Browsing by Projects - Department "Department of Business Administration"

Sparked by Pekrun and Frese (1992) and Ashforth and Humphrey (1995), by the beginning of the 21st century, "the affective revolution in organizational behavior" (Barsade, Brief, & Spataro 2003, p. 3) was under way. There is "a shift in emphasis to balance the interest in moods with an interest in discrete emotions" (Brief & Weiss, 2002, p. 298) and "…the focus would be on what is driving each of the processes and the different outcomes resulting from that particular discrete emotion." (Ashkanasy, & Dorris, 2017, p.70; discrete emotion is generally defined as a particular subjective feeling toward a certain target). This revolution goes further beyond the tendency of previous research which classifies moods/emotions as either positive or negative, and/or transforms the early belief that emotions are barriers to rationality at work (e.g. Barsade & Gibson, 2007).

Despite that the emotion studies in organizational behaviour have taken central stage over the past two decades, we still lack of knowledge on how discrete emotions are functional in the workplaces (see, Gooty, Gavin, Ashkanasy, 2009). In 2017, there is special topic forum in Academy of Management Review (Vol. 42, No. 2) to call for "Integrating Emotions and Affect in Theories of Management". In this most recent stepping stone in the "affective revolution", the functional process of discrete emotion, esp. negative ones (e.g. anger, fear), are discussed across different contexts and levels of organizational settings (Ashkanasy, Humphrey, & Huy, 2017). Unquestionably, the significance of researching on discrete emotion functions in organization is timely.

During the past two decades of "affective revolution", human being had been encountering the changing workplace and organisations. The increasing interdependence and uncertainty represent the most critical changes at work and employees are challenged to extend their job responsibilities to face with (Griffini, Neal, & Parker, 2007). Proactive behaviour (proactivity) - self-initiating, future-oriented behaviour adopted to change work situations (Parker, Bindl, & Strauss, 2010) - has become crucial at work. As one of important motivational pathway for proactivity (Parker, et. al, 2010), this emotion "energy" may be even more crucial in such highly interdependent and uncertain work environment, as it serves communicative and social functions (e.g., Keltner & Haidt, 1999). However, the pathway is still relatively less explored with the inconsistent empirical evidences in the proactivity literature (e.g., Den Hartog & Belschak, 2007; Fay, & Sonnentag, 2012).

In the purpose of understanding how discrete emotions can be functional for proactivity at the more and more interdependent and uncertain work environments. We would like to invite the four prestige researchers who are leading figures in the "affective revolution" to look to the future research on discrete emotion, esp. in proactivity. Furthermore, to get more insights and understandings on the emotional functions in other social settings, we would also invite the other six famous researchers in social psychology and educational psychology to deliver seminars/workshop on how discrete emotion would make people more proactive in the various social/interpersonal settings. For example, how moral emotions (e.g. disgust or anger) motivate people to engage in more change initiative, or achievement emotions (e.g. pride or enjoyment) motivate students to be more proactively seek knowledge, which could definitely inspire future research and practices in management. The invited presentations will constitute the basis of chapters for a book on this theme. By publishing the book, this project will have wider and longer impact to generate more insightful research idea and evidence-based practices on functions of discrete emotions in proactivity in various social settings.

Knowledge sharing (KS) has become a critical issue for information technology professionals. However, some findings of previous research on the antecedents of KS are not consistent, which suggests that the nature of the KS may differ. Therefore, we aim to investigate the different types of KS and their antecedents in this study. Based on the literature review, we propose two types of KS among information technology professionals, namely, in-role and extra-role KS. We also investigate their antecedents based on self-determination theory and their consequences. We hypothesise that extrinsic, introjected and intrinsic rewards, beneficial and relationship reciprocity, and self-efficacy influence the two proposed types of KS behaviour in different ways based on their different natures. Furthermore, the two forms of sharing behaviour are expected to influence performance at both the group and organisational levels.

