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Exhaustion has a significant impact on employees and organizations, and leader behavior may affect it. We applied conservation of resources theory to test propositions regarding the joint effects of goal-focused leadership (GFL) and personality on employee exhaustion. We proposed that the relationship between GFL and exhaustion depends on employees' standing on both conscientiousness and emotional stability. Specifically, we expected that high-conscientiousness subordinates experience greater compatibility with a goal-focused leader because of their predisposition to direct resources toward achievement and goal setting, resulting in lower exhaustion under such a leader than among low-conscientiousness employees. Furthermore, high emotional stability may compensate for GFL incompatibility among low-conscientiousness employees by providing additional resources to manage GFL. In contrast, employees low on both traits likely experience greater exhaustion under a goal-focused leader compared with other employees. Results revealed a 3-way interaction in 2 independent samples and were generally supportive of our predictions. GFL was associated with heightened exhaustion among individuals in the low-emotional-stability, low-conscientiousness group but not among workers having any other trait combination. Keywords: exhaustion, goal-focused leadership, conscientiousness, emotional stability, personality DOI: 10.1037/a0020538

The authors tested the hypothesis that goal-focused leadership enables conscientious workers to perform effectively by helping them to accurately understand organizational goal priorities. Data collected from 162 workers in a private sector document processing organization supported the hypotheses that goal-focused leadership moderates the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance and that person-organization goal congruence mediates this moderated relationship. Specifically, conscientiousness was more strongly positively related to performance among workers who perceived that their supervisors effectively set goals and defined roles, responsibilities, and priorities than among workers who did not perceive this type of goal-focused leadership. Keywords: personality, leadership, goal congruence, conscientiousness, performance

The present study examined the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on the relationship between social skill and supervisor-rated job performance. On the basis of regulatory and activation models of behavior, the authors argue that low-POS environments activate social skill because they reflect situations in which interpersonal acuity is required to demonstrate effective job performance. Accordingly, the authors hypothesize that social skill is more strongly related to performance among workers reporting low rather than high levels of organizational support. Results of hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses on data gathered from 2 samples support the hypothesis. These results suggest that the relevance of social skill to job performance may be dependent on contextual cues. Implications for substantive research, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are offered. Keywords: social skill, perceived support, job performance

This research examined the interaction of organizational politics perceptions and employee age on job performance in 3 studies. On the basis of conservation of resources theory, the authors predicted that perceptions of politics would demonstrate their most detrimental effects on job performance for older workers. Results across the 3 studies provided strong support for the hypothesis that increases in politics perceptions are associated with decreases in job performance for older employees and that perceptions of politics do not affect younger employees' performance. Implications of these results, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. Keywords: politics, age, performance, resources, stress

Previous research on workplace deviance has examined the relationship of either personality or employees' situational perceptions with deviant behavior. In this study, the authors focused on the joint relationship of personality and perceptions of the work situation with deviant behavior. Using 4 samples of employees and multiple operationalizations of the core constructs, the authors found support for the hypothesis that positive perceptions of the work situation are negatively related to workplace deviance. In addition, consistent with hypotheses, the personality traits of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness moderated this relationship. Specifically, the relationship between perceptions of the developmental environment and organizational deviance was stronger for employees low in conscientiousness or emotional stability, and the relationship between perceived organizational support and interpersonal deviance was stronger for employees low in agreeableness.

The authors conducted 4 studies to test the hypothesis that the relationship between Conscientiousness and job performance reflecting interpersonal effectiveness is more strongly positive among workers who are higher rather than lower in social skill. Results of hierarchical moderated regression analyses supported the hypothesis in all 4 studies. Among workers high in social skill, Conscientiousness was positively related to performance. Among workers low in social skill, the relationship between Conscientiousness and performance was essentially irrelevant in Study 2 but was negative in the other 3 studies. Potential implications of these results are discussed as are directions for future research.

The authors tested the hypothesis that communication frequency moderates the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and job-performance ratings. In a study of 188 private sector workers, they found that LMX was more strongly related to job-performance ratings among individuals reporting frequent communication with the supervisor than among those reporting infrequent communication. At high levels of LMX, workers reporting frequent communication with the supervisor received more favorable job-performance ratings than did workers reporting infrequent communication. In contrast, at low levels of LMX, workers reporting frequent communication with the supervisor received less favorable job-performance ratings than workers reporting infrequent communication. The authors conducted a 2nd study of 153 public sector workers to provide a constructive replication and found similar results.

Building on the organizational-politics (Kacmar & Baron, 1999) and social-identity (Hogg & Terry, 2000) literatures, we examined the moderating effect of work identity on the organizational-politics/organizational-commitment relationship. Data collected from 500 employees of a data-reporting organization and 943 employees of a customer-service organization indicate that employees who identified primarily with their occupations were less affected by the level of perceived politics in the organization in the consideration of their commitment than were employees who identified primarily with their employing organizations or one of its units. Implications for research and management practice are discussed.

The authors hypothesized that the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance would be stronger for persons high in agreeableness than for those low in agreeableness. Results of hierarchical moderated regression analyses for 7 independent samples of employees across diverse occupations provided support for the hypothesis in 5 of the samples. In samples supporting the hypothesis, among the highly conscientious workers, those low in agreeableness were found to receive lower ratings of job performance than workers high in agreeableness. One explanation for lack of an interaction between conscientiousness and agreeableness in the other 2 samples is that those jobs were not characterized by frequent, cooperative interactions with others. Overall, the results show that highly conscientious workers who lack interpersonal sensitivity may be ineffective, particularly in jobs requiring cooperative interchange with others.

