Projects

As a result of demographic changes, workforces in industrialized economies are increasingly becoming older and more age diverse. In many organizations members of four different generations (e.g., so-called Generation Y, Baby Boomers) co-exist and are required to interact effectively.

In my research project, I examine how and when members of different generations interact and exchange resources effectively. Further, I analyze consequences of intergenerational resource exchanges, such as differential need fulfillment, well-being, and performance.

In my PhD project, I focus on three research questions:

First, I argue that research on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of organizations should include compensation and benefits systems in its analysis. These systems, specifically performance-contingent incentive schemes, are used to align organizational and individual goals, and to manage employee performance in organizations. However, these systems can also motivate irresponsible employee behavior, when they evoke conscious and unconscious processes that eventually lead to unethical decision-making, which directly concerns the responsibility of an organization.

Indeed, there are reasons to expect that bonuses may also be a central ingredient to the competitiveness of a workplace, that is a climate of constant interpersonal comparison and competition. This in turn may lead to more interpersonal deviance, i.e. harmful behavior against others within the organization, in particular when respectively incentivized employees already show high levels of individual competitiveness – a personality trait of employees, highly welcomed by organizations in competitive markets. A cross-sectional field study and two experiments provide support for the hypotheses.

Last, the psychological process that can explain the negative interpersonal behavior when receiving a bonus has not been investigated in detail yet. It is unclear if this process is different than the one that is triggered by money, i.e. an unconscious process that makes people work harder on their tasks, but at the same time prefer more solitary activities and show less helping behavior towards others. In experiments I try to find out if bonuses have other unconscious effects than money. I hypothesize that bonuses lead to more competition and comparison concerns than money, and thereby increase the likelihood of unwanted aggressive behavior.

So far, extant research assumed that employees only show negative behavior (less cooperation, more social undermining) toward those coworkers who currently outperform them as they are potential competitiors for promotion, bonuses etc. At the same time, practitioners often observe that supervisors and employees whose performance/career is stagnating feel threatend by those coworkers whose performance/career improved a lot in the recent past.

In my thesis I investigate and show that people do not only consider the status quo when they compare themselves to others but rather engage in comparisons with others over time. Consequently, trends (e.g., in performance) influence the social comparison process. Based on these trends, people form expectations about their future standing relative to the comparison person. Thereby also those coworkers who currently perform worse than a focal employee but who show a steep performance trend can become a threat to the focal employee as they might outperform him/her in the future.

As a consequence, competition among employees is much greater than previously assumed and companies currently undererstimate the social costs of competitive reward systems. At the same time, they risk losing the so-called „rising stars“ who might leave the company at some point due to social undermining and lack of support from their colleagues or supervisor.

My research addresses the question how people lead together, be it in a team, at the top of a corporation or in the mids of an hierarchy. I’m thereby interested in two questions. First: How important is the relationship between multiple leaders for their followers? And second: How can multiple leaders complement each other effectively and when do they stand in each other’s way? I’m addressing these questions in a diverse set of context, from complex matrix organizations to small doctor practices or pharmacies. One of my methodological emphases thereby lies on social network analysis.

Getting respect from one’s leader – who does not wish for something like that. Nonetheless, often there is a lack of respect at workplaces and there is also a lack of research on this topic. Thereby, the challenge is that the term “respect” includes two different meanings: On the one hand, it is about respect as an interaction on par, as unconditional recognition of the counterpart for his/her human dignity (horizontal respect). On the other hand, it is about respecting performance, effort, and competence (vertical respect).

With two surveys and one experiment we already found that leaders’ horizontal respect led to more self-determination, lower intentions to leave, and higher job satisfaction for employees. These relations get stronger, when employees report having vertical respect for their leaders.
A next study showed that leaders who are less representative for their led employees (e.g., because of differing norms and values) can foster employees’ personal initiative by leading respectfully.

Currently, my colleagues and I are working of further studies on the relation of respectful leadership and employee personal initiative. With our research we hope to motivate leaders and employees to see the value of respect at their workplaces.