Moderators of the Relationships Between Coworkers' Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Fellow Employees' Attitudes.

The authors developed and tested the prediction that the relationship hetween coworkers' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and fellow employees' attitudes depends on the supervisors' abusiveness. Results of a longitudinal study using data collected from 173 supervised employees at 2 points in time (separated by 7 months) suggested that coworkers' OCB was positively related to fellow employees' job satisfaction and affective commitment when abusive supervision was low. However, when abusive supervision was high, coworkers' OCB was negatively related to job satisfaction and was unrelated to organizational commitment. The results of a 2nd study were consistent with the idea that the attributions employees make for their coworkers' OCB explains the moderating effect of abusive supervision on the relationship between coworkers' OCB and job satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abusive supervision and family undermining as displaced aggression.

This study focuses on factors that contribute to abusive supervision, one form of nonphysical aggression, and the results of such abuse on subordinates and their family members. Using a "kick the dog" metaphor (As Marcus-Newhall, Pedersen, Carlson, and Miller (2000) state, this is a "commonly used anecdote to illustrate displaced aggression. . .a man is berated by his boss but does not retaliate because he fears losing his job. Hours later, when he arrives home to the greeting barks of his dog he responds by kicking it," p. 670), the authors investigated whether abusive supervision may be the result of a supervisor's displeasure with his or her organization. Using a sample of 210 supervisors, their subordinates, and the subordinates' family members or partners, the authors hypothesized that supervisors' reports of psychological contract violations, moderated by hostile attribution bias, would be associated with subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision. In turn, the authors hypothesized that abused subordinates' family members would report sustained negative affect and negative evaluations directed toward them in the home. The hypotheses were supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A within-subject longitudinal study of the effects of positive job experiences and generalized workplace harassment on well-being.

Drawing on the mobilization-minimization hypothesis, this research examines the influence of positive job experiences and generalized workplace harassment (GWH) on employee job stress and well-being over time, postulating declines in the adverse influence of GWH between Time 1 and 2 and less pronounced declines in the influence of positive job experiences over this same timeframe of approximately one year. A national sample of 1,167 workers polled via telephone at two time periods illustrates that negative job experiences weigh more heavily on mental health than do positive job experiences in the short-term. In the long-term, GWH's association with mental health and job stress was diminished. But its effects on job stress, and mental health, and physical health persist over one year, and, in the case of long-term mental health, GWH overshadows the positive mental health effects of positive job experiences. The research also argues for a reconceptualization of GWH and positive job experiences as formative latent variables on theoretical grounds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Justice, citizenship, and role definition effects.

A limitation of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature is that theory and empirical evidence suggest that some employees define OCBs as part of their job. A theoretical framework that addresses this problem is tested in this article. The framework focuses on 2 effects: a role enlargement effect (i.e., employees with more favorable attitudes define OCB as inrole behavior, which, in turn, results in greater citizenship) and a role discretion effect (i.e., the relationship between employees' attitudes and their citizenship will be stronger among employees who define OCB as extrarole behavior). In tests of this framework with 2 independent samples of supervisor–subordinate dyads, role definition were found to moderate several relationships between procedural justice and OCB, providing support for the role discretion effect. Implications for OCB theory and research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)