Social media has been widely adopted by individuals and organisations over the past decade. In recent years, the rapid developments of mobile technology have enabled social media to penetrate many aspects of daily life. Facebook, according to its statistics, had over 4.4 million users in Hong Kong in 2014, with a penetration rate of around 60%. More than 86% of these users access Facebook via mobile devices, which is one of the highest rates in Asia. In addition, many people in Hong Kong use WhatsApp and WeChat for mobile instant messaging. Undoubtedly, social media and its applications are shaping the way individuals and organisations communicate. But is this change good or bad? In particular, does social media use impede or enhance aspects of job performance, such as innovation, in an organisational context?

Whether they like it or not, employers realise that increasingly their employees use social media to communicate with each other. Leaving voice or text messages for team members is replacing some fact-to-face communication, due to its effectiveness and efficiency. Employees also use their organisational mobile devices at home, extending team communication beyond the traditional workplace boundaries. When mobile devices are incorporated into work processes, the traditional ways of structuring work patterns are altered to be more diversified. These changes in communication influence many aspects of a team, especially the interaction among team members, which in turn influences team creativity.

This study aims to examine the social media usage of employees and its effect on team creativity. We propose a social media and team creativity model (SMTCM) based on group property framework. Group properties include role, cohesiveness, norms, status and size of groups. We examined each property from an interpersonal perspective with regard to social media use and then, developed five social-media-enhanced interpersonal factors for team creativity, including role trust, team cohesiveness, collaboration facilitation, conformity pressure reduction, and social loafing prevention. These factors are believed to be influenced by social media use and thereby to influence team creativity. Moreover, we believe the ubiquity of social media positively affects social media use. This study is expected to contribute to the existing literature by highlighting the role of social media use on team creativity and offer important insights to both research and practice.

Employees are expected to proactively improve deficient processes and address issues caused by the increasing unpredictability and uncertainty of workplaces. It is also found that such proactive work behaviors are important to ensure workplace effectiveness (Campbell, 2000; Carpini, Parker & Griffin, 2017; Frese & Fay, 2001; Parker, 2000). However, employee proactivity research focuses on the motivational states that drive employees to proactively initiate change but pays little attention to the setbacks that they may encounter in doing so. We know little about why some employees who encounter proactivity setbacks attempt to overcome them, whereas others do not. That is, why do some employees regard proactivity setbacks as energizing their goal-regulation processes, whereas others regard them as inhibiting their goal regulation processes? The proposed project will answer this important question because this difference determines the ultimate success or failure of the proactive endeavor.

Based on an integration of the proactive goal-regulation model with implicit person theory, we argue that employees may exhibit either mastery or helpless responses to proactivity setbacks, depending on what kind of implicit person theory they hold. Specifically, employees who hold an incremental implicit person theory are likely to engage in mastery reflection on proactivity setbacks, which sustains their proactive efforts to envision, plan, and enact their goals. By contrast, employees who hold an entity implicit person theory are likely to engage in helpless reflection on setbacks, which leads them to decrease their proactive efforts to envision, plan, and enact their goals. Therefore, the type of reflection engaged in by employees dictates whether they continue changing or taking on challenges. We will examine these arguments in two experimental studies and a field weekly diary study. We will also conduct studies to develop a measurement scale for proactivity setback, which is newly developed in this research.

Overall, we have identified a major gap in current proactivity research: a lack of understanding on proactivity setbacks and how employees’ responses to them affect employees’ proactive goal-regulation process. In this proposed project, we extend the employee proactivity literature by conceptualizing proactivity setback based on the proactive goal-regulation model and two forms of reflection based on the implicit person theories to examine the dynamic relationships between the proactive goal regulatory activities. Theoretically, this work delineates employees’ differential responses to proactivity setback, and shed light on proactivity literature concerning how to make effective proactivity resiliently. Practically, this work will provide an evidence-based guidance on facilitating and nurturing employees’ proactive goal-regulation through cultivating an incremental implicit person theory and facilitating mastery reflections in employees. These insights can be integrated in employee/manager training and organizational culture development programs to benefit employees, managers, organizations, and communities.

