Justice in teams: The activation and role of sensemaking in the emergence of justice climates

Team Adaptation to Discontinuous Task Change: Equity and Equality as Facilitators of Individual and Collective Task Capabilities Redevelopment

Teams often need to adapt to planned discontinuous task change or fundamental alteration of tasks, tools, and work systems. Although team adaptation theories have made substantive progress in explaining how teams can respond to change, they have not adequately considered the unique impact that discontinuous task change can have on teams. Such change can render not only collective but also individual task capabilities obsolete and necessitate a multilevel task relearning process. Drawing on the team compilation model, we suggest that adaptation to discontinuous task change is akin to team (re)development. We posit that teams are more effective when they approach discontinuous task change by first focusing on the rebuilding of individual task capabilities and only later shifting their attention to the rebuilding of team-level task capabilities. Moreover, we argue that the uncertainty caused by discontinuous task change makes reward fairness salient such that equity and equality in rewards are particularly useful in motivating members to (re)develop individual and collective task capabilities, respectively. We provide support for these arguments using survey, qualitative, and archival data from 115 manufacturing teams and discuss the implications of our findings for both research and practice.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1621 .

A multi-level analysis of the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance: The importance of interpersonal justice climate

Although job satisfaction—an indicator of employees’ happiness at work—is thought to contribute to higher job performance, past research findings have been inconsistent, suggesting that there could be important contextual factors that moderate this relationship. This study aims to revisit this important relationship by drawing attention to the role of supervisor-focused interpersonal justice climate as an important social context that may moderate the effect of job satisfaction on job performance (i.e., task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors). Based on a multi-source sample of 192 individuals in 40 teams from a large public organization in Thailand, the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses revealed that when interpersonal justice climate was high, job satisfaction did not contribute significantly to job performance. However, when interpersonal justice climate was low, the influence of job satisfaction became significant. These findings lend support for a compensatory model in which job performance only suffers when both factors are low.

Are Leaders and Followers Receiving What They Give? A Long-Term Examination of the Reciprocal Relationship Between Relative LMX and Relative OCB-Helping

Relying on social comparison theory and the norm of reciprocity perspective, the present study aims to longitudinally investigate the specific relationships between relative leader–member exchange (RLMX) and relative organizational citizenship behavior (ROCB). We examined the potentially bidirectional relationship between these two constructs using data consisting of 1,420 time-lagged observations from 725 employees surveyed at multiple time points. Our results indicate that performing more helping behaviors than the group average (ROCB) leads to a subsequent higher quality of relationship with the leader compared to the group average (RLMX), above and beyond the effect of organizational citizenship behavior on RLMX. This effect is stronger than the reverse relationship (i.e., the effect of RLMX on ROCB, above and beyond the leader–member exchange). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Mobilizing Megaproject Narratives for External Stakeholders: A Study of Narrative Instruments and Processes

Megaprojects combine multiple external stakeholders, and a common narrative is essential to drive the project among often conflicting objectives. Narratives help organize people toward an agenda and therefore have performative and strategic implications. In this research, we explore how narratives are mobilized through narrative instruments and processes using the case study of the High Speed Two (HS2) megaproject in the United Kingdom. We record the use of three instruments—stories, labels, and comparisons—that undergo four processes: repeating, endorsing, humorizing, and actioning. These instruments and processes enable megaprojects to mobilize a narrative that helps in managing external stakeholders.

Just and Inclusive Team Climates Affect Mentoring Satisfaction: The Roles of Negative Mentoring and Race

As more work is being conducted in teams, mentees have increased opportunities to develop non-traditional mentoring relationships. We investigate how and when three aspects of team climate (procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and inclusion) influence mentoring satisfaction among mentees with an informal secondary mentor. Using survey data from 116 researchers on environmental science teams, we test whether (a) just and inclusive team climates are related to mentoring satisfaction through positive and negative mentoring experiences and (b) race moderates the relationships between just and inclusive team climates and mentoring satisfaction. We found that negative mentoring experiences mediated the relationships between just and inclusive team climates and mentoring satisfaction. Further, just and inclusive team climates were positively related to mentoring satisfaction, especially for people of color. These results suggest that positive team climates support informal mentoring in teams by reducing negative mentoring experiences and creating a welcoming environment for individuals from marginalized groups.

