Abstract

We are pleased to present the CEIBS 2021 Innovation Survey. This project came together as a natural byproduct of years teaching in China. Over the past decade, there has been a notable shift from manufacturing to dreaming up innovative new products and services. In response to these trends, we launched this survey to better understand how executives define innovation and what policies and practices companies are currently engaging in to help foster innovative climates. We also hoped to glean important insights into how these trends might differ across different industries and types of companies. Finally, we wanted to gage the impact that innovation has on employee attitudes toward innovation and intentions to leave their organization. We want to sincerely thank all of the executives who participated in this survey for their time and valuable contributions. In particular, we thank the CEIBS alumni community and current students who have shown their support by responding to our call for volunteers. We also acknowledge the financial support from the CEIBS Research Fund, support from the Alumni, MBA, EMBA, FMBA, HEMBA, and Executive Education offices at CEIBS, as well as the many friends that helped to spread the word through their networks. We are grateful to all of them. The CEIBS 2021 Innovation Survey was completed by a total of 950 respondents in the Fall of 2020. In terms of demographics, 72% of the respondents were male and 96% had more than 10 years of work experience (with no respondent having worked for less than 5 years). Tenure in their current organization varied, with 52% working in their firm for over 10 years, 19% working 5-10 years, 23% 1-5 years, and 7% less than 1 year. Of those working in China, most (93%) had been here for over 10 years (with the remainder working here for 5-10 years [4%], 1-5 years [3%], or less than 1 year [1%]). The majority (58%) reported working in the head office whereas 12% were in marketing, 8% in project management, 7% in finance, and 15% in other functions. As demonstrated by these responses and the positions represented in Figure 1 below, our broad and experienced sample provided rich perspectives to the survey.

Keyword

Innovation

Abstract

Considering recent corporate scandals, organizations have increased their efforts to curb unethical employee behavior. However, little is known about whether leaders comply with these efforts and how they respond to unethical employee behavior, especially when unethical actions benefit the organization. By integrating arguments from social identity and moral disengagement theories, we develop and test a model to explain how leaders respond to unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) among employees. Results from one multi-wave, multi-source field study and one experiment showed that leader perceptions of employee UPB were positively related to leader trust in employees when leaders identified strongly with their organization or when they had a strong propensity to morally disengage. Moreover, the results revealed an important three-way interaction effect. Leaders put considerable trust into UPB-enacting employees when leaders both identified strongly with the organization and showed high levels of moral disengagement. In contrast, they put little trust into UPB-enacting employees when leaders identified weakly with the organization and reported low moral disengagement. Furthermore, results showed that leader trust ultimately translated into perceived leader justice toward employees. These findings provide new and important insights into when organizations can(not) rely on their leaders to manage unethical employee behaviors.

Keyword

justice ;  leadership ;  moral disengagement ;  moral disengagement theory ;  organizational identification ;  social identity theory ;  unethical pro‐organizational behavior

Abstract

Keyword

Abstract

The leadership literature suggests that followers are likely to be autonomously motivated when working for servant leaders, leading them to experience greater psychological empowerment. Guided by self-determination theory, we predicted that this empowerment would then heighten individuals' perceptions of their teams' transactive memory systems. When subordinates perceive that discrimination is occurring in their workgroup, however, we expected that the empowerment-transactive memory systems link would be weakened. This moderated mediation model was tested at multiple timepoints using 211 employees from a variety of industries and job types. The results generally supported our predictions, and the implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Keyword

empowerment ;  perceived discrimination ;  self-determination theory ;  servant leadership ;  transactive memory systems

Abstract

We sought to better understand the impact of leader emotional stability on follower burnout. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we examined the emotional exhaustion consequences of supervisor-subordinate emotional stability congruence. Study 1 consisted of 299 light construction and maintenance workers and their supervisors. Study 2 was comprised of 294 workers at a city permits office and their supervisors. As hypothesized, both samples revealed that the highest levels of subordinate emotional exhaustion occurred when both supervisor and subordinate emotional stability were low. Our polynomial regression results suggest that the effects of leader and follower emotional stability are not simply a matter of similarity; subordinates low in emotional stability are disproportionately and negatively impacted by a low-emotional stability leader.

