Group & Organization Management

Group & Organization Management, Ahead of Print. <br/>Grit in leaders (and, in general, all employees) typically results in greater success and well-being but also has potential downsides. We propose that gritty leaders also need to be prudent or they may spend excessive time and resources at work, leading to greater work-to-family conflict and, as a result, lower well-being. Findings of two studies support this reasoning. Grittier and imprudent leaders experience greater work-to-family conflict and lower affective well-being, whereas grittier and prudent leaders experience lower work-to-family conflict and greater affective well-being. We therefore conclude that the agentic resource of grit in leaders may be either positively or negatively related to their affective well-being depending on their prudence. Considering that work-to-family conflict and affective well-being are important for the leader’s health and performance, which in turn may influence team/organizational performance, our study contributes to a better understanding of the routes leading to better leadership and team/organizational functioning.

Group & Organization Management, Ahead of Print. <br/>The employee-organization relationship (EOR) is a key component of organizational behavior. Researchers have consistently shown that employees who perceive that they are supported by their organizations (favorable EORs) tend to have positive attitudes and behave in a manner that helps the organization to reach its goals. For many years, the reciprocity norm (e.g. felt obligation) has been a widely accepted explanation for the EOR. Yet, despite calls to explore additional pathways, little work has examined other mediating mechanisms between favorable EORs and outcomes. We draw on the affect theory of social exchange to argue for the mediating effects of gratitude, felt obligation, and pride on the relationship between perceived organizational support (POS) and outcomes. Our results—from three field studies—show that (a) gratitude mediated the relationships of POS with extra-role performance aimed at aiding the organization, affective organizational commitment, and job satisfaction, (b) the mediating effect of gratitude was stronger than the mediating effect of felt obligation, and (c) gratitude made stronger contributions to extra-role performance and affective organizational commitment than did pride. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

Group & Organization Management, Ahead of Print. <br/>While many aspects of the leader–follower relationship have been studied, we know very little about the role of leader–follower distance in relationships and organizations. In particular, we propose to go beyond the current definition and examine distance as malleable and enacted by leaders. We explore this as acts of “doing distance” via two studies. In the first, we utilized the Critical Incident Technique to collect events of enacted distance from 97 managers working in diverse sectors and organizations. Drawing on the qualitative findings, we develop a conceptual model of the context, goals, and behavioral practices of enacted distance. In the second study (N = 543), we tested the proposed model using an experimental manipulation to examine the role of identity processes and levels (individual, relational, and collective) in leaders’ doing distance. We identify specific managerial practices of doing distance and their related antecedents in terms of individuals’ experiences and relationships, and discuss implications for theory and practice regarding distance in leader–follower relationships.

Group & Organization Management, Ahead of Print. <br/>Research on inclusion has increased at a rapid pace highlighting the need for a close look at the literature for ways to advance future research. This review about individual-level inclusion in the workplace is theoretically grounded in social identity theory and organizes the literature through a process lens using the input-mediator-output-input (IMOI) framework. Inputs (the context that allows for inclusion, such as how extra-organizational factors, alignment, and signaling influence inclusion in organizations), intervening variables (such as change, learning, and power), outputs associated with inclusion (e.g., performance, well-being, and organizational commitment), and inputs resulting from outputs as part of a feedback loop (such as a willingness to engage with diverse others) are included as part of a holistic view of the literature while indicating specific areas that would benefit from further development. Future research directions are offered based on this framework in order to facilitate development of research on inclusion going forward.

Group & Organization Management, Ahead of Print. <br/>Organizational culture is widely seen as an important element in a firm’s success or failure. While there is almost universal agreement that leaders define and shape organizational culture, there is little research exploring how and why they do this. We propose that a leader’s personality and values are the cornerstone of organizational culture. Using a validated natural language processing instrument, we used earnings call data to collect data on the personalities of 460 CEOs in 309 firms and matched this to organizational culture ratings based on Glassdoor employee ratings for the period 2015–2019. Results show strong, interpretable associations between a CEO’s personality and the culture of the firm—and this association is strengthened the longer the CEO is in the role. Further, by examining 128 succession events during this period, we also show that, consistent with attraction-similarity-retention logic, there is some weak evidence that the existing culture of a firm can be related to the selection of a new CEO. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on organizational culture.