’ OCBs in public sector organizations. Using a sample of Mexican employees we tested this proposition with structural equation modelling. Our results show that the motivational effects of transformational leadership were less for public sector followers higher in PSM than for those lower in PSM. A follow‐up study in private sector organizations did not reveal a similar interaction effect. These findings appear consistent with previous research demonstrating that PSM is more aligned to the goals and values of public rather than private sector organizations. Nevertheless, the direct effects of PSM on OCBs remained in the private sector.     

How Leaders Affect Followers’ Work Engagement and Performance: Integrating Leader−Member Exchange and Crossover Theory

Drawing on leader?member exchange and crossover theory, this study examines how leaders’ work engagement can spread to followers, highlighting the role of leader?member exchange as an underlying explanatory process. Specifically, we investigate if leaders who are highly engaged in their work have better relationships with their followers, which in turn can explain elevated employee engagement. For this purpose, we surveyed 511 employees nested in 88 teams and their team leaders in a large service organization. Employees and supervisors provided data in this multi‐source design. Furthermore, we asked the employees to report their annual performance assessment. We tested our model using multilevel path analyses in Mplus. As hypothesized, leaders’ work engagement enhanced leader?member exchange quality, which in turn boosted employee engagement (mediation model). Moreover, employee engagement was positively linked to performance and negatively linked to turnover intentions. As such, our multilevel field study connects the dots between work engagement research and the leadership literature. We identify leaders’ work engagement as a key to positive leader?follower relationships and a means for promoting employee engagement and performance. Promoting work engagement at the managerial level may be a fruitful starting point for fostering an organizational culture of engagement.     

Explaining ambidextrous leadership in the aerospace and defense organizations

Researchers have increasingly been using the term of organizational ambidexterity to denote the simultaneous use of exploration and exploitation in organizations. Exploration refers to innovation, whereas exploitation addresses cost efficiency. However, despite the plethora of research output on ambidexterity, very few studies are actually providing insights into what specific behaviors and leadership styles accomplish ambidexterity and how organizational constraints influence ambidextrous leadership. In this research, we aim to explain the key properties of ambidextrous leadership, where we propose that ambidexterity is most efficiently promoted by ambidextrous leaders who combine two leadership styles: transformational leadership and transactional leadership. In our study, we associate transformational leadership to exploration, whereas transactional leadership is linked to exploitation. We conduct a research on ambidextrous leadership in the aerospace and defense organizations while also taking into account how organizational structure and environmental dynamism impact leadership styles. The results of our research reveal that both leadership styles are present at the senior management level. Top management, however, mostly uses transactional leadership in part because of structural and environmental constraints while also employing some limited form of transformational leadership style. Therefore, our study concludes that in this particular field the ambidextrous leaders are primarily focused on exploitative activities, while only a limited amount of their time is being allocated on exploration-oriented objectives.     

The high cost of low wages: Economic scarcity effects in organizations

Due to current economic circumstances (e.g., stagnating wages, increasing material aspirations, mounting student debt), an increasing number of employees are prone to experiencing economic scarcity, defined here as the perception that one has fewer financial resources than one's needs require. In this paper, we focus primarily on an under-studied population in the organizational sciences: The working poor—employees who hold jobs but do not earn enough to sustain a reasonable standard of living for themselves and their dependents. Taking into account recent research suggesting that scarcity can have profound psychological consequences, we argue that organizations have a vested interest in reducing feelings of financial deprivation among its employees because the psychology of scarcity has the potential to spill over into organizational functioning. Furthermore, we assert that most organizations’ approaches to managing low-wage work are not only ineffective at reducing the spillover effects of scarcity on organizational outcomes, but also increase their endurance because they do not account for the behavioral consequences of financial deprivation. As such, we present more sustainable initiatives through which organizations can reduce scarcity among its employees. Finally, we discuss ways in which organizational researchers can become more involved in relevant public policy debates.     

