Tae-Yeol Kim

This study examined how East Asians differently react to unfairness toward supervisors and organizations from Americans and one another. Based on a sample of 550 employees from China, Japan, Korea, and the U.S., results revealed that there was no significant US-East Asia difference in employee reactions to distributive and interpersonal justice. However, East Asians, compared to Americans, were less likely to leave their supervisors and/or organizations in reaction to voice opportunity and respect fairness. Results also indicated that East Asians significantly differed from one another in their reactions to some types of facet fairness. For example, Chinese, compared to Japanese and Koreas, were more likely to leave their organizations and supervisors when they perceived promotion unfairness.

In today’s rapidly changing environment, employee creativity is important for organizations to have competitive advantages for an organizational innovation, survival and long term success. Consequently, to examine how organizations can foster employee creativity can be extremely valuable to increase organizational competitiveness. Creativity researchers have examined the antecedents of employee creativity and found that personal characteristics (e.g., creative personality and openness), job characteristics (e.g., job autonomy), and work environment (e.g., team characteristics) independently or interactively influenced employee creativity. Although current creativity research has enhanced our understating about what factors influence employee creativity, less research has focused on examining how personal characteristics, job characteristics, and work environment jointly influence employee creativity. To address this issue, we examined how creative personality, skill variety, and tea...

While humor has received much attention in the field of psychology, recently management scholars have begun to examine the effects of humor on individual and organizational effectiveness. Recent research supports the use of humor as an effective strategy to manage the work environment, and high profile case studies involving companies such as Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry’s, and Sun Microsystems demonstrate the potential of humor as a significant management tool. Specifically, employing humor at work has been associated with high job performance, effective leadership and communication, positive employee psychological well-being, improved organizational commitment, and increased employee creativity. Although current studies have enhanced our understanding about the relationship between humor and individual and organizational effectiveness, researchers have yet to address several important issues. First, most studies to date have considered humor as a single dimension in their analy...

Via a scenario-based experiment distributed to executive managers in the U.S. and Korea, we manipulated a supervisor’s (dis)similarity to study participants and (in)sensitivity when explaining why a requested resource was being denied. As expected, employees who were rudely (rather than politely) treated in explaining organizational decisions regarding outcomes were more likely to engage in revenge. The latter tendency was partially mediated by negative emotions that employees felt about the mistreatment. In addition, the tendency for respondents to express more revenge against the insensitive supervisor was heightened when the supervisor was dissimilar (rather than similar) to them. We also found that the similar effect was even stronger to those who highly value vertical collectivism. Surprisingly, however, the Koreans rather than U.S. Americans were more likely to retaliate against the supervisor. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT We theorized and tested how leader-member exchange (LMX) is associated with employee outcomes (i.e., job performance and organizational citizenship behavior). The results obtained using 226 employee-supervisor pair questionnaires from 12 Chinese companies indicated that taking charge significantly mediated the relationship between LMX and employee outcomes. In addition, psychological empowerment significantly moderated the relationship between LMX and taking charge, such that the positive effect of LMX on taking charge was stronger when psychological empowerment was higher (rather than lower). Furthermore, psychological empowerment significantly moderated the indirect positive relationship between LMX and employee outcomes through taking charge; the indirect effect was also stronger when psychological empowerment was higher (rather than lower).

Corporate socially responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major multidisciplinary and multilevel research topic within organizational sciences. Whereas the literature suggests that employees respond positively to CSR, we argue that both motivational and cultural characteristics can place boundary conditions on these effects. Integrating the multiple-needs model of organizational justice, self-determination, and cross-cultural theories, we propose and test if the association between employees’ perceptions of CSR and their work engagement is moderated by employees’ self-determination and individualism. Using 673 working adults from five different countries/regions (Canada, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and France), the results show that among employees with low individualism, the relationship between CSR and work engagement was stronger among those with less CSR-related relative autonomy. In contrast, among employees with high individualism, this relationship was stronger among...

This paper identified the dimensions of proactive socialization behavior among Chinese employees. We examined the mediating effects of perceived insider status on the relationships between proactive socialization behavior and socialization outcomes, and the moderating effect of supervisors' traditionality on the relationship between proactive socialization behavior and perceived insider status. Results from 280 newcomer–supervisor pairs supported the hypotheses that proactive socialization behavior was positively associated with task performance and social integration through perceived insider status. In addition, supervisors' traditionality significantly influenced the indirect relationships that proactive socialization behavior had with task performance and social integration via perceived insider status, such that the relationships became weaker as supervisors' traditionality increased.

Purpose ─ To examine the linkage between employee core self-evaluation (CSE) and employee outcomes and the moderating effects of transformational leadership on the latter relationships.

Design/methodology/approach ─ A survey with 546 matched supervisor-subordinate dyads representing six South Korean organizations. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to test the research hypotheses including the moderating effects.

Findings ─ Employee CSE was positively associated with job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and job performance. In addition, the latter relationships were facilitated by transformational leadership. Specifically, the relationship between CSE and job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment became strongest as transformational leadership was higher rather than lower.

Implications ─ These findings contribute to a developing research literature that integrates individual characteristics and behaviors of both leaders and followers in leadership research. These results are also important in developing and in refining leadership theories on how leadership behaviors interact with followers’ personality traits in influencing employee outcomes. Our findings also provide practical implications for organizations. For example, organizations wishing to enhance leadership effectiveness must consider individual characteristics and behaviors of both leaders and followers.

Originality/value ─ One of few studies that has examined the cross-level moderating effects of leadership behaviors on the relationships between followers’ CSE and employee outcomes.



Keywords: core self-evaluation; transformational leadership; job satisfaction; affective organizational commitment; job performance

We theorized and tested the mechanisms by which leader–member exchange (LMX) quality is associated with job performance. The results obtained using 212 employee–supervisor pairs from eight Chinese companies indicated that LMX quality had an indirect and positive relationship with taking charge via psychological empowerment and had an indirect and positive relationship with job performance via taking charge. In addition , organizational tenure significantly moderated the relationship between taking charge and job performance , such that the positive effect of taking charge on job performance became weaker as organizational tenure increased. Furthermore, organizational tenure significantly moderated the indirect positive relationship between LMX quality and job performance via taking charge; the indirect effect became weaker as organizational tenure increased. These results suggest that organizations should encourage managers to develop high-quality LMX with their subordinates, which may make them feel more empowered and engage in more taking charge, and result in better job performance.