The impact of dispositional cynicism on job-specific affect and work intentions.

Working from the Employee Work Passion Appraisal (EWPA) model, this article examines the relationship between employee dispositional cynicism, job-specific affect (i.e. positive and negative) and work intentions including intent to use discretionary effort, intent to perform, intent to endorse, intent to stay and intent to be an organisational citizen. An online survey generated participation from 747 current and potential clients of an international consulting company. To evaluate the fit of the data in accordance with the EWPA framework, structural equation modeling was conducted to test the overall fit of the proposed model and to examine the hypothesised relationships between constructs. Analyses confirmed correlations between dispositional cynicism and job-specific affect, supported notable relationships between positive job-specific affect and all work intentions, provided evidence for job-specific affect's mediation of cynicism and work intentions and uncovered a direct negative relationship between cynicism and intent to use organisational citizenship behaviour. Results suggest that state-specific workplace emotions are important for understanding the degree to which employee dispositional cynicism will ultimately influence most performance-related work intentions. However, independent of affect, employee cynicism may directly result in somewhat lower intentions to help others at work. Study limitations and practical implications for employee selection and training are considered.

Examining the Relationship Between Leaders' Power Use, Followers' Motivational Outlooks, and Followers' Work Intentions.

From the foundation of self-determination theory and existing literature on forms of power, we empirically explored relationships between followers' perceptions of their leader's use of various forms of power, followers' self-reported motivational outlooks, and followers' favorable work intentions. Using survey data collected from two studies of working professionals, we apply path analysis and hierarchical multiple regression to analyze variance among constructs of interest. We found that followers' perceptions of hard power use by their leaders (i.e., reward, coercive, and legitimate power) was often related to higher levels of sub-optimal motivation in followers (i.e., amotivation, external regulation, and introjected regulation). However, followers who perceived their leaders used soft power (i.e., expert, referent, and informational power) often experienced higher levels of optimal motivation (i.e., identified regulation and intrinsic motivation), but further investigation of soft power use is warranted. The quality of followers' motivational outlooks was also related to intentions to perform favorably for their organizations.