How Interpersonal Justice Shapes Legitimacy Perceptions: The Role of Interpersonal Justice Trajectories and Current Experience

Despite a growing body of research on the relationship between justice and perceptions of an authority’s legitimacy, few studies have addressed the effects of changes in justice on perceived legitimacy. In the present study, we tested a dynamic model emphasizing the interactive influences of both interpersonal justice trajectories and current experience predicting perceived legitimacy. We tested the trajectory of interpersonal justice over time as a predictor of perceived legitimacy (Study 1) and the current experience of justice as a moderator of this link (Study 2). In Study 1 participants were randomly assigned to receive either improving or declining feedback from an anonymous tutor over the course of four days. Results showed that participants with an improving trajectory perceived the authority to have higher legitimacy. In Study 2 participants rated the tutor’s fairness on 3 consecutive weeks, which were used to identify naturally interpersonal trajectories; we then manipulated the current interpersonal justice experience in the fourth week. Results showed that the trajectory effect was significant when the current experience was just, but not when it was unjust.

Leader creativity expectations and follower radical creativity

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to research the effect of leader creativity expectations on follower radical creativity. Highlighting the implications of leader creativity expectations, the authors examined employee creative process engagement as a mediator and follower perceived procedural justice as a moderator in the relationship between leader creativity expectations and employee radical creativity.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of 256 dyads comprising full-time employees and their immediate supervisors were collected from the innovation teams of industry-university alliances through questionnaire in China, the authors hypothesized and found support for a moderated mediation model.

Findings

The findings show that leader creativity expectations are significantly and positively related to employee radical creativity; creative process engagement plays a fully mediating role between leader creativity expectations and employee radical creativity; procedural justice moderates the positive relationship between leader creativity expectations and creative process engagement and enhances the positive indirect effect of leader creativity expectations on follower radical creativity.

Practical implications

The creativity expectations of leaders are prerequisite for leadership to drive followers to be creative, which can pose great effect on extra-role behavior of followers such as radical creativity. Leaders can deliberately set role expectations for subordinates to achieve creative goals. Compared with the traditional management practices emphasizing planning, leaders encourage trial practice, provide enough time to ensure employees fully identify problems and provide resources to facilitate information search and coding, may achieve better results. Organizations should also place greater emphasis on the procedural justice, thereby enhancing the positive impact of other factors on employee radical creativity.

Originality/value

This study examined the relationship between leader creativity expectations and follower radical creativity based on the perspective of creative process engagement. The conclusion expanded the evidence of the impact of leader expectations besides this study strongly demonstrate that procedural justice will affect employees creative process engagement which enriches the literature on radical creativity strategic leadership and work engagement.

A cross-level model of team-level psychological capital (PsyCap) and individual- and team-level outcomes

Psychological capital (PsyCap) is a higher-order construct reflecting the psychological resources of hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism. This study adopted a multilevel approach to investigate relationships between team-level PsyCap and team- and individual-level outcomes. We also compared two compositional models of aggregation to represent team-level PsyCap. Findings revealed significant associations between team-level PsyCap and team- (performance and satisfaction) and individual-level (job satisfaction, turnover intent) outcomes, particularly when a referent-shift model of aggregation was employed. We also investigated PsyCap strength to explore the degree to which team member consensus regarding PsyCap perceptions may moderate these relationships. We found that team PsyCap strength had a significant influence in the prediction of most outcomes. Our findings emphasize the importance of fostering team-level positivity, as the benefits of team-level PsyCap can operate at both the individual and team level. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, along with avenues for future research.

Top Management Team and Middle Managers

This study provides insight about the process of top management teams' (TMTs') sensemaking about leadership of middle managers—a process that has so far been neglected by researchers. In a longitudinal case study design, the authors analyzed observational data from 23 TMT meetings and transcripts from interviews with TMT members. Results indicate that TMT sensemaking consisted of images of middle managers, the TMT self-image, and reflection on action and action planning. Furthermore, the importance of TMT unity in actions toward middle managers is highlighted as an important aspect of TMT leadership. It is suggested to incorporate TMT sensemaking about leadership, as well as actual leadership actions toward middle managers, as processes for explaining how TMT composition influences organizational performance.

