Perceived personal and contextual impunity: Conceptualization, antecedents, and implications for workplace misconduct.

Scholarship on impunity has centered around quantifiable prosecutions related to criminal acts that often occur outside of the workplace. We offer insights into the psychological experience of impunity by shifting the focus to organizational settings and embedding impunity within discussions of workplace misconduct. We distinguish between (a) perceived personal impunity, which reflects employees' belief that they will not face punishment for their own misconduct; and (b) perceived contextual impunity, which reflects employees' belief that their organization will not punish employees for their misconduct. We develop and validate measures for each impunity perception and establish a preliminary nomological network by investigating factors that influence each perception and their relationship with workplace misconduct. Consequently, we offer nuanced insights into how distinct impunity perceptions result in workplace misconduct relative to other established predictors. Our perceived workplace impunity measures provide a valuable tool for assessing impunity perceptions and predicting instances of misconduct. In addition, they offer practical insights into impunity's functions within organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The errors of experts: When expertise hinders effective provision and seeking of advice and feedback.

To be effective, experts need to simultaneously develop others (i.e. provide advice and feedback to novices) and advance their own learning (i.e. seek and incorporate advice and feedback from others). However, expertise, and the state of efficacy associated with it, can inhibit experts from engaging in these activities or doing so effectively. We discuss when and why cognitive entrenchment and reduced perspective taking lead experts to hold misperceptions about others. We then explain how these misperceptions lead experts to provide less helpful advice and feedback to novices and to be less likely to seek and take input from others. We offer insights to overcome these barriers, enhancing experts' ability to provide and propensity to seek advice and feedback.

It's not only what you do, but why you do it: How managerial motives influence employees' fairness judgments.

Although past research demonstrates that perceived fairness leads to many benefits, it also tends to assume that fairness flows almost exclusively from justice adherence. We instead reason that when employees form fairness judgments, they consider not only the extent to which supervisors adhere to justice but also why supervisors do so. In particular, our work outlines three distinct theoretical pathways to fairness. Supervisory justice motives affect fairness judgments via supervisors' justice rule adherence (behavioral) and via employees' attributed motives (attributional), such that prosocial (self-interest) motives are positively (negatively) related to fairness judgments after controlling for justice. We also reason that people jointly consider supervisory motives and justice when forming fairness judgments (interactive), such that the relationship between prosocial (self-interest) motives and fairness judgments is more positive (negative) when justice is lower versus higher. We test our predictions across six studies, both survey and experimental. Our results support the three pathways for prosocial justice motives and the behavioral and attributional (but not interactive) pathways for self-interest justice motives. Our work suggests organizations trying to promote fairness should avoid inadvertently instilling a self-interest justice motive in their supervisors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Keeping it between us: Managerial endorsement of public versus private voice.

When employees use public settings such as team meetings to engage in voice-the expression of work ideas or concerns, they can spur useful discussions, action planning, and problem solving. However, we make the case that managers, whose support is essential for voice to have a functional impact, are averse to publicly expressed voice and prefer acting on voice that is privately brought up to them in one-on-one settings. Drawing on face management theory (Goffman, 1967), we argue that voice expressed in front of an audience, compared with that expressed one-on-one, is more threatening to the image that managers seek to portray as competent and unerring leaders, and that leads managers to respond more defensively to public voice and endorse it less. This, we propose, is especially true when the relationship quality between manager and employee is weak as public voice from relationally distant employees is perceived as a stronger challenge. Across five studies (correlational and experimental), we find support for our arguments and rule out alternative explanations such as that managers are aversive to public voice because it threatens their ego or that managers feel more accountable to act on publicly provided input. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

I do not need feedback! Or do I? Self-efficacy, perspective taking, and feedback seeking.

A central idea in the feedback seeking literature is that there should be a positive relationship between self-efficacy and the likelihood of seeking feedback. Yet empirical findings have not always matched this theoretical claim. Departing from current theorizing, we argue that high self-efficacy may sometimes decrease feedback seeking by making people undervalue feedback and that perspective taking is an important factor in determining whether or not this occurs. Results from 5 studies, utilizing diverse methodologies and samples, support our hypothesis that the relationship between self-efficacy and feedback seeking depends on the extent to which one engages in perspective taking. In the absence of perspective taking, self-efficacy tends to be more negatively related to feedback seeking. However, when perspective taking occurs, this relationship tends to be more positive. We also provide evidence that this interaction effect is mediated by perceptions of the value of feedback. We discuss the implications of our theory and findings for the feedback seeking literature and more broadly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Centralization of member voice in teams: Its effects on expertise utilization and team performance.

Voice, or the expression of work-related suggestions or opinions, can help teams access and utilize members' privately held knowledge and skills and improve collective outcomes. However, recent research has suggested that sometimes, rather than encourage positive outcomes for teams, voice from members can have detrimental consequences. Extending this research, we highlight why it is important to consider voice centralization within teams, or the extent to which voice is predominantly emanating from only a few members rather than equally spread across all members. We argue that, under certain circumstances, voice centralization is harmful to the utilization of members' expertise in the team and, thereby, to team performance. Specifically, we propose that voice centralization is likely to have negative effects when it occurs around members who are more socially dominant or are less reflective. We find support for our arguments in a sample of 78 teams (319 team members) working on graduate student projects in a business school over a semester. Overall, through our theory and results, we showcase why it is important for future studies to examine the distribution of voice among team members. (PsycINFO Database Record

Regulating and facilitating: the role of emotional intelligence in maintaining and using positive affect for creativity.

Although past research has identified the effects of emotional intelligence on numerous employee outcomes, the relationship between emotional intelligence and creativity has not been well established. We draw upon affective information processing theory to explain how two facets of emotional intelligence-emotion regulation and emotion facilitation-shape employee creativity. Specifically, we propose that emotion regulation ability enables employees to maintain higher positive affect (PA) when faced with unique knowledge processing requirements, while emotion facilitation ability enables employees to use their PA to enhance their creativity. We find support for our hypotheses using a multimethod (ability test, experience sampling, survey) and multisource (archival, self-reported, supervisor-reported) research design of early career managers across a wide range of jobs.