Customer engagement refers to the connection between a user and a business, and can be derived from the consumer’s experiences with the products, services, and activities of the business (Hollebeek 2011). Customer engagement has emerged as a prominent construct that is capable of affecting customer relationships with brands, surpassing satisfaction and loyalty, and thus providing a real competitive advantage (Kumar et al., 2010). Previous research studies have predominantly focused on positive engagement (positive emotional connections) (Baldus et al., 2015; Hollebeek et al., 2014; Vivek et al., 2012) and have neglected the ‘negative’ side. Thus, the first part of the present study enhances the previous research by examining the key dimensions of negative brand engagement and developing and validating a scale to measure negative brand engagement. In today’s digitalized society, customers are interconnected with each other both physically and virtually. Their satisfaction and relationship with brands are derived from their brand experience and the experience generated through interactions with other customers. Customers have different touch points such as brand offerings (Hollebeek et al., 2014), brand events (Vivek et al., 2012), and brand-related social media platforms (Dolan et al., 2016). Thus, this study explores how a consumer’s personal experiences, expectations, and social contexts relate to negative brand engagement.

Working with emotionally intelligent teammates is more enjoyable and productive than working with emotionally unintelligent teammates. Emotional intelligence (EI) can be briefly defined as the ability to handle emotions and emotional issues. We are well informed that emotions are inherently social functional and that EI can lead to better social interactions. However, the research to date has largely been limited to the impact of a focal employee’s EI on his/her own attitudes and behaviour. We are keen on the knowledge about the interpersonal process of EI, how the influences of teammates’ EI happen, on the focal employee at the workplace, which may contribute to the literature significantly. At the same time, the changing nature of work and organisations has challenged traditional views of how employees perform at work. With the increasing interdependence and uncertainty of work systems, proactivity—self-initiating, future-oriented behaviour to change work situations—is becoming crucial to employees’ performance. Under such situations, how teammates and the focal employee understand and manage emotions in social interactions are even more crucial for initiating and implementing changes in team context. Unfortunately, there is limited knowledge about the interpersonal process of EI on proactivity in the team context.

Parker, Bindl and Strauss (2010) identify ‘energized to’ as the key direct affect pathway influencing proactivity. In this process, affect is functional and ‘energize’ individuals to become proactive. We posit that this pathway explains how EI has interpersonal effects on proactivity in a team environment. According to the theory of EI (Mayer, & Salovey, 1997), EI of both teammate’s and focal employee can help the focal employee nurture positive affect and/or reduce negative affect. Meanwhile, the proactivity literature shows that positive and negative affect may motivate or sometimes demotivate the focal employee to be proactive. Building on theory of EI and the motivational process of proactivity, the proposed research will focus on the interpersonal process of EI’s on proactivity. That is, we will aim to investigate how teammates’ EI influences a focal employee’s proactivity in the team context. Specifically, the proposed research will test how team composition of EI influences a focal employee’s positive and negative affect, which in turn influences his/her proactive behaviour.

Additionally, the focal employee’s EI will act as a moderator in the interpersonal process according to theory of EI and the motivational process of proactivity. One’s own EI determines how one interprets and deals with teammate’s emotional information and one’s own emotional experience. Thus, the focal employee’s EI is an important condition to both the team composition of EI and affect link and the affect and proactivity link. By taking consideration of focal employee’s EI, the proposed research aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the relationship between teammates’ EI and proactivity and how the interpersonal process works under different level of focal employee’s EI. This will further enlighten future research on the interpersonal processes of EI in workplaces.

To test the interpersonal process model of EI and proactivity, we conducted a pilot study to preliminarily explore the interpersonal influence of EI in a team setting. Based on the positive results, we propose to conduct a longitudinal field survey to formally test the proposed model. We believe the research may contribute to the EI, affect and proactivity literature, and provide managerial implications for managing employee EI and proactivity in the workplace. Even if applied to interpret the Hong Kong workforce with the high interdependence and uncertainty, the research would be of significant pedagogical value.