Being trusted: How team generational age diversity promotes and undermines trust in cross-boundary relationships

We examine how demographic context influences the trust that boundary spanners experience in their dyadic relationships with clients. Because of the salience of age as a demographic characteristic as well as the increasing prevalence of age diversity and intergenerational conflict in the workplace, we focus on team age diversity as a demographic social context that affects trust between boundary spanners and their clients. Using social categorization theory and theories of social capital, we develop and test our contextual argument that a boundary spanner's experience of being trusted is influenced by the social categorization processes that occur in dyadic interactions with a specific client and, simultaneously, by similar social categorization processes that influence the degree to which the client team as a whole serves as a cooperative resource for demographically similar versus dissimilar boundary spanner-client dyads. Using a sample of 168 senior boundary spanners from the consulting industry, we find that generational diversity among client team members from a client organization undermines the perception of being trusted within homogeneous boundary spanner-client dyads while it enhances the perception of being trusted within heterogeneous dyads. The perception of being trusted is an important aspect of cross-boundary relationships because it influences coordination and the costs associated with coordination.

Measuring cognition in teams: a cross-domain review

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this article is twofold: to provide a critical cross-domain evaluation of team cognition measurement options and to provide novice researchers with practical guidance when selecting a measurement method.

BACKGROUND

A vast selection of measurement approaches exist for measuring team cognition constructs including team mental models, transactive memory systems, team situation awareness, strategic consensus, and cognitive processes.

METHODS

Empirical studies and theoretical articles were reviewed to identify all of the existing approaches for measuring team cognition. These approaches were evaluated based on theoretical perspective assumed, constructs studied, resources required, level of obtrusiveness, internal consistency reliability, and predictive validity.

RESULTS

The evaluations suggest that all existing methods are viable options from the point of view of reliability and validity, and that there are potential opportunities for cross-domain use. For example, methods traditionally used only to measure mental models may be useful for examining transactive memory and situation awareness. The selection of team cognition measures requires researchers to answer several key questions regarding the theoretical nature of team cognition and the practical feasibility of each method.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide novice researchers with guidance regarding how to begin the search for a team cognition measure and suggest several new ideas regarding future measurement research.

APPLICATIONS

We provide (1) a broad overview and evaluation of existing team cognition measurement methods, (2) suggestions for new uses of those methods across research domains, and (3) critical guidance for novice researchers looking to measure team cognition.

Prozedurale Fairness als Mediator zwischen transformationaler Führung und psychischer Beanspruchung am Arbeitsplatz

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht prozedurale Fairness als Mediator zwischen transformationaler Führung und psychischer Beanspruchung am Arbeitsplatz, konzeptualisiert als emotionale Erschöpfung und kognitive Irritation. In einer Querschnittstudie in Deutschland, Finnland und Schweden wurden Mehrebenendaten von 2092 Beschäftigten aus 271 Teams erhoben. Prozedurale Fairness konnte als ein Mediator des Zusammenhangs zwischen transformationaler Führung und psychischer Beanspruchung am Arbeitsplatz auf individueller Ebene bestätigt werden (Effekt und Mediation auf individueller Ebene). Zusätzlich konnte ein indirekter Effekt eines transformalen Führungsklimas über die individuelle Wahrnehmung prozeduraler Fairness und auch über ein Klima prozeduraler Fairness auf die psychische Beanspruchung am Arbeitsplatz bestätigt werden (indirekter Effekt auf Individual- und Teamebene). Dabei wurde für die individuelle Führungseinschätzung und bei indirektem Effekt auf Teamebene auch für individuelle Fairnesseinschätzungen kontrolliert. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Bedeutung prozeduraler Fairness für die Gesundheit von Beschäftigten und zeigen, dass prozedurale Fairness nicht nur ein individuelles Phänomen ist.