Exploring the effect of national cultures on organizational commitment of bicultural employees

Many organizations today operate globally and employ a significant number of bicultural employees. Consequently, it is extremely important to conduct research that furthers our understanding of bicultural employees in an organizational context. In addition, research that furthers our understanding of an employee attitude such as the organizational commitment of bicultural employees will have practical significance for organizations seeking to maximize employee commitment. This paper presents two profiles of biculturals based on predominant identification to individualist or collectivist national cultures and offers rationale to support the premise that organizational commitment will differ between collectivist and individualist biculturals. Exploring the national cultural dimensions of organizational commitment of bicultural employees as conceptualized in this paper provides human resource development (HRD) an excellent opportunity to research these two constructs that significantly impact organizational outcomes.     

Transformational leadership climate: Performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions at the organizational level

Transformational leadership (TFL) climate describes the degree to which leaders throughout an organization engage in TFL behaviors. In this study, we investigate performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions of TFL climate at the organizational level of analysis. In a sample of 158 independent organizations, 18,094 employees provided data on TFL climate, positive affective climate, trust climate, and employees' task performance behavior and organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, human resource managers rated overall employee productivity. Study results yielded a pattern of moderated mediation for overall employee productivity and employees' aggregate task performance behavior, in that an organization's TFL climate was indirectly (through positive affective climate) related with these outcome variables under conditions of high trust climate, but not under conditions of low trust climate. Further, we found an organization's TFL climate to indirectly relate with employees' aggregate organizational citizenship behavior through positive affective climate, largely independent of the level of trust climate.     

The interactive effect of leader–member exchange and electronic communication on employee psychological empowerment and work outcomes

We advance understanding of the role that leaders play in promoting psychological empowerment and positive work outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job performance) for employees who engage in a high degree of electronic communication in their job. By integrating leader–member exchange (LMX) theory and theories of electronic communication, we build and test a mediated moderation model in which employees’ degree of electronic communication in their job amplifies the positive relationship that LMX has to psychological empowerment and subsequent employee work outcomes. Based on a sample of 353 early-career professionals employed in a range of different types of organizations, we found general support for the hypothesized model. We discuss the study’s theoretical and practical implications for leading employees in electronically-enabled work environments.     

When the Minority Rules: Leveraging Difference While Facilitating Congruence for Cultural Minority Senior Leaders

The inclusion of cultural minorities as senior leaders is of growing importance and relevance to contemporary organizations with increasingly international composition, but much is to be learned about how and when such leaders impact the workplaces they lead. We draw on the “cultural difference” and “cultural congruence” propositions (Dorfman and House, 2004) to build a model for understanding whether and under what conditions cultural minority senior leaders have an impact on the elaboration of task-relevant information and relationship conflict in their workplaces. Hierarchical regression results from a study of 315 Australian workplaces and their senior leaders suggest that, regardless of whether the senior leader is a member of a cultural minority group, an organizational climate for innovation and flexibility increases information elaboration – an effect that is stronger when the organization faces greater environmental turbulence. The results further provide support for a three-way interaction effect, whereby employees in workplaces led by a cultural minority leader have less relationship conflict when climate for innovation and environmental turbulence are both low. We conclude with a discussion of the scholarly contributions and practical implications of our conceptual and empirical work, the limitations of our study, and future directions for this research.     

How leadership matters: The effects of leaders' alignment on strategy implementation

Research has confirmed that leader behavior influences group and organizational behavior, but we know less about how senior leaders ensure that group and organizational members implement their decisions. Most organizations have multiple layers of leaders, implying that any single leader does not lead in isolation. We focused on how the consistency of leadership effectiveness across hierarchical levels influenced the implementation of a strategic initiative in a large health care system. We found that it was only when leaders' effectiveness at different levels was considered in the aggregate that significant performance improvement occurred. We discuss the implications of these findings for leadership research, specifically, that leaders at various levels should be considered collectively to understand how leadership influences employee performance.     

