Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Upward social comparison is common in workplaces, and many studies have identified its downsides, such as negative emotions and dysfunctional behaviors. However, a few studies have revealed positive effects, such as learning from comparison targets. These conflicting results suggest that the mechanism underlying the effect of upward social comparison in workplaces remains unclear. Furthermore, most research is based on social comparison theory, whereas few studies have explored upward social comparison through a cognitive lens. To fill these research gaps, we drew on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress to investigate upward social comparison in the workplace and determine how and when it yields (mal) adaptive behavioral outcomes. We used a multi-wave, round-robin design to collect data. 270 employees from 65 teams agreed to participate. At Time 1, 270 employees were invited to assess their workplace upward social comparison, performance-prove goal orientation, social comparison orientation, learning goal orientation, and demographics. 251 employees provided valid responses (response rate = 93%). Two weeks after Time 1, 251 employees were invited to evaluate their challenge and threat appraisals, and 240 employees provided valid responses (response rate = 95.6%). Two weeks after Time 2, 240 employees were invited to report their learning behaviors towards their coworkers, and meanwhile, employees were invited their received social undermining from coworkers. 240 valid responses were received (response rate = 100%). Finally, 720 dyads from 240 employees from 60 teams were used to test our proposed model. Given that the dyads nested in employees and then employees nested within teams, we tested our hypothesis by multilevel social relations model. To test the conditional indirect effects, a Monte Carlo simulation with 20, 000 replications was used to generate the 95% Monte Carlo confidence intervals in R 3.5. The results showed that employees with low levels of performance-prove goal orientation tended to appraise upward social comparison as a challenge, which prompts learning from the comparison targets. However, employees with high levels of performance-prove goal orientation tended to appraise upward social comparison as a threat, motivating them to socially undermine the comparison targets. Our study provides theoretical and practical implications. We reveal the double-edged effects of workplace upward social comparison on subsequent learning behaviors and social undermining through a cognitive rather than emotional lens. Our findings demonstrate how and why workplace upward social comparison drives employees to develop two distinct behavioral responses, from a novel theoretical perspective—the cognitive appraisal theory of stress. Finally, the performance-prove goal orientation determines the effects of workplace upward social comparison. Furthermore, our findings offer important practical implications to managers and policymakers.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2022-10-25
Abstract： Upward social comparison is common in workplaces, and many studies have identified its downsides, such as negative emotions and dysfunctional behaviors. However, a few studies have revealed positive effects, such as learning from comparison targets. These conflicting results suggest that the mechanism underlying the effect of upward social comparison in workplaces remains unclear. Furthermore, most research is based on social comparison theory, whereas few studies have explored upward social comparison through a cognitive lens. To fill these research gaps, we drew on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress to investigate upward social comparison in the workplace and determine how and when it yields (mal)adaptive behavioral outcomes. We used a multi-wave, round-robin design to collect data. 270 employees from 65 teams agreed to participate. At Time 1, 270 employees were invited to assess their workplace upward social comparison, performance-prove goal orientation, social comparison orientation, learning goal orientation, and demographics. 251 employees provided valid responses (response rate = 93%). Two weeks after Time 1, 251 employees were invited to evaluate their challenge and threat appraisals, and 240 employees provided valid responses (response rate = 95.6%). Two weeks after Time 2, 240 employees were invited to report their learning behaviors towards their coworkers, and meanwhile, employees were invited their received social undermining from coworkers. 240 valid responses were received (response rate = 100%). Finally, 720 dyads from 240 employees from 60 teams were used to test our proposed model. Given that the dyads nested in employees and then employees nested within teams, we tested our hypothesis by multilevel social relations model. To test the conditional indirect effects, a Monte Carlo simulation with 20,000 replications was used to generate the 95% Monte Carlo confidence intervals in R 3.5. The results showed that employees with low levels of performance-proving goal orientation tended to appraise upward social comparison as a challenge, which prompts learning from the comparison targets. However, employees with high levels of performance-proving goal orientation tended to appraise upward social comparison as a threat, motivating them to socially undermine the comparison targets. Our study provides theoretical and practical implications. We reveal the double-edged effects of workplace upward social comparison on subsequent learning behaviors and social undermining through a cognitive rather than emotional lens. Our findings demonstrate how and why workplace upward social comparison drives employees to develop two distinct behavioral responses, from a novel theoretical perspective—the cognitive appraisal theory of stress. Finally, the performance-proving goal orientation determines the effects of workplace upward social comparison. Furthermore, our findings offer important practical implications to managers and policymakers.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2020-11-09
Abstract： Customer empowering behaviors, an emerging research topic in the fields of service management and organizational behavior, refer to employees’ perceptions of certain behaviors of customers or certain conditions created by customers in the service encounter contexts that make them feel motivated and competent to make independent decisions for achieving the desired service objects in the process of providing services (Dong et al., 2015; Tuan et al., 2019). Although this concept originally comes from “empowerment,” prior research on empowerment mainly focused on organizations (or leaders) empowering employees (e.g., empowering supervision, leadership empowerment behavior, employee empowerment, or employee psychological empowerment) and organizations empowering customers (e.g., customer empowerment or customer psychological empowerment), customers empowerment of employees (i.e., customer empowering behaviors) was given little attention. Therefore, this study focuses on the relatively new concept of customer empowering behaviors and aims to investigate their effects on the career growth of frontline service employees. To unravel the linking mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationship between customer empowering behaviors and employees’ career growth, we introduce organization-based self-esteem as a mediator and career centrality as a moderator, respectively, from the perspective of self-determination theory. We conducted a three-wave research design and achieved 245 valid samples from the frontline service employees of six garment sales enterprises in Guangzhou and Shantou cities of Guangdong Province. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the discriminant validity of key variables (i.e., customer empowering behaviors, organization-based self-esteem, career centrality, and career growth); the results yielded good distinctiveness. Then, we employed hierarchical multiple regression analyses and bootstrapping analyses to test the hypotheses. The results indicated the following: (1) customer empowering behaviors have a significant positive impact on employees’ career growth; (2) organization-based self-esteem plays a mediating role in the relationship between customer empowering behaviors and employees’ career growth; (3) career centrality plays a moderating role in the relationship between customer empowering behaviors and organization-based self-esteem; (5) career centrality further moderates the indirect effect of customer empowering behaviors on employees’ career growth via organization-based self-esteem. This study offers several theoretical and practical implications. First, it explores the impact of customer empowering behaviors on employees’ career outcomes (i.e., career growth) of frontline service employees. This is conducive to a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the consequences of customer empowering behaviors and provides new empirical evidence for expanding and enriching the research on customer empowering behaviors. Second, from the perspective of self-determination theory, this study confirms the mediating role of organization-based self-esteem and the moderating role of career centrality on the “customer empowering behaviors–career growth” connection, which reveals the “black box” and the boundary condition of the effects of customer empowering behaviors on employees. In practice, this study can help service enterprises and their managers understand the connotation and the effects of customer empowering behaviors more accurately, to improve their insight into the possible positive effects of these actions, and to strengthen their positive effects, such as promoting organization-based self-esteem and the career growth of their employees.
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