Christian Vandenberghe

The prevalence of teams in contemporary organizations and the trend toward diversity in a workforce composed of members from multiple countries have drawn the attention of researchers on the consequences of diversity in workplaces. While there are potential benefits to diversity, relationship conflicts among team members may also result and affect team functioning. The aim of the present study was to explore how supervisors’ social dominance orientation, a tendency to support the arbitrary dominance of specific social groups over others, may relate to relationship conflicts and reduced team commitment within teams. A two-wave study in a sample of 931 individuals from 108 workgroups was conducted to examine the relationship between supervisors’ social dominance orientation and team functioning. Analyses indicated that supervisor social dominance orientation was associated with increased within-team differentiation of leader-member exchange relationships based on team members’ national origin. Such LMX differentiation was related to more within-team relationship conflict and in turn to reduced collective team commitment. The implications of these findings for research on supervisor social dominance orientation, within-team nationality diversity, and team functioning are discussed.

The relation between role overload and work performance remains insufficiently understood. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we expected role overload to negatively relate to performance through psychological strain and this relation to be buffered by leader–member exchange. Study 1 examined depression as a severe type of strain that mediates between role overload and in-role performance, job dedication, and voice behavior. Study 2 used generic, perceived strain as a mediator between role overload and in-role performance and reward recommendations. Both studies tested LMX’s buffering effect, controlling for role ambiguity and conflict. A supplementary panel study assessed the temporal relationship between role overload and strain. Role overload triggered psychological strain, which undermined performance, and LMX acted as a buffer on role overload, but not on role ambiguity or role conflict. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.

It has been theoretically proposed that employees’ perceptions of their supervisor social power in the organization entail a potential to influence their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. However, no study has investigated such potential. This lack of research stems from the absence of a common understanding around the meaning of perceived supervisor social power and the absence of any validated measure. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to establish PSSP definition and to validate a five-item scale to measure this construct. Three studies encompassing four independent samples of employees from three different countries and three different languages were conducted to assess the validity of PSSP. Results showed that responses to the PSSP scale presented excellent psychometric properties. Furthermore, the structure of the proposed five-item measure of PSSP was found to be invariant across four samples. Finally, PSSP nomological validity was assessed. Study 1 and Study 2 showed that PSSP was positively related to affective organizational commitment. All three studies showed that PSSP acted as a positive moderator of the relation between affective commitment to the supervisor and affective organizational commitment. Together, these studies support the psychometric soundness of the PSSP scale and presented the first evidence of its potential to influence followers. Implications of these findings for future research on supervisor social power are discussed.

This study examines the relationships of servant leadership to organizational commitment, voice behaviors, and antisocial behaviors. Adopting a multifaceted approach to commitment, we hypothesized that servant leadership would be positively related to affective, normative, and perceived sacrifice commitment, but unrelated to few alternatives commitment. We further hypothesized that affective commitment would be positively related to voice behaviors, controlling for the other commitment components, and would mediate a positive relationship between servant leadership and voice behaviors. Similarly, we hypothesized that normative commitment would be negatively related to antisocial behaviors, controlling for the other commitment components, and would mediate a negative relationship between servant leadership and antisocial behaviors. These predictions were tested using matched data from a sample of 181 Canadian customer service employees and their managers. Results largely supported the above predictions. Importantly, affective commitment mediated a positive relationship between servant leadership and voice behaviors. Yet, while servant leadership was positively related to normative commitment and the latter was negatively related to antisocial behaviors, the indirect effect of servant leadership on these behaviors through normative commitment was nonsignificant. Theoretical implications and future research directions are discussed.