Changing Digital Age in the Wake of COVID-19

Virtual teams play a crucial role in today’s knowledge-based organisation for overcoming challenges in our dynamic world, especially in the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams play a key role in today’s knowledge-based organization for overcoming challenges in our dynamic world. Drawing on social information processing theory, this study explores the effect of members’ humility and team environment within a leaderless team mainly based on virtual platforms. Their impacts on shared leadership, relationship conflict and team and individual performance were investigated. Surveying 219 students forming 61 virtual leaderless teams, our findings showed that a high level of humility and a positive team environment can help to improve shared leadership within a team, which contributes to team performance. Moreover, both humility and team environment have a negative relationship with relationship conflict, which depressed both team and individual performance. Our analysis also indicated that humility positively interacts with team environment on shared leadership.

Role of Peer Coaching in Transmitting the Benefits of Leader Coaching

Drawing on social information processing theory, the present study examines how and when leader coaching can be beneficial for team performance. Based on a sample of 58 teams from a sanitary product company in China, we found that peer coaching served as a mediator linking leader coaching and team performance. Moreover, the team individualistic/collectivism value moderated the first-stage relationship that the relationship between leader coaching and peer coaching was more positive when the team individualism value was low, but not significant when the team individualism value was high; while team task interdependence moderated the second-stage relationship that the relationship between peer coaching and team performance was more positive when the team task interdependence was high, but not significant when it was low. The findings enrich our understandings of the effectiveness of leader coaching behavior by uncovering the theoretical mechanism and boundary conditions. The study also provides important implications for coaching practice in organizations.

Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

Aggression and trait anger have been linked to attentional biases toward angry faces and attribution of hostile intent in ambiguous social situations. Memory and emotion play a crucial role in social-cognitive models of aggression but their mechanisms of influence are not fully understood. Combining a memory task and a visual search task, this study investigated the guidance of attention allocation toward naturalistic face targets during visual search by visual working memory (WM) templates in 113 participants who self-reported having served a custodial sentence. Searches were faster when angry faces were held in working memory regardless of the emotional valence of the visual search target. Higher aggression and trait anger predicted increased working memory modulated attentional bias. These results are consistent with the Social-Information Processing model, demonstrating that internal representations bias attention allocation to threat and that the bias is linked to aggression and trait anger.

Eminence of Leader Humility for Follower Creativity During COVID-19: The Role of Self-Efficacy and Proactive Personality

The purpose of this study is to understand how leader humility effectively stimulates follower creativity in the workplace during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) scenario. Relying on social cognitive and social information processing theories, this study investigates how leader humility cultivates follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. Furthermore, it explores an intervening mechanism of follower self-efficacy and examines a moderating role of leader proactive personality. The hypothesized model is empirically tested by collecting the data from 405 employees and 87 managers working in the banking sector of Pakistan. The results indicate that leader humility is positively related to follower self-efficacy and follower creativity, which improve the organization’s innovation climate and an environment for social sustainability. Follower self-efficacy is also significantly related to follower creativity. The mediation analysis shows that follower self-efficacy mediates the relationship between leader humility and follower creativity. Additionally, leader proactive personality moderates the relation between follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. This study highlights the importance of leader humility for creativity and extends the literature by explaining the role of self-efficacy. Furthermore, the findings may assist the policymakers in how a humble leader heightens employee creativity and social sustainability in COVID-19.

How and When Health-Promoting Leadership Facilitates Employee Health Status: The Critical Role of Healthy Climate and Work Unit Structure

Health-promoting leadership has attracted a lot of attention from scholars in recent years. However, majority studies focused on theoretical arguments rather than empirical examination. Not only that, extant research often theorizes health-promoting leadership as a combination of a series of direct and explicit health-related behaviors, neglecting the potential social information it may convey to employees. Based on social information processing theory, this study empirically examines how and when health-promoting leadership can facilitate employees’ health status. Using a time-lagged data of 370 employees (i.e., matched to 51 leaders), we found that health-promoting leadership has a significant and positive influence on employees’ health status, and healthy climate acts as a linking pin. In addition, work unit structure moderates the relationship between health-promoting leadership and healthy climate. Specifically, compared with mechanic work unite structure, employees rely more on social information conveyed by health-promoting leadership when working at an organic work unite structure. This study not only extends current knowledge about the effect of health-promoting leadership, but also provides useful guidance for practitioners.

