IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v185y2023i2d10.1007_s10551-022-05170-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Job Stressors Activate Amoral Manipulation? A Weekly Diary Study

Author

Listed:
  • Gloria Xiaocheng Ma

    (Erasmus University)

  • Paraskevas Petrou

    (Erasmus University)

  • Arnold B. Bakker

    (Erasmus University
    University of Johannesburg)

  • Marise Ph. Born

    (Erasmus University
    North-West University)

Abstract

This study investigates whether job stressors such as role ambiguity, procedural unfairness, and perceived competition may prompt high Machiavellian employees to use amoral manipulation at work. We also examine whether these manipulative behaviors are consequently related to their own task performance and affiliative citizenship behaviors. A weekly diary study was conducted among 111 Dutch employees over five consecutive working weeks, resulting in 446 assessed occasions. Using a multilevel moderated mediation model, we found that the relationship between weekly job stressors and weekly amoral manipulation (AM) was contingent on trait AM, when the job stressor was role ambiguity (but not when the job stressor was either weekly procedural unfairness or weekly perceived competition). Our results also revealed significant indirect effects of weekly role ambiguity on weekly task performance and weekly display of courtesy through state AM, when trait AM was high. Our findings suggest that role ambiguity activates high Machiavellian employees’ manipulative behaviors at work, which in turn leads to impaired task performance and less courtesy toward others during the same working week.

Suggested Citation

  • Gloria Xiaocheng Ma & Paraskevas Petrou & Arnold B. Bakker & Marise Ph. Born, 2023. "Can Job Stressors Activate Amoral Manipulation? A Weekly Diary Study," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 185(2), pages 467-482, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:185:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05170-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05170-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05170-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-022-05170-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Colquitt, Jason A. & Scott, Brent A. & Judge, Timothy A. & Shaw, John C., 2006. "Justice and personality: Using integrative theories to derive moderators of justice effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 110-127, May.
    2. Anthony M. Marino & Ján Zábojník, 2004. "Internal Competition for Corporate Resources and Incentives in Teams," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(4), pages 710-727, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roman Inderst & Manuel Klein, 2007. "Innovation, endogenous overinvestment, and incentive pay," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(4), pages 881-904, December.
    2. Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap & Abhijit Ramalingam & Brock K. Stoddard, 2018. "Within-group inequality in inter-group competition," Working Papers 18-17, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    3. Raymond Loi & Hang-Yue Ngo, 2010. "Mobility norms, risk aversion, and career satisfaction of Chinese employees," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 237-255, June.
    4. Legge, Stefan & Schmid, Lukas, 2013. "Rankings, Random Successes, and Individual Performance," Economics Working Paper Series 1340, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    5. Jason G. Cummins & Ingmar Nyman, 2013. "Yes Men in Tournaments," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 169(4), pages 621-659, December.
    6. Rebekka Kesberg & Stefan Pfattheicher, 2019. "Democracy matters: a psychological perspective on the beneficial impact of democratic punishment systems in social dilemmas," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-13, December.
    7. Cheng, Colin C.J. & Shiu, Eric C., 2022. "A two-level, longitudinal investigation into the effects of employee social entrepreneurship orientation and top management team decisions on product innovation," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    8. Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo & Gómez, Santiago & Mantilla, César, 2019. "Between-group competition enhances cooperation in resource appropriation games," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 17-26.
    9. Thau, Stefan & Bennett, Rebecca J. & Mitchell, Marie S. & Marrs, Mary Beth, 2009. "How management style moderates the relationship between abusive supervision and workplace deviance: An uncertainty management theory perspective," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 79-92, January.
    10. Ishida, Junichiro, 2009. "Incentives in academics: Collaboration under weak complementarities," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 215-223, April.
    11. Viktoria Boss & Robin Kleer & Alexander Vossen, 2017. "Walking Parallel Paths Or Taking The Same Road? The Effect Of Collaborative Incentives In Innovation Contests," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(03), pages 1-34, April.
    12. Benndorf, Volker & Rau, Holger A., 2012. "Competition in the workplace: An experimental investigation," DICE Discussion Papers 53, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    13. Zapata-Phelan, Cindy P. & Colquitt, Jason A. & Scott, Brent A. & Livingston, Beth, 2009. "Procedural justice, interactional justice, and task performance: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 93-105, January.
    14. Bianchi, Emily C. & Brockner, Joel, 2012. "In the eyes of the beholder? The role of dispositional trust in judgments of procedural and interactional fairness," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 46-59.
    15. Schweisfurth, Tim & Zaggl, Michael A. & Schöttl, Claus P. & Raasch, Christina, 2017. "Hierarchical similarity biases in idea evaluation: A study in enterprise crowdfunding," Kiel Working Papers 2095, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    16. Shaun P. Hargeaves Heap & Abhijit Ramalingam & Brock V. Stoddard, 2017. "The productivity puzzle and the problem with the rich: An experiment on competition, inequality and "team spirit"," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 17-03, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    17. Hassan Jalil Shah & Jenho Peter Ou & Saman Attiq & Muhammad Umer & Wing-Keung Wong, 2022. "Does Inclusive Leadership Improve the Sustainability of Employee Relations? Test of Justice Theory and Employee Perceived Insider Status," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-19, November.
    18. Gjedrem, William Gilje & Kvaløy, Ola, 2020. "Relative performance feedback to teams," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    19. Steven Kaplan & Janet Samuels & Jeffrey Cohen, 2015. "An Examination of the Effect of CEO Social Ties and CEO Reputation on Nonprofessional Investors’ Say-on-Pay Judgments," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 103-117, January.
    20. Junichiro Ishida, 2013. "Multilayered Tournaments," ISER Discussion Paper 0879, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:185:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05170-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.