Inclined but less skilled? Disentangling extraversion, communication skill, and leadership emergence.

Individual extraversion is considered to be one of the most consistent predictors of leadership emergence according to meta-analytic support, but inconsistent empirical results indicate that their relationship may be more nuanced than scholars have concluded. We propose two key reasons for why the extraversion-emergence relationship has yielded inconsistent results. First, we challenge one of the fundamental theoretical assumptions regarding why extraverts emerge as leaders, namely, that extraverts have high levels of communication skill. Drawing on the personality literature, we argue that rather than being inextricably linked to extraversion, communication skill not only plays a separate role but also may determine when extraversion relates to emergence. Second, we test a multilevel model accounting for the team context by proposing in alignment with the social identity model of leadership that a team's overall level of extraversion impacts the team's leadership prototypes and thus the importance of extraversion and communication skill for leadership emergence. We test our hypotheses across two studies in assessment center contexts. We find broad support for our multilevel model and show that extraversion's effects may be much more conditional than previously assumed, whereas communication skill may be a more promising explanatory factor. Thus, we provide a more complete understanding of why and when interpersonal characteristics relate to leadership emergence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A meta-analytic examination of the gender difference in creative performance.

Studies examining gender and creative performance ratings have offered mixed results. The current meta-analysis integrates insights from gender role theories (Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Karau, 2002) with Woodman et al. (1993) interactionist perspective of creativity to identify factors that explain these observed inconsistencies across studies. Cumulating decades of research from 259 independent studies (N = 79,915), we find a male advantage in creative performance (δ = .13). An examination of contextual moderators reveals that this gender gap is contingent on several social and cultural factors. We observe a decline in the creativity gender gap when the country-level cultural context of the sample is communal and an increase when it is agentic. Results also show that the gender disparity declined over time, but industry gender composition did not influence the gender gap. Interestingly, we find that the gender gap is larger when creative performance is self- versus other-reported. Finally, methodological contingency factors such as publication status, study setting, creativity type, and occupational creativity requirements were also assessed. Overall, our findings clarify gender's relationship with creative performance and underscore the importance of undertaking contingency-based approaches in future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Multiple team membership and empowerment spillover effects: Can empowerment processes cross team boundaries?

In today's organizations, employees are often assigned as members of multiple teams simultaneously (i.e., multiple team membership), and yet we know little about important leadership and employee phenomena in such settings. Using a scenario-based experiment and 2 field studies of leaders and their employees in the People's Republic of China and the United States, we examined how empowering leadership exhibited by 2 different team leaders toward a single employee working on 2 different teams can spillover to affect that employee's psychological empowerment and subsequent proactivity across teams. Consistent across all 3 studies, we found that each of the team leaders' empowering leadership uniquely and positively influenced an employee's psychological empowerment and subsequent proactive behaviors. In the field studies, we further found that empowering leadership exhibited by one team leader influenced the psychological empowerment and proactive behaviors of their team member not only in that leader's team but also in the other team outside of that leader's stewardship. Finally, across studies, we found that empowering leadership exhibited on one team can substitute for lower levels of empowering leadership experienced in a different team led by a distinct leader. We discuss our contributions to the motivation, teams, and leadership literatures and provide practical guidance for leaders charged with managing employees that have multiple team memberships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Detrimental Effects of "Stretch" Goals in Specialty Substance Use Disorder Treatment Organizations.

BACKGROUND: "Stretch" goals, a rarely examined concept that represents seemingly impossible, highly ambitious organizational goals ostensibly established to fill performance gaps and motivate employees, are examined within a sample of substance use disorder (SUD) treatment centers in the United States in terms of their prevalence and effects on organizational behavior. Stretch goals are defined as "seemingly impossible" goals intended to motivate employees to achieve high performance. In light of the high level of environmental change and unpredictability faced by SUD treatment centers in recent decades, we theorize that stretch goals would be both common and often detrimental (in terms of capacity utilization rate and efficiency) in these settings. METHODS: In a temporally lagged analysis of data from leaders of a representative U. S. national sample of 219 SUD treatment centers characterized by entrepreneurial management structures, we examined the prevalence of stretch goals and their impact on key outcome variables of capacity utilization rate and efficiency. RESULTS: Widespread adoption of stretch goals was found, with 43% of our sample falling within the stretch category. Stretch goals had a negative main effect on capacity utilization rate as compared to less ambitious challenging goals. Stretch and prior performance interacted to further predict capacity utilization rate, whereas stretch and slack resource availability interacted to predict center efficiency. DISCUSSION: Although stretch goals are frequently used in the SUD treatment industry, we find them mostly detrimental to performance. Stretch goals may enhance the efficiency of treatment centers with prior limited resource availability, but they are negatively associated with capacity utilization, especially in centers with a record of already strong performance. Despite the high prevalence of such goals and positive values centered on aspirational behavior, these results strongly suggest caution in such goal setting in SUD treatment centers.

Above and beyond, again and again: self-regulation in the aftermath of organizational citizenship behaviors.

In this temporally lagged study of employees in a service organization, we examined the ways in which feedback regarding organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) may affect employees' motives to continue performing OCBs over time. Building on the self-regulation approach to citizenship (Bolino, Harvey, & Bachrach, 2012), we propose and test an overall model of OCB motive, others' attribution and feedback, and motive fulfillment to determine their impact on continuing OCB. Using a total sample of 213 employees and structural equation modeling, we found support for most of our model, indicating that instances of OCB initiate a chain of events that can ultimately lead individuals to alter their OCB patterns, based on their own motives, others' motive attributions, and feedback. We also find that feedback regarding OCB can influence motive fulfillment and the motivations to engage in future OCB, although this feedback is most powerful when it comes from peers, as opposed to managers.