Empowerment through Choice? A Critical Analysis of the Effects of Choice in Organizations

The provision of choice is one of the most common vehicles through which managers empower employees in organizations. Although past psychological and organizational research persuasively suggests that choice confers personal agency, and is thus intrinsically motivating, emerging research indicates that there could be potential pitfalls. In this chapter, we examine the various factors that could influence the effects of choice. Specifically, we examine individual-level factors such as the chooser's socioeconomic status and cultural background. We also examine situational factors such as the content of choice and the number of choices offered. We then expand our discussion on the effect of giving employees extensive choice by looking at its influence on creative performance. In the second half of this chapter, we discuss implications for future organizational behavior research and examine how emerging research on choice making can inform specific managerial practices.     

A meta-analysis of humble leadership: Reviewing individual,team, and organizational outcomes of leader humility

Humility is a concept grounded in a self-view that something greater than oneself exists. A multitude of disciplines to date have sought to understand how humility impacts leaders, as well as the individuals, teams, and organizations they lead. Despite overlapping research questions, methodologies, and empirical contexts, studies examining leader humility have developed largely in isolation with little overlap between fields. This has created a fundamental divide between micro and macro researchers who suggest that humility is conceptualized as both a mutable behavioral state and a stable leader trait, respectively. We provide a systematic review of research on leader humility at multiple organizational levels of analysis to provide linkages across disciplinary and theoretical divides. We couple our systematic review with a meta-analysis of 212 unique studies, identifying 99 estimates for the relationships between leader humility and numerous individual, team, and organizational variables. Among all variables, we find humble leadership most strongly predicts followers’ satisfaction with the leader and the leaders’ participative decision making. We also find humble leadership does not affect their own job performance or the performance of organizations, but improves the performance of their followers and teams. Building on our results, we call for research across academic disciplines.     

Expecting the Unexpected: Predicting Physiological and Psychological Wildfire Preparedness from Perceived Risk,Responsibility, and Obstacles

People who live in wildfire‐prone communities tend to form their own hazard‐related expectations, which may influence their willingness to prepare for a fire. Past research has already identified two important expectancy‐based factors associated with people's intentions to prepare for a natural hazard: Perceived risk (i.e., perceived threat likelihood and severity) and perceived protection responsibility. We expanded this research by differentiating the influence of these factors on different types of wildfire preparedness (e.g., preparations for evacuation vs. for defending the house) and measured actual rather than intended preparedness. In addition, we tested the relation between preparedness and two additional threat‐related expectations: the expectation that one can rely on an official warning and the expectation of encountering obstacles (e.g., the loss of utilities) during a fire. A survey completed by 1,003 residents of wildfire‐prone areas in Perth, Australia, revealed that perceived risk (especially risk severity) and perceived protection responsibility were both positively associated with all types of preparedness, but the latter did not significantly predict preparedness after controlling for other predictors and demographics. Also, the two new expectancy‐based factors were significantly associated with all types of preparedness, and remained significant predictors of some types of preparedness after controlling for other predictors and demographics: the expectation of being able to rely on an official fire warning and expecting to lose electricity both still predicted less preparedness around house resilience, and expecting to lose water still predicted increased planning preparedness. We discuss public policy implications that follow from this research.     

The mediating effect of organizational commitment and employee empowerment: how transformational leadership impacts employee knowledge sharing intention

This study examined the underlying process through which transformational leaders provide an influence on employees’ knowledge sharing intention by concentrating on mediating roles of psychological empowerment and employees’ commitment to organizations. The direct and indirect impacts of transformational leadership on knowledge sharing were explored. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, structural equation modelling analysis was conducted with a sample of 426 full-time employees in South Korea. The results of this study showed a significant direct effect of transformational leadership on psychological empowerment and organizational commitment, which in turn had a significant influence on employees’ knowledge sharing intention. Transformational leadership had only an indirect effect on knowledge sharing intention among employees. These results bring out the importance of mediating roles of employee’s attitudes, especially organizational commitment, for promoting knowledge sharing intention among employees.     

