Soo Young Shin

Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) is gaining scholarly attention due to its harmful consequences, yet limited research explains how employees’ perceptions of leaders’ personality traits drive such behavior. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept, this study examined whether and how perceived leader narcissistic rivalry predicts employee UPB. We argue that leaders high in narcissistic rivalry devalue and exclude others, increasing workplace ostracism. Ostracism, in turn, depletes employees’ psychological resources and motivates UPB as a compensatory strategy. We further propose that underdog expectations amplify this effect by shaping employees’ interpretations of exclusion. Using a three-wave, time-lagged survey of 383 full-time employees in South Korea and analyzing data with PROCESS Macro, results show that perceived leader narcissistic rivalry positively predicts workplace ostracism. Workplace ostracism increases UPB and mediates the relationship between leader narcissistic rivalry and UPB. Moreover, underdog expectations strengthen the positive association between ostracism and UPB, with stronger effects among employees high in such expectations. These findings identify workplace ostracism as a key resource-depletion mechanism linking leader narcissistic rivalry to unethical behavior and highlight underdog expectations as an important boundary condition. They highlight the need to manage narcissistic leadership, reduce ostracism, and strengthen ethical norms.

Competition is widely promoted as a mechanism for enhancing employee motivation and organizational performance. However, its unintended costs for female managers remain underexplored. This study examines how performance-oriented competition (POC) affects affective organizational commitment (AOC) through workplace interpersonal strain (WIS) and work overload strain (WOS), and whether job autonomy moderates these relationships among female managerial employees. Data were drawn from the seventh wave of the Korean Women Manager Panel, a large-scale national survey in South Korea. The final sample comprised 1325 females across 413 organizations. Mediation and moderation analyses were conducted using the PROCESS macro with bootstrapped confidence intervals. Results indicate that POC is positively associated with both WIS and WOS, which are in turn negatively associated with AOC. Both forms of strain significantly mediate the relationship between competition and commitment, with the WIS pathway being stronger. Job autonomy does not affect the relationship between POC and WIS but unexpectedly strengthens the positive association between POC and WOS. These findings suggest that competitive work systems may impose hidden costs by weakening female managers’ organizational commitment. This study extends research on competitive climates and challenges the assumption that job autonomy is uniformly beneficial. Organizations should exercise caution when relying on competition and autonomy as motivational tools.

Purpose: Drawing on affective events theory, this study aims to investigate the association between vicarious abusive supervision and defensive silence, examine fear as a mediating mechanism associated with this relationship and explore the moderating role of emotional contagion in shaping employees' emotional and behavioral responses to vicarious abusive supervision. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative survey was conducted to collect time-lagged data from 422 employees in Korean manufacturing companies. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and the PROCESS macro. Findings: Vicarious abusive supervision exhibited a positive association with fear, which in turn mediated its relationship with defensive silence. Furthermore, emotional contagion strengthened the positive association between vicarious abusive supervision and fear, as well as the indirect relationship between vicarious abusive supervision and defensive silence through fear. Originality/value: This study advances the literature on workplace mistreatment and employee silence by suggesting that observing supervisory abuse directed toward coworkers may contribute to employees' fear and defensive silence. By integrating the concept of emotional contagion, the study explains why fear-related silence associated with observed abuse may be more pronounced in some employees than in others.

This study investigates how the gender of human resource (HR) managers and the presence of rationality culture (RC) in organizations jointly influence women employees’ workplace outcomes, including interpersonal affinity, job involvement, and organizational loyalty. Drawing on feminist organizational theory and social identity theory, the study examines whether women HR managers are associated with more positive outcomes for women employees and whether the dominance of RC moderates these effects. RC, rooted in bureaucratic logic and objectivity, may diminish the perceived value of relational and inclusive HR practices—especially in highly formalized work environments. The study employs a survey-based quantitative method using data from the Korean Women Managers Panel, which includes responses from over 346 women working in medium- and large-sized organizations in South Korea. Directional hypotheses are tested, proposing that women HR managers positively influence employee outcomes, but this effect may be weakened in organizations where RC is strongly embedded. The findings contribute to organizational behavior and the gender studies literature by clarifying how HR managers’ gender operates under varying cultural norms and revealing the conditional nature of its effectiveness. The study offers both theoretical and practical insights for organizations aiming to foster inclusive environments, with implications for HR strategy, organizational development, and gender

Organizations are increasingly depending on their employees to contribute suggestions aimed at enhancing organizational processes, boosting overall efficiency, and fostering innovation. However, some factors might hinder employees from expressing their thoughts. While there is evidence suggesting an effect of supervisor social undermining behavior on employee voice, the impact on innovative types of voice, specifically promotive voice, remains uncertain. This study aims to explore the association between supervisor social undermining and employee promotive voice. Moreover, this research investigates how employee perceptions of procedural justice moderate this relationship, utilizing the Conservation of Resources theory. Data were collected from 115 highly skilled employees, and hierarchical regression analysis was employed to assess the proposed hypotheses. The findings suggest that when individuals encounter social undermining behavior from their supervisor, they are less inclined to engage in promotive voice behavior. Interestingly, the results indicate that this relationship becomes stronger when individuals possess higher perceptions of procedural justice. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the impact of supervisor social undermining on promotive voice while considering procedural justice as a moderator in this relationship. The findings of this study suggest several theoretical and practical implications and provide directions for future research.

While the social cognitive theory suggests that a group’s efficacy belief enhances its performance, emerging evidence indicates that this relationship is more complex than it appears to be. This study explores the boundary conditions of this relationship using the data of 389 employees from 41 work groups in a manufacturing company in South Korea. The results show that group efficacy is positively related to group performance and that this relationship is stronger when members are generally incompetent than competent. We also found that a bottleneck, which is operationalized as a group’s minimum competency, in an efficacious group is at least one condition that forms a negative relationship between group efficacy and its performance.

Drawing on job demand-resources (JDR) theory, this study proposes that role overload and perceived organizational support have interaction effects on turnover intention. Further, we investigate the dynamics between role overload and turnover intention by considering differences in individuals’ reactions to inequity. We conducted several hierarchical regression analyses to test our hypotheses using data from 207 team members at 12 manufacturing companies in South Korea. The results reveal a positive relationship between role overload and turnover intention and a significant joint moderation effect of perceived organizational support and equity sensitivity. This study expands on JDR theory by simultaneously considering the buffer and strain hypotheses in the role overload–turnover relationship and its link to equity sensitivity.

Based on social learning theory, we explore when the most competent member in the group leads to high group performance. We argue that the most competent member in the group increases group performance in high cohesive groups where members interact more frequently and maintain closer relationships with one another. To examine this, we used multisource data collected in two waves from an organization in South Korea. The results indicate that the highest competency within the group is positively related to group performance being perceived by the group members and by the upper management in cohesive groups. Moreover, we found different patterns for the group performance rated by different sources.