Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Turnover Intentions with Organizational Identification and Job Satisfaction*

The social identity approach is a powerful theoretical framework for the understanding of individuals' behaviour. The main argument is that individuals think and act on behalf of the group they belong to because this group membership adds to their social identity, which partly determines one's self‐esteem. In the organizational world, social identity and self‐categorization theories state that a strong organizational identification is associated with low turnover intentions. Because identification is the more general perception of shared fate between employee and organization, we propose that the relationship between identification and turnover will be mediated by job satisfaction as the more specific evaluation of one's task and working conditions. In four samples we found organizational identification feeding into job satisfaction, which in turn predicts turnover intentions.     

Improving Participation in Green Infrastructure Planning

Green infrastructure is a strategic planning concept that is able to address environmental, social and even economic problems by supplying a variety of benefits for society. Especially in times of public financial crises and spatial transformation, it is important to ensure that those services are high quality to guarantee that they will provide the intended benefits by integrating stakeholders’ knowledge and experience into green infrastructure planning. Active stakeholder participation leads to legitimate and informed future planning that accounts for society’s needs. This paper investigates participation approaches of six green infrastructure investments in Belgium, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The major aim is to explore how and when participation should take place to optimize participation in green infrastructure planning. This is achieved by surveying the stakeholders involved and conducting stakeholder discussions to identify their views on the participation approaches employed and their integration into the planning process. We found that stakeholders were generally satisfied with how they were involved but desired a broader and more tailored mix of approaches. Furthermore, we found several Arnstein gaps, which lead us to conclude by suggesting recommendations that are helpful for successful participation in green infrastructure planning.     

System Justification in Responding to the Poor and Displaced in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

We examine people's reactions to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, most of whom are minorities living in poverty, and we do so in terms of system justification theory. We propose that the social system was indirectly threatened for the public when inadequate relief efforts exposed governmental shortcomings, called into question the legitimacy of agency leadership, and highlighted racial inequality in America. In response to such system threats, both victims and observers (e.g., the general public, commentators, policy makers) are known to engage in various forms of system justification, including direct defense of the status quo, victim blaming, stereotyping, and internalization of inequality. These processes can reduce emotional distress and restore perceived legitimacy to the system, but they may have a number of troubling consequences for the storm victims in their efforts to return to normalcy.     

The "Antidemocratic Personality" Revisited: A Cross-National Investigation of Working-Class Authoritarianism

More than 60 years ago, psychologists identified a potential threat to democracy from within, namely the "antidemocratic personality" arising from the "authoritarian syndrome." It was soon discovered that the problem of authoritarianism was especially acute among those who were low in education and income, and that it was associated with intolerance toward others. However, several important questions were left unresolved. We revisit fundamental theoretical and empirical questions concerning the existence and nature of "working-class authoritarianism," focusing especially on four psychological aspects of authoritarianism, namely, conventionalism, moral absolutism, obedience to authority, and cynicism. In a cross-national investigation involving respondents from 19 democratic countries, we find that all four aspects of authoritarianism are indeed related to moral and ethnic intolerance. However, only obedience to authority and cynicism are especially prevalent among those who are low in socioeconomic status. Conventionalism and moral absolutism were significant predictors of economic conservatism, whereas obedience to authority and cynicism were not. We find no support for Lipset's (1960) claim that working-class authoritarianism would be associated with economic liberalism. Instead, we find that authoritarianism is linked to right-wing orientation in general and that intolerance mediates this relationship. Implications for electoral politics and political psychology are discussed.     

Psychological Needs and Values Underlying Left-Right Political Orientation: Cross-National Evidence from Eastern and Western Europe

According to previous research conducted mainly in the UnitedStates, psychological needs pertaining to the management ofuncertainty and threat predict right-wing conservatism, operationallydefined in terms of resistance to change and acceptance of inequality.In this study, we analyze data from 19 countries included inthe European Social Survey (ESS) to assess two sets of hypotheses:(1) that traditionalism (an aspect of resistance to change)and acceptance of inequality would be positively associatedwith right (versus left) orientation, and (2) that rule-following(an aspect of the need for order), high need for security, andlow need for openness to experience would be associated withright (versus left) orientation, adjusting for quadratic effectsassociated with ideological extremity. In addition, we determinethe extent to which the pattern of relations among needs, values,and political orientation was similar in Eastern and WesternEuropean contexts. Results from regression and structural equationmodels indicate that traditionalism and, to a lesser extent,rule-following predict right-wing conservatism in both regions,whereas acceptance of inequality predicts right-wing orientationin the West only. Although openness to experience was associatedwith preferences for greater equality in both regions, it wasassociated with left-wing orientation in Western Europe andright-wing orientation in Eastern Europe. Needs for security,conversely, were associated with right-wing orientation in WesternEurope and left-wing orientation in Eastern Europe. Thus, wefind evidence of both universal and context-specific effectsin our analysis of the cognitive and motivational antecedentsof left-right political orientation.     

The organization of project evaluation under competition

This article examines the optimal organizational form of project evaluation under competition. The evaluations are carried out by two fallible screening units that sequentially assess projects. Screening can be organized as a hierarchy or a polyarchy. We show that as competitive pressure rises, the polyarchy becomes less attractive. Therefore, different organizational forms might be found in different industries depending on the degree of competition. In addition, we examine endogenous screening rules under competition: For symmetric situations, we show that polyarchies will employ higher decision thresholds compared to hierarchies. Nonetheless, as in the case of exogenous screening rules, the hierarchy becomes more attractive the higher the degree of competition.

Unterstützungsbedarfe ausländischer Existenzgründer/innen mit akademischem Hintergrund – eine explorative Studie

Academic migrant company founders have not been in the focus of entrepreneurship research in Germany so far. The Project “StartMiUp—support for academic entrepreneurs with migration background” is dealing with this target group in the context of the German IQ-Network. In an empiric study the project investigates the specific challenges in starting up business and the support requirements of academic migrant founders. The study includes the perspective of start-up consultants and entrepreneurs from the target group. The results point out the necessity to increase the intercultural awareness and the competence orientation of existing start up consultancy institutions.     

An economic theory of leadership styles

This paper studies the role of leadership style in providing incentives to subordinates. A leadership style is characterized by its degree of decentralization of tasks and its degree of empathy towards subordinates’ interests. I analyze the optimal leadership style in an incomplete contract framework in which the agent as well as the principal jointly have to solve decision problems and implement their solutions. I show that the optimal leadership style crucially depends on the environment (structure of decision problems and associated payoffs) as well as on the agent’s personality (incentive alignment and competence). Moreover, I examine how monetary incentives influence the optimal leadership style.     

Nachruf auf Prof. Dr. Achim Schrader

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