Sticking out versus fitting in: A social context perspective of ingratiation and its effect on social exchange quality with supervisors and teammates.

Research indicates that whereas ingratiation directed toward one's supervisor enhances employee-supervisor social exchange quality, it diminishes social exchange quality with those who observe this behavior, such as team members. However, because researchers have largely overlooked the role of social context in shaping supervisors' and teammates' reactions to ingratiatory employees, current understanding of how ingratiation plays out in complex organizational settings may be incomplete, and perhaps misleading. In this study, we augment a social context perspective with social exchange theory to propose that comparative levels of ingratiation, determined by the focal employee's ingratiation in the context of other team members' ingratiation, shape social exchange quality with supervisors and teammates. The results from a multi-wave multi-source field study of 222 employees and their supervisors from 64 teams show that higher levels of ingratiation relative to other team members increases the employee's social exchange quality with the supervisor, whereas congruence between the employee's and other team members' ingratiation enhances social exchange quality with team members. We also find that relative ingratiation and ingratiation congruence increase citizenship received from supervisors and team members, respectively, via social exchange quality with the corresponding actor(s). Overall, our research contributes to a more complete understanding of ingratiation, especially in regard to how reactions to this behavior are largely a function of the social context in which it occurs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Working through an "infodemic": The impact of COVID-19 news consumption on employee uncertainty and work behaviors.

Uncertainty is a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, because uncertainty is an aversive state, uncertainty reduction theory (URT) holds that employees try to manage it by obtaining information. To date, most evidence for the effectiveness of obtaining information to reduce uncertainty stems from research conducted in relatively stable contexts wherein employees can acquire consistent information. Yet, research on crises and news consumption provides reasons to believe that the potential for information to mitigate uncertainty as specified by URT may break down during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Integrating URT with research on crises and news consumption, we predict that consuming news information during crises-which tends to be distressing, constantly evolving, and inconsistent-will be positively related to uncertainty. This in turn may have negative implications for employee goal progress and creativity; two work outcomes that take on substantial significance in times of uncertainty and the pandemic. We further predict that death anxiety will moderate this relationship, such that the link between employees' news consumption and uncertainty is stronger for those with lower levels of death anxiety, compared to those with higher levels. We test our theorizing via an experience-sampling study with 180 full-time employees, with results providing support for our conceptual model. Our study reveals important theoretical and practical implications regarding information consumption during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Taking engagement to task: The nature and functioning of task engagement across transitions.

Engagement is widely viewed as a motivational state that captures the degree to which individuals apply their physical, cognitive, and emotional energies to their jobs, and ultimately improves job performance. However, this job-level view overlooks the possibility that engagement may vary across the different tasks within a job and that engagement in one task may influence engagement and performance in a subsequent task. In this article, we develop and test hypotheses based on a task-level view of engagement and the general notion that there is "residual engagement" from a task that carries forward to a subsequent task. We propose that although task engagement (engagement in a specific task that comprises a broader role) positively spills over to influence task engagement and performance in a subsequent task, in part because of the transmission of positive affect, task engagement simultaneously engenders attention residue, which in turn impedes subsequent task engagement and performance. These predictions were supported in a study of 477 task transitions made by 20 crew members aboard The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Human Exploration Research Analog (Study 1) and in a laboratory study of 346 participants who transitioned between a firefighting task and an assembly task (Study 2). Our investigation explains how engagement flows across tasks, illuminates a negative implication of engagement that has been masked by the predominant job-level perspective, and identifies completeness as a task attribute that reduces this negative consequence of engagement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).