Employees' discretionary work effort and performance: explanations from different theories

Abstract

The PhD thesis is composed by three essays. The first essay, titled “Employees’ Inferences of Workplace Social Support: Applying the Group Engagement Model to Explain Discretionary Work Effort (DWE)” examines how supervisor and co-worker support influence employees' collective identification which ultimately enhances discretionary work effort. Using the group engagement model (Blader & Tyler, 2009) I show that the influence of social support on identification and DWE is explained by enhanced perceived procedural justice and internal career expectancy. Further, the explanatory power of the two mechanisms is related to whether or not the context is characterized by internal career opportunities. Empirical data are drawn from a survey of 364 semi-skilled manufacturing workers and 216 bank employees and their supervisors in China. Structural equation modelling was used to test hypotheses. The second essay titled “Justice, Career Expectations and Discretionary Work Effort: An explanation based on expectancy theory and social exchange theory” advances insights from the justice and OCB literatures by including felt obligation to the focal work unit as a mediator, and by incorporating internal career expectancy into an integrative model. Based on a sample of 201 bank employees and 16 matched supervisors, felt obligation to the work unit is shown to directly encourage DWE. In line with expectancy theory, felt obligation arises from employees’ favorable internal career expectancy which has a stronger positive effect if distributive and procedural justice are perceived as strong and if employees are exposed to opportunities for training and promotion.Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. The third essay titled: Explaining task performance and creativity from perceived organizational support theory: Which mechanisms are more important?” examines how the three mechanisms specified in Perceived Organizational Support (POS) theory—felt obligation, group identification, and outcome expectancy—explain the effects of organizational support on employee performance and creativity. Based on a sample of 206 bank employees in China, task performance is found to be more strongly predicted by felt obligation than by the other two mechanisms, whereas identification and internal career expectancy more strongly predict creativity than felt obligation. Important implications derive from these findings.