The discretionary efforts of employees to go above and beyond illustrated by organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) provide an important path to organizational success. Organizational work environment characteristics, notably, organizational climates, serve as fundamental mechanisms for eliciting OCBs. However, existing research on organizational climate and OCBs frequently adopts a variable-centered approach that breaks down climate into individual dimensions. In contrast to past research, our goal is to respond to calls to more fully contextualize organizational climate by offering a configuration of climate attributes. Drawing on a typology of research problematizing, we replace the metaphor of individual dimensions with a metaphor of a climate configuration. To theorize and test the relationship between organizational climate and OCBs, we examine organizational values embodied in the competing values framework through a mesolevel organizational climate perspective. Building on the literature on managing paradox, we propose a constructive organizational values climate configuration, which captures how the different dimensions of the competing values framework coexist and work together. In turn, we propose that constructive organizational values climate predicts three types of OCBs: helping, taking charge, and creative behavior. Furthermore, drawing on regulatory focus theory and on the change-oriented and affiliative roots of OCBs, we offer two distinct mediators that shed light on the underlying processes. We test the proposed theory with data from 737 respondents residing in 166 work units in a wide variety of organizations.

In the face of recurring corporate scandals and rampantly selfish behavior, a focus on various types of leadership that take into account the interests of others more so than oneself has started to emerge. In this manuscript, we review the leadership literature with a specific focus on leadership behaviors that can be construed as other-oriented (e.g. servant leadership, self-sacrifice, ethical leadership). We then examine meta-analytically the practical impact of other-oriented leadership on outcomes at multiple levels by analyzing 151 effect sizes (N=36,843) at the individual, group and the organizational levels. We find strong support for the importance of other-oriented leadership for multiple outcomes. We analyze and discuss possible moderators of the strength of proposed relationships.

While many people believe that exercise can relieve stress and enrich well-being, it is unclear whether this relationship always holds when employees suffer from work–family conflict (WFC). Drawing on the transactional theory of stress and conservation of resources theory, we examine how exercise moderates the impact of time- and strain-based WFC on employees’ vitality at work and, subsequently, employees’ subjective well-being. With data collected in multiple waves from a sample in China (N = 243), we found that when employees experienced time-based WFC, strong adherence to exercise did not benefit their vitality as weak adherence to exercise did. However, when employees experienced strain-based work interference with family demands, strong (rather than weak) adherence to exercise benefited their vitality. In addition, the moderating effect of exercise on the relationship between WFC and vitality transited to affect employee job satisfaction.

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.