Mental Model Updating and Team Adaptation

In this article, we build on theories of team adaptation by exploring the role of team members’ cognitive knowledge structures in team adaptation to a changing task context. We introduce the notion of mental model updating as the extent to which team members update their mental models in reaction to a change in the task situation. In a laboratory study we investigate the relations between initial mental model similarity and accuracy, team mental model updating, the development of novel interaction patterns, and postchange team performance. The results indicate that mental model updating is positively related to postchange team performance. Also, team adaptation patterns accounted for the effect of mental model updating on postchange team performance. We did not find evidence for a positive relation between initial mental model similarity and accuracy and mental model updating.

Transformational leadership as a moderator of the relationship between psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams in Ghana

Orientation: Transformational team leadership is an important variable that influences team members’ perception of the team as psychologically safe enough to engage in learning behaviours.Research purpose: The study was aimed at investigating the relationship between psychological safety and learning behaviour in teams, as well as the moderating role of transformational team leadership in this relationship.Motivation for the study: For a team to be effective, adaptive and innovative and engage in learning behaviours, the transformational team leader must set the right climate in the team, where he or she welcomes the team members’ opinions, questions and feedback at no risk to their image. An understanding of this will be important in team leader selection and training.Research design, approach and method: Using a cross-sectional survey design, 57 work teams comprising 456 respondents in teams of 7–9 members were purposively sampled from five financial institutions in Accra, Ghana. Hierarchical regression and moderation analyses were run on the data at the team level.Main findings: Results indicated a positive relationship between team psychological safety and team learning behaviour, with transformational team leadership moderating this relationship.Practical/managerial implication: Transformational team leadership is important in creating a climate of psychological safety that will enable team members to engage in learning behaviours.Contribution/value-add: The study provided theoretical and empirical evidence that, in organisational contexts, transformational team leadership is an important variable that can facilitate psychological safety and learning behaviour in teams.

How perceptions of fairness can change

Research on organizational justice has focused almost exclusively on fairness at one point in time. This perspective severely limits our understanding because fairness perceptions can continually evolve as individuals encounter new information. We present a dynamic model of organizational justice in which we integrate current justice theories with research on sense-making and social cognition to describe the processes through which perceptions of fairness change. The model describes a cyclical process whereby individuals' cognitive processing and judgments about the fairness of an event are guided by their perceptions about the entity involved. In turn, event judgments alter the knowledge structure that underlies entity perceptions, which has implications for perception change. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Organizational climate and culture

Organizational climate and organizational culture theory and research are reviewed. The article is first framed with definitions of the constructs, and preliminary thoughts on their interrelationships are noted. Organizational climate is briefly defined as the meanings people attach to interrelated bundles of experiences they have at work. Organizational culture is briefly defined as the basic assumptions about the world and the values that guide life in organizations. A brief history of climate research is presented, followed by the major accomplishments in research on the topic with regard to levels issues, the foci of climate research, and studies of climate strength. A brief overview of the more recent study of organizational culture is then introduced, followed by samples of important thinking and research on the roles of leadership and national culture in understanding organizational culture and performance and culture as a moderator variable in research in organizational behavior. The final section of the article proposes an integration of climate and culture thinking and research and concludes with practical implications for the management of effective contemporary organizations. Throughout, recommendations are made for additional thinking and research.

Peer Justice and Teamwork Process

We articulate a teamwork process model of peer justice, defined as a shared perception regarding how individuals who work together within the same unit and who do not have formal authority over each other judge the fairness with which they treat one another. We argue that unit-level judgments of procedural and interpersonal fairness may influence team process, characterized by such things as better communication, better coordination, and more mutual support for members. These team processes, in turn, promote higher team performance and unit-level citizenship behaviors. These ideas were tested among teams of business students working on a semester-long class project. Findings generally supported our theoretical model, attesting to the importance of peer justice. We also found that peer procedural justice strength influenced team outcome variables, including performance, through teamwork processes. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Faultlines, Fairness, and Fighting: A Justice Perspective on Conflict in Diverse Groups

Most people can recall instances at work where thankless tasks get in the way of tasks that lead to big rewards. This typically leads people in a group to a struggle with others over how to approach their work and set priorities. Inspired by such conversations with many employees, we develop a theory to understand how task conflict can be linked to distributive injustice. Using a survey from 42 workgroups, we found that the effect of distributive injustice on task conflict was mediated via role conflict. Group faultlines moderated this mediated relationship such as it was weaker when faultlines were stronger.