Keyword

Conservation of resources ;  Emotional exhaustion ;  Emotional stability ;  Leader personality ;  Personality congruence

Abstract

Integrating notions of coopetition with social information processing theory, we build and test a theoretical model that explains the paradox that arises when prosocial identifying employees work in competitive climates. Sampling 406 subordinates nested within 91 supervisors over two time‐points, we show that the relationship between prosocial identity and interpersonal helping is stronger when competitive climate is low rather than high. We also find that competitive team climate positively relates to instrumental helping motives (i.e., helping others to gain something in return). In addition, instrumental helping motives significantly moderate the linkage between interpersonal helping and job performance as well as the indirect effect of prosocial identity on job performance via interpersonal helping such that the main and indirect effects became weaker as instrumental helping motives increased. Overall, our findings reveal new insights into how prosocial identifiers incorporate information from social cues to strike a balance between cooperation and competition.

Keyword

competitive team climate ;  helping behaviour ;  helping motives ;  instrumental helping motives ;  job performance ;  prosocial identity

Abstract

Adopting a motivational perspective on creativity, we theorized when and how perceived cognitive diversity in teams was associated with creativity by focusing on the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of learning orientation. We further expanded our contribution by examining these relationships at both the individual and team levels. We used a sample of 382 Chinese employee-supervisor pairs nested within 106 teams to test our hypotheses. The results revealed that, at both the individual and team levels, learning goal orientation significantly moderated the positive association between perceived cognitive diversity and intrinsic motivation such that the latter relationship became stronger as learning goal orientation increased. Furthermore, our findings confirmed that learning goal orientation enhanced the indirect positive relationship between perceived cognitive diversity and creativity through intrinsic motivation.

Keyword

creativity ;  intrinsic motivation ;  learning goal orientation ;  perceived cognitive diversity

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test whether self-verification striving serves as an individual difference antecedent of emotional labor and explore whether various emotional labor tactics acted as mediatingmechanisms through which self-verification striving relates to employee outcomes. Design/methodology/approach - The sample used in this paper consisted of supervisor-subordinate dyads working in six hotels in South Korea and used multi-level analyses and the Monte Carlo method to test the research hypotheses presented in this paper. Findings - Self-verification striving was positively and directly related to job performance as well as two out of three forms of emotional labor (i.e. the expression of naturally felt emotions and deep acting). Selfverification striving also indirectly related to job satisfaction through the expression of naturally felt emotions and indirectly related to job performance through deep acting. Practical implications - The findings of this paper suggest that organizations should consider selfverification striving as an employment selection criterion and provide training programs to help their customer service employees engage in appropriate types of emotional labor. Originality/value - This paper is the first to explore the underlying mechanisms through which selfverification striving relates to employee outcomes. It also empirically bolsters the notion that expressing naturally felt emotions is an important means of authentic self-expression that positively contributes to job satisfaction. Further, the authors found that self-verification striving positively relates to job performance partially through deep acting. Moreover, they have shown that self-verification striving, as an individual differences variable, is an antecedent of different types of emotional labor.

Keyword

Emotional labor ;  Job performance ;  Job satisfaction ;  Self-verification striving

Abstract

Although we know that individuals who tend to reveal their true selves to others at work are better performers, little is known about why this is the case or in which workplace environments this trait will be most helpful. In the present study, we leveraged self-verification theory to better understand the internal and interpersonal effects that self-verification striving has on employees. Specifically, we proposed and found that self-verification striving serves to increase both employee vigor and demand-ability fit, ultimately leading to better job performance. Results of a multilevel, two-wave study involving 222 employees and their supervisors further revealed that ethical climates also play a critical role in affecting the self-verification striving-employee outcome relationship. Specifically, self-verification striving leads to higher vigor and better demand-ability fit and subsequently higher job performance only in teams with high ethical climates. Our results contribute to the literature by describing how and when self-verification striving may augment performance.

Keyword

Conservation of resource theory ;  demand-ability fit ;  ethical climate ;  job performance ;  self-verification striving ;  vigor

Abstract

In the present study, we examined whether greater personality dissimilarity would indirectly lead to lower organizational commitment as a result of heightened emotional exhaustion. We also proposed and tested the notion that the experience of being dissimilar to one’s workgroup members in the traits of (a) agreeableness, (b) conscientiousness, or (c) emotional stability would have the strongest positive effect on emotional exhaustion in workgroups with low justice climates. The data from 8196 members of the U.S. Armed Services confirmed the predicted negative indirect effect for agreeableness dissimilarity, but showed that conscientiousness dissimilarity resulted in a positive indirect effect on commitment. Contrary to expectations, emotional stability dissimilarity did not demonstrate a significant relationship. Multilevel moderated mediation analyses revealed that the presence of a strong workgroup justice climate attenuated the significant mediated relationships. Finally, we report supplementary polynomial regression analyses and discuss their implications for workgroup composition and individual career development. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Keyword

Commitment ;  Emotional exhaustion ;  Justice climate ;  Personality dissimilarity