Job and organizational changes have promoted the importance of social skill at work, yet research in this area has been limited. The authors investigated the interaction between social skill and general mental ability (GMA) in the explanation of job performance and salary, controlling for personality and demographic characteristics. The results indicated that the relationships between social skill and job performance were stronger among workers high than low in GMA. In a similar manner, the relationships between GMA and job performance were stronger among workers high than low in social skill. The interaction on salary indicated that increases in social skill (or GMA) for high-GMA (or social skill) individuals were associated with higher salary levels. It is interesting, however, that increases in social skill (or GMA) for those low in GMA (or social skill) contributed to lower salaries. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

Results of moderated multiple regression analyses on data collected from 979 workers in 5 organizations confirmed the hypothesis that supervisor-subordinate goal congruence would moderate the relationship between organizational politics and organizational commitment. Similar analyses on data collected from 366 workers in 2 of those organizations provided partial support for the second hypothesis that goal congruence would also moderate the relationship between organizational politics and job performance. Perceptions of politics were more strongly related to expressions of commitment and supervisor-rated performance among individuals who did not share the priorities of their supervisors than among those whose goal priorities were consistent with those of their supervisors. Results suggest that supervisors and managers can help their employees cope with politics by making efforts to ensure that they share their goal priorities.

ABSTRACT. By using regression analyses on data from 355 full-time employees of a customer-service organization in the eastern United States, the authors tested the hypothesis that perceptions of organizational politics [...]

Workers high in other-oriented perfectionism have unreasonable standards for others and place considerable importance on others meeting these standards. Although other-oriented perfectionism is thought to be maladaptive, we investigated whether other-oriented perfectionists might help others achieve the high standards that they set for them by engaging in task-focused interpersonal citizenship behaviors ( ICB). We suggest that the relationship between an individual's other-oriented perfectionism tendencies and his or her task-focused ICB is non-linear. Furthermore and in line with trait interactionist theory, we argue that an individual's conscientiousness moderates the other-oriented perfectionism-task focused ICB relationship. As hypothesised, data from 154 employees of a public sector organisation, using self-reports of personality and supervisor reports of task-focused ICB, revealed that increases in other-oriented perfectionism for workers high in conscientiousness generally led to those employees engaging in greater levels of task-focused ICB. However, there were diminishing returns at high levels of other-oriented perfectionism. The opposite was found amongst workers low in conscientiousness. Thus, we conclude that conscientiousness brings out a bright side of other-oriented perfectionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Based on social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity, interactional justice has been proposed to be an important construct in explaining individual performance. However, meta-analytic results have noted the relationship is modest at best. The present study extends the understanding of the justice-performance relationship by empirically examining how interactional justice and political skill interactively influence contextual job performance. Focusing on interpersonal aspects of justice and performance, the paper proposes that the existence of interactional justice will only lead to improvements in interpersonally facilitative behavior if employees recognize this situation as an opportunity to invest their skill-related assets into the organization. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Integrating research on political skill with social exchange theory, the current study contends that interactional justice stemming from the supervisor will likely lead to employees feeling obligated and/or wanting to help, cooperate, and consider others in the workplace. However, only employees with political skill will be able to recognize the conditions and act appropriately on these conditions. As such, this paper investigates the moderating role of political skill in the interactional justice-performance relationship. The paper used multi-source survey methodology and applied hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Findings – Results from 189 respondents indicated that interactional justice was more strongly related to supervisor-rated interpersonal facilitation when employees possessed higher levels of political skill. This suggests that when both interactional justice and political skill are high, the potential for interpersonal facilitation is also high. Conversely, when one or both are low, interpersonal facilitation is less likely. Originality/value – Previous articulations and evaluations of the relationship between interactional justice, political skill, and interpersonal facilitation have omitted either situational determinants of motivation or individual differences in job-related skills. With the current study, the paper sought to address these omissions by exploring the interactive effects of interactional justice and political skill on interpersonal facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We posited that the form of the joint effects of motivation and ability in traditional performance models are interactive because motivation triggers the use of energy resources required to deploy ability at work. Moreover, we posited that achievement might best represent motivation compared to five other facets of Conscientiousness or global Conscientiousness. In two samples of customer service representatives, achievement interacted with general mental ability (GMA) in predicting task performance, whereas global Conscientiousness and the other five facets did not. This suggests that researchers examining the motivational aspects of Conscientiousness might uncover a more consistent pattern of results for task performance if they focus on the achievement facet. Furthermore, managers might see the highest levels of task performance in certain contexts when hiring individuals based on both achievement and GMA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the main and interactive effects of general mental ability (GMA) and perceived organizational support (POS) on typical performance and maximum performance. Data from two field samples (96 programmers and 181 cash vault employees) empirically supported distinguishing between typical performance and maximum performance. GMA was related to maximum performance but not to typical performance, and POS was related to two out of three measures of typical performance. Interactive effects of GMA and POS were detected in both samples for maximum performance outcomes but not found for typical performance outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data collected from members (N = 141) of 22 matrix teams in a public sector organization indicated that the perceived reciprocity of social exchange between the team members and the teams (exchange quality) related to expressions of team commitment. Consistent with social identity theory, team identification moderated the magnitude of this relationship. Specifically, team-member exchange quality was unrelated to commitment among members who primarily identified with their team but was moderately related among members identifying with other organizational constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]