How and when does leader narcissism hinder team radical creativity? The role of team information elaboration and inter-team competition

Purpose Drawing on social information processing theory and trait activation theory, this study aims to examine the mediating effect of leader narcissism on team radical creativity via team information elaboration and explores the moderating role of inter-team competition. Design/methodology/approach Time-lagged and multisource survey data were collected from 86 team leaders and 409 employees in a Chinese company. Path analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Findings The results indicated that leader narcissism could impede team radical creativity via team information elaboration. Moreover, the negative indirect effects of leader narcissism on team radical creativity were more pronounced when the inter-team competition was low. Originality/value This study makes contributions to the literature on leader narcissism and team radical creativity by examining the detrimental indirect effects of leader narcissism on team radical creativity via team information. Furthermore, it broadens current literature by investigating the potential positive intervention of inter-team competition on the negative aspects of leader narcissism.

Family supportive and singles-friendly: how an equally supportive working environment impacts unmarried hotel employees

Purpose This study aims to focus on a relatively unexplored area: single employees’ non-work needs. With social information processing theory as the basis, the authors examine the process whereby a singles-friendly work culture leads to multiple desirable outcomes for single employees. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected from 472 single employees working in the hospitality sector in China. A model with three mediating paths was tested using Mplus 7.2 software. Findings The authors found that organization-based self-esteem mediates the relationship between a singles-friendly work culture and emotional exhaustion; procedural justice mediates the relationship between a singles-friendly work culture and organizational commitment and hostility mediate the relationship between a singles-friendly work culture and helping behaviors directed toward coworkers. Practical implications The present study reminds hotel managers that establishing a singles-friendly work culture is a new strategy to retain and attract talented single employees. Originality/value Inspired by the work of Casper et al. (2007), the authors examined the importance of equal employment opportunities for single employees, who are the major workforce in the hotel industry but are often ignored in academic research.

Evaluating the Impact of Positive Implicit Followership towards Employees’ Feedback-Seeking: Based on the Social Information Processing Perspective

Amid the growth of COVID-19 pandemic, SMEs are facing greater uncertainties and pressures to survive because even though they are efficiently managed, their human resource organizations lack a large number of resources and a well-developed training system to foster the sustainable development of employees. Employees are important assets of the company, and their continuous growth and development are keys to the survival of the company. In this context, the individual worker’s assessment of his or her job role and how the assessments drive the employee to exhibit an appropriate proactive work behavior are particularly important. Previous research has typically focused on how organizations and leaders perceive employees but has rarely explored employees’ own implicit followership cognitive states. This study integrates the traits of positive implicit followership of employees, namely, industry trait, enthusiasm trait, and good citizen trait, with perceived supervisor support (PSS) and feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) into one research framework. In this study, 207 valid questionnaires were collected by using offline convenience sampling, and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was conducted. The results show that employees’ industry traits directly and positively influence FSB, while enthusiasm traits and good citizen traits have no direct effect on promoting FSB. In addition, industry trait, enthusiasm trait, and good citizen trait significantly and positively influence PSS, with good citizen trait having the greatest positive effect on PSS. Furthermore, PSS has a significant positive effect on FSB. Finally, PSS was found to mediate between industry traits and FSB. Corresponding to the results of the study, the actions shaping employees’ positive implicit followership cognition and forming a good supportive atmosphere to promote employees’ performance of more feedback-seeking behaviors are recommended.