Dr Rashpal K. Dhensa-Kahlon

Although impression management scholars have identified a number of tactics for influencing supervisor evaluations, most of those tactics represent supervisor-targeted behaviors. This study examines the degree to which employees form supportive relationships with peers for impression management purposes. In so doing, we explore this intriguing question: Will employees gain more from forming supportive relationships with ?stars? (i.e., top performers who are ?on the fast track? in the organization) or ?projects? (i.e., ?works in progress? who need help and refinement to perform well)? We examined this question in 2 field studies. Study 1 included 4 sources and 2 time periods; Study 2 included 2 sources and 3 time periods. The results showed that supportive relationships with both stars and projects seemed to represent impression management opportunities, insofar as they predicted supervisor positive affect and perceptions of employee promotability. Impression management motives only predicted supportive relationships with stars, however, not projects. Relationships with projects were driven by prosocial motives not concerns about managing images. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of our results for the managing of impressions and peer relationships.

The construct of feeling trusted reflects the perception that another party is willing to accept vulnerability to one?s actions. Although this construct has received far less attention than trusting, the consensus is that believing their supervisors trust them has benefits for employees? job performance. Our study challenges that consensus by arguing that feeling trusted can be exhausting for employees. Drawing on Stevan Hobfoll?s conservation of resources theory, we develop a model in which feeling trusted fills an employee with pride?a benefit for exhaustion and performance?while also increasing perceived workload and concerns about reputation maintenance?burdens for exhaustion and performance. We test our model in a field study using a sample of public transit bus drivers in London, England. Our results suggest that feeling trusted is a double-edged sword for job performance, bringing with it both benefits and burdens. Given that recommendations for managers generally encourage placing trust in employees, these results have important practical implications.

Many employees feel a general sense of unfairness toward their supervisors. A common reaction to such unfairness is to talk about it with coworkers. The conventional wisdom is that this unfairness talk should be beneficial to the aggrieved employees. After all, talking provides employees with an opportunity to make sense of the experience and to ?let off steam.? We challenge this perspective, drawing on cognitive-motivational-relational theory to develop arguments that unfairness talk leads to emotions that reduce the employee?s ability to move on from the unfairness. We first tested these proposals in a three-wave, two-source field study of bus drivers (Study 1), then replicated our findings in a laboratory study (Study 2). In both studies, we found that unfairness talk was positively related to anger and negatively related to hope. Those emotions went on to have direct effects on forgiveness and indirect effects on citizenship behavior. Our results also show that the detrimental effects of unfairness talk were neutralized when the listener offered suggestions that reframed the unfair situation. We discuss the implications of these results for managing unfairness in organizations.

Organisations increasingly rely on teams to get work done. Teams can provide more creative, responsive, productive, efficient, and effective outcomes than individuals working alone. However, the successful use of teams in organisations depends on team members? ability to utilize their own specialized expertise while integrating the diverse expertise of their colleagues. This can be achieved through team learning.
Team learning enables that teams can combine their members? existing knowledge structures and develop innovative solutions to changing problems. Team learning is a function of the members? learning, which through their interactions produce mutual understanding that leads to an increase in the collective level of knowledge. By means of learning, team members can gain knowledge on how to structure themselves, communicate with other groups, conduct work processes, make decisions, and put these decisions into action. However, teams do not always learn, as learning can be conditioned by the members? characteristics, the team emergent states and the members? interactions while they are working together.
By studying the process of learning in teams, this thesis presents three studies that extend our understanding of the antecedents and contextual factors that determine when and from whom team members learn within their team. This thesis therefore contributes to the research on teams and learning in four ways: (1) by studying how members? expertness, work team identification and need for closure influence team learning; (2) by reviewing learning from a multilevel contingency perspective; (3) by zooming in at the process of learning, that is studying dyadic learning in teams through the use of social network analysis; and, (4) by getting insights of learning as a process that can be studied from a dyadic (longitudinal) perspective. Our findings strengthen the knowledge that organisations have to promote learning in teams, such that they can create more effective policies and practices that enable both the social and the cognitive processes that stimulate the emergence of learning within teams.