infonet-economy

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to follow the call of researchers to take intrapersonal resources into account when trying to understand the influence of interpersonal resources by investigating the interplay of social support and self-efficacy in predicting job performance of people with disabilities.

Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected in an Israeli call center employing mostly people with disabilities. The independent and moderator variables were assessed by an employee survey. To avoid common source bias, job performance was rated by the supervisors four weeks after conducting the survey. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings - The first main effect hypothesis, stating a positive relationship between social support and job performance was conditionally supported (p=0.06). The relationship between self-efficacy and job performance did not gain support. In line with the extended support buffer hypothesis, the job performance of low self-efficacious employees increased with higher levels of social support. The interference hypothesis, postulating a negative effect of social support under the condition of high levels of self-efficacy, was not supported.

Practical implications - The results indicate that employees with disabilities differ in the level of social support they need in order to reach high levels of job performance. Instead of a one-size-fits-all-approach, organizations should take individual levels of self-efficacy into account and offer support accordingly in order to unleash the full working potential.

Originality/value - This is the first known empirical investigation examining the role of individual differences in the need of social support among employees with disabilities.

Research testing a complex process model, incorporating moderating and mediating mechanisms associated with virtual team (VT) performance, remains rare. This paper aims to introduce trust climate as a crucial boundary condition for high performance in VTs. It also aims to propose a moderated-indirect model such that the relationship between team goals and task performance is mediated by task cohesion and the relationship between team goals and task cohesion is moderated by trust.

Due to globalization and technological innovation, virtual teams (VT) are currently attracting substantial research attention (e.g. Schiller & Mandviwalla, 2007). A number of studies have shown the importance of individual process factor (e.g. Rico et al., 2008) which can be differentiated into planning, action and interpersonal processes (Martins et al., 2004). In terms of planning, it is essential for virtual teams to set team goals (Hertel et al., 2004). In an experimental study, team goals were related to cohesion and performance in virtual teams (Huang et al., 2002). With regard to action processes, trust seems to be crucial for task behavior (Jarvenpaa et al., 1998). However, in another study, Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999) showed that socially-oriented exchange supports the development of trust in virtual teams. An important interpersonal factor for collaboration is task cohesion (Cohen & Bailey, 1997). One study showed that task cohesion was related to interaction, performance goals as well as to task effectiveness (Van den Bossche et al., 2006). As these research results suggest 'empirical research on VTs has been relatively limited in scope and offers few consistent fndings, and that many aspects of VT functioning remain unexamined.' (Martins et al., 2004, 819). Above all, the question how these different process factors interplay is not yet answered. This study aims at clarifying the relationship between team goals, trust, task cohesion and performance. We propose a moderated-mediation model such that the relationship between team goals and task performance (Huang et al., 2002) is mediated by task cohesion (H1) and the relationship between team goals and task cohesion is moderated by trust (H2). Hypotheses of the study are tested with structural equation modeling, in a sample of 50 virtual teams from a German telecommunication company with 225 members. The relationships are examined longitudinally in order to mitigate some of the common method bias. Overall, the proposed hypotheses can be concrmed. Thus, the study provides insights for team leaders and managers that a general culture of trust should be established in virtual teams so that the teams' goal setting indeed aects higher performance.

This paper introduces a multilevel perspective on the relationships of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) with organizational outcomes (i.e., client satisfaction) and investigates how and under which conditions these relationships manifest. On the basis of contagion theory, we proposed that the positive effects of i-deals will spill over within organizational units (indicated by reduced emotional exhaustion and enhanced collective commitment), which leads to increased customer satisfaction. Moreover, we postulated that the effects of i-deals would be more prominent in units with high age diversity, as i-deals are more important in units where people’s work-related needs are more heterogeneous due to the higher diversity in employee age. A study among 19,780 employees and 17,500 clients of a German public service organization showed support for the contagion model and that i-deals were negatively related to individual emotional exhaustion and subsequently positively related to collective commitment within units and Client satisfaction measured 6 months later. Emotional exhaustion and collective commitment mediated the relationships between i-deals and client satisfaction. Finally, we found that the relationships between i-deals and emotional exhaustion / client satisfaction were more strongly negative in units with high age diversity, rather than in units with low age diversity, indicating the benefits of i-deals within units with high age diversity to reduce emotional exhaustion and enhance client satisfaction.

Despite huge imbalances in the division of housework between women and men, previous studies have found perceptions of equity on the part of women to be much more frequent than feelings of injustice. Taking a comparative perspective on the basis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2002 data (N = 8,556), we find that, on the individual level, the explanatory frameworks that have been found to influence the actual inequality of household division of labor (time availability, resource dependence, and gender ideology) contribute to the explanation of perceptions of equity, in that they interact with the inequality of the household division of labor. On the country level, the gender-wage ratio and the average level of inequality are important predictors.