Recent thinking about top management has been influenced by alternative models of man.1 Economic approaches to governance such as agency theory tend to assume some form of homo-economicus, which depict subordinates as individualistic, opportunistic, and self-serving. Alternatively, sociological and psychological approaches to governance such as stewardship theory depict subordinates as collectivists, pro-organizational, and trustworthy. Through this research, we attempt to reconcile the differences between these assumptions by proposing a model based upon the subordinate's psychological attributes and the organization's situational characteristics.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259223.pdf

Toward a stewardship theory of management

Implementation is the process of gaining targeted organizational members' appropriate and committed use of an innovation. Our model suggests that implementation effectiveness—the consistency and quality of targeted organizational members' use of an innovation—is a function of (a) the strength of an organization's climate for the implementation of that innovation and (b) the fit of that innovation to targeted users' values. The model specifies a range of implementation outcomes (including resistance, avoidance, compliance, and commitment); highlights the equifinality of an organization's climate for implementation; describes within- and between-organizational differences in innovation-values fit; and suggests new topics and strategies for implementation research.

The Challenge of Innovation Implementation

The validity of Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristics Model was assessed by conducting a comprehensive review of nearly 200 relevant studies on the model as well as by applying meta-analytic procedures to a large portion of the data. The evidence indicated that the available correlational results are reasonably valid in light of the issues examined. Results tended to support the multidimensionality of job characteristics, but there was less agreement on the exact number of dimensions. The corrected correlational results of the meta-analysis indicated that job characteristics related both to psychological and behavioral outcomes. Concerning psychological states, the results tended to support their mediating (e.g., intervening) role between job characteristics and personal outcomes. The pattern of correlations between the job characteristics and psychological states was less supportive of the model. Meta-analytic results demonstrated that most of the cross-study variance was due to statistical artifacts. True variance across studies was found for the job characteristics-performance relationship, however, and subsequent analyses suggested that growth-need strength moderates this relationship. Implications for potential revisions of the model and for practice are discussed.

The validity of the job characteristics model: a review and meta‐analysis

We argue that additional understanding of work motivation can be gained by incorporating current insights concerning self-categorization and social identity processes and by examining the way in which these processes influence the motivation and behavior of individuals and groups at work. This theoretical perspective that focuses on the conditions determining different self-definitions allows us to show how individual and group processes interact to determine work motivation. To illustrate the added value of this approach, we develop some specific propositions concerning motivational processes underpinning leadership and group performance.

/pdf/motivating-individuals-and-groups-at-work-a-social-identity-400uq5s2s6.pdf

Motivating Individuals and Groups at Work: A Social Identity Perspective on Leadership and Group Performance

A petty tyrant is defined as one who lords his or her power over others. Preliminary empirical work suggests that tyrannical behaviors include arbitrariness and self-aggrandizement, belittling others, lack of consideration, a forcing style of conflict resolution, discouraging initiative, and noncontingent punishment. A model of the antecedents of tyrannical management and the effects of tyranny on subordinates is presented. Petty tyranny is argued to be the product of interactions between individual predispositions (beliefs about the organization, subordinates, and self, and preferences for action) and situational facilitators (institutionalized values and norms, power, and stressors). Tyrannical management is argued to cause low self-esteem, performance, work unit cohesiveness, and leader endorsement, and high frustration, stress, reactance, helplessness, and work alienation among subordinates. It is further argued that these effects may trigger a vicious circle which sustains the tyrannical behavior. Re...

Petty Tyranny in Organizations

Choice of influence tactics: Individual and organizational determinants

A framework for understanding worker motivation is proposed. The framework draws heavily on theory and research in the areas of social influence, individual differences, and organizational typology. In addition to integrating these theoretical approaches in a social influence interpretation of worker motivation, the proposed framework identifies specific, testable hypotheses.

A Social Influence Interpretation of Worker Motivation

Staffing sufficiency and job enrichment: Support for an optimal level theory

As part of a study of the predictive utility of employee preferences for forms of supervisory inducements, a sample of 236 administrators and first-line supervisors provided survey data regarding their individual superiors. The respondents' statements of preferred forms of social influence from their superiors were statistically adjusted for the reported level of influence used in order to determine more precisely whether discrepancies between actual and preferred forms of influence could uniquely predict criterion variance. Results indicated that these adjusted discrepancy values were inversely correlated with satisfaction with supervision, ingroup status, and superior's considerate-ness. These supportive results suggest that discrepancies between preferences for inducements and reported forms of influence may be an important ingredient in a fuller explanation of the phenomenon of motivation and leadership.

Mario Sussmann

Papers

Choice of influence tactics: Individual and organizational determinants

A Social Influence Interpretation of Worker Motivation

Staffing sufficiency and job enrichment: Support for an optimal level theory

Preferences for forms of supervisory social influence

Conceptualizations of valence and instrumentality: A fourfold model