Leadership for organizational adaptability: A theoretical synthesis and integrative framework

One of the biggest challenges facing leaders today is the need to position and enable organizations and people for adaptability in the face of increasingly dynamic and demanding environments. Despite this we know surprisingly little about this topic. In this paper we provide a theoretical synthesis and integrative review of research from strategy, organization theory, innovation, networks, and complexity to provide a framework of leadership for organizational adaptability. Our review shows that leadership for organizational adaptability is different from traditional leadership or leading change. It involves enabling the adaptive process by creating space for ideas advanced by entrepreneurial leaders to engage in tension with the operational system and generate innovations that scale into the system to meet the adaptive needs of the organization and its environment. Leadership for organizational adaptability calls for scholars and practitioners to recognize organizational adaptability as an important organizational outcome, and enabling leadership (i.e., enabling the adaptive process through adaptive space) as a critical form of leadership for adaptive organizations.     

What is strategic leadership? Developing a framework for future research

We attempt to bring clarity to the concept of strategic leadership and guide its development by reviewing and synthesizing the existing management literature on how top managers and board directors influence organizations. We propose a new definition of strategic leadership and offer a framework organized around the essential questions of what strategic leadership is, what strategic leaders do, why they do it, and how they do it. To answer these questions, we organize our review around the eight functions strategic leaders serve, the key attributes of strategic leaders, the theories scholars have used to relate these functions and attributes to outcomes, contextual factors, and the organizational outcomes that strategic leaders affect. We identify how strategic leadership research is concentrated in five streams that rarely interact with each other, and offer suggestions for connecting these streams. Our review provides a big picture of what is known about individuals at the top levels of organizations and highlights the key areas where future investigation is essential.     

Individual and organizational strategies for coping with organizational change

Abstract

During times of significant change to organizations in strategies and structures, employees can experience high levels of stress as their jobs, areas of responsibility and roles also change. Yet research is curiously silent about how people react to organizational change, especially towards promoting healthy responses to change. As a first step to outlining areas for future research this paper considers a range of individual and organizational strategies that may be effective in reducing employee stress and related problems. Prior to the implementation of these strategies, however, organizations must empower employees to adopt the role of change agent and encourage them to take action to solve the problems that stress them. At the individual level, employees can respond to the stress created by organizational change by using problem- and emotion-focused strategies. Also important in coping with change are the personal resources of employees, including a sense of hardiness, beliefs about having control over their work environment, and the availability of social supports within and outside the organization. Although few organizations fully acknowledge their role in helping employees cope with change, there are a number of initiatives that organizations can pursue. Several strategies are discussed in relation to communication, leadership, job-related tasks and stress management programmes.     

Innovative activity in small businesses: Competitive context and organization level

The effect of market type and product technology on innovation was studied using data from 3800 employees in 88 small businesses. Results demonstrate that: (1) organizational context effects on innovative activity are significant at administrative and strategic levels, (2) organizational members in consumer markets initiate more innovations but implement fewer than organizational members in industrial markets, (3) members of service-providing organizations report less innovative activity than those in goods-producing organizations, and (4) operative level employees appear to play a small role in the innovation process.     

Individual and organizational strategies for coping with organizational change

During times of significant change to organizations in strategies and structures, employees can experience high levels of stress as their jobs, areas of responsibility and roles also change. Yet research is curiously silent about how people react to organizational change, especially towards promoting healthy responses to change. As a first step to outlining areas for future research this paper considers a range of individual and organizational strategies that may be effective in reducing employee stress and related problems. Prior to the implementation of these strategies, however, organizations must empower employees to adopt the role of change agent and encourage them to take action to solve the problems that stress them. At the individual level, employees can respond to the stress created by organizational change by using problem- and emotion-focused strategies. Also important in coping with change are the personal resources of employees, including a sense of hardiness, beliefs about having control over their work environment, and the availability of social supports within and outside the organization. Although few organizations fully acknowledge their role in helping employees cope with change, there are a number of initiatives that organizations can pursue. Several strategies are discussed in relation to communication, leadership, job-related tasks and stress management programmes.