Who is offering a helping hand?

The impact of personality and cognitive style of managers on their work types

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between the personality and cognitive styles of managers and different types of work.

Design/methodology/approach

The personality types and cognitive styles of managers were measured, respectively, with the help of the Big Five personality factors and Jung’s cognitive types. Different types of works in an organization were categorized in three ways: identity, institutional and integrative work. A survey questionnaire method was used to collect data from a sample of 107 managers from a diverse range of industries, and these data were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The study found that intuitive feeling and intuitive thinking types of cognitive styles are suitable for identity and integrative kinds of work, respectively. Openness to experience and conscientiousness positively correlate with identity work. For institutional work, conscientious personality trait is most important for managers; agreeableness has a negative impact on identity work and institutional work.

Practical implications

This study will assist recruitment and staffing professionals, when recruiting managers for an organization, and the paper should be interesting for readers in industry (professionals in HR, managerial career development and managerial competence audit and counseling) and academia (research scholars).

Originality/value

Analysis of theses relationship types is unavailable in the literature of leadership and organizational studies. It can help organizations utilize their human resources efficiently.

How followers’ emotional stability and cultural value orientations moderate the impact of health-promoting leadership and abusive supervision on health-related resources

Health-related resources at work are crucial for followers to stay healthy and to cope with job demands. This study investigates the impact of health-promoting leadership as well as abusive supervision on followers’ social and task resources as antecedents of their health. Moreover, it examines whether the impact of leadership on followers’ health-related resources depends on the followers’ emotional stability and cultural value orientations (i.e. power distance and collectivism). A total of 503 employees from Austria, Germany and Slovenia took part in this online study and provided information on their leaders’ health-promoting behaviour and abusive supervision as well as on their own emotional stability, perceived power distance and collectivism. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis strongly support the importance of simultaneously assessing health-promoting leadership and abusive supervision when predicting task and social resources. Abusive supervision added incremental variance above health-promoting leadership when followers’ task resources were predicted. Moreover, the results suggest that followers benefit from or suffer differently under perceived leadership: high power distance enhances the positive effect of health-promoting leadership on followers’ social resources, while collectivism strengthens the negative impact of abusive supervision on followers’ social resources. Finally, emotionally stable followers who are working with highly abusive leaders experience a stronger threat to their resources compared to emotionally stable followers who are working with less abusive leaders. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of how leaders impact those resources known to influence followers’ health. They further show that follower personality and cultural value orientations determine the impact of leadership behaviour on health-related resources.

The effect of OCB in relationship between personality, organizational commitment and job satisfaction on performance

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to know whether organizational citizenship behavior mediates the effects of personality, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach

This research was conducted in the city of Makassar with the entire population being lecturer with the status from a permanent lecturer foundation. By using the Slovin formula, a sample of 295 respondents was obtained. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used as an inferential statistical analysis technique to test the hypothesis of the research.

Findings

The results of the study found the mediating effect (indirect effect) of variable organizational citizenship behavior was found in between personality, organizational commitment and job satisfaction on performance, which thus indicates that the higher the personality, organizational commitment and job satisfaction the higher the performance, and if mediated, organizational citizenship behavior is also higher.

Originality/value

Organizational citizenship behavior research has been conducted on student classroom and career success. Additionally, organizational citizenship behavior has been researched for a critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature, which has provided suggestions for future research. Thereby, on paper originality the variables shown to be used are personality, organization commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and performance. Furthermore, the method used in this research is the SEM. The investigation was performed at two private colleges in Indonesian Muslim University and Muhammadiyah University Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, where no studies were conducted on the same topic previously.

Two facets of pride and helping

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of two different facets of pride – authentic and hubristic – on helping.

Design/methodology/approach

– Hypotheses were tested combining an experimental vignette study (n=75) with correlational field research (n=184).

Findings

– Results reveal that hubristic pride is associated with lower levels of intended helping compared with authentic pride when experimentally induced; further, trait hubristic pride is negatively related with helping, whereas trait authentic pride is positively related to helping, while controlling for alternative affective and cognitive explanations.

Research limitations/implications

– The use of vignettes and self-reports limits the ecological validity of the results. But when considered in combination, results provide important indications on how helping can be fostered in organizations: by emphasizing successes and the efforts that were necessary to achieve them.

Originality/value

– The results highlight the differential effects of discrete emotions in organizations.

Prosocial motive and helping behavior: examining helping efficacy and instrumentality

Purpose

– Building on trait activation theory, theory of other orientation, and self-perception theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ perceptions of helping efficacy and instrumentality influence the relationship between their prosocial motive and helping behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

– Data from 304 supervisor-subordinate dyads in South Korea were analyzed. Hypotheses were tested using hierarchical multiple regression.

Findings

– The results show that prosocial motive had a stronger positive influence on helping behavior among employees with high levels of helping efficacy. However, contrary to our expectation, prosocial motive was more positively related to helping behavior when employees had high levels of helping instrumentality.

Practical implications

– Organizations need to present employees with effective, standardized work procedures to make them feel efficacy in helping others. It is also necessary for organizations to consider helping behavior an important factor in performance evaluation and to signify to employees that helping behavior will be rewarded.

Social implications

– Helping behavior is critical for the effectiveness of both organizations and society at large; voluntarily helping people can enhance various kinds of performance at the societal level and can contribute to people’s welfare. Thus, it is necessary to teach people how to help others and to recognize helping behavior.

Originality/value

– This study contributes to the understanding of when the influence of prosocial motive on helping is more strongly activated by incorporating employees’ perceptions of the contexts in which helping behavior operates – efficacy and instrumentality.