Accounting for personal disposition and organizational context: connecting role ambiguity,public service motivation,and whistle-blowing in federal agencies

Abstract

Organizational psychologists and HRM scholars have long argued that prosocial organizational behaviors enhance organizational performance. However, prosocial behaviors are motivated by both self-interested and altruistic intent. Moreover, some have recognized that the factors that encourage shifts between egoistically and altruistically motivated prosocial behaviors may result from inherent tensions between individual disposition and situational contexts. As such, this study draws from literature examining prosocial behavior to evaluate whether work situations with clear task expectations dampen the extent to which prosocial personal dispositions diminish egoistically motivated prosocial behavior. Findings from a series of structural equation models reveal that altruistic dispositional traits diminish egoistic motives for engaging in one specific prosocial behavior, whistle-blowing. However, findings also reveal that work situations characterized by clear task expectations dampen the negative effect of altruistic dispositions on egoistically motivated whistle-blowing. Our findings imply that managers can adjust organizational contexts to capitalize on the enhanced benefits resulting from altruistically motivated prosocial behaviors.     

THE EFFECTS OF NEWS WHEN LIQUIDITY MATTERS

We analyze the impact of news (information shocks) in economies where liquidity matters, including those with endogenous credit limits, and those with assets serving as collateral or media of exchange. Although we also consider news about productivity and credit conditions, a leading case concerns monetary policy announcements. Real or monetary news has big effects on markets, potentially causing cyclic or boom–bust responses, even though we focus on the unique transition consistent with stationarity after shocks. In particular, policy announcements may induce instead of reduce volatility. We also discuss the implications for the inflation puzzle, forward-guidance puzzle, and other apparent anomalies.     

The Relationship Among Union Membership, Facets of Satisfaction and Intent to Leave: Further Evidence on the Voice Face of Unions

This study examined the impact of union membership on employees’ intent to leave their jobs across a number of facets of satisfaction, as a further test of unions’ voice face. Among the findings were that there were significant relationships between job, compensation, benefits, working conditions, and immediate supervisor satisfaction and intent to leave one’s job for nonunion employees. In contrast, only the relationship between job satisfaction and intent to leave was significant for union employees. Finally, over the facets of satisfaction where one would expect unions to have the most influence, the relationship between intent to leave one’s job and satisfaction was greater for nonunion employees than for union employees. These results provide a great deal of support for the effect of unions’ voice face.

Creative destruction and firm-specific performance heterogeneity

Traditional U.S. industries with higher firm-specific stock return and fundamentals performance heterogeneity use information technology (IT) more intensively and post faster productivity growth in the late 20th century. We argue that this mechanically reflects a wave of Schumpeter's creative destruction disrupting a wide swath of industries, with successful IT adopters unpredictably undermining established firms. This validates endogenous growth theory models of creative destruction and suggests intensified creative destruction as explaining findings associating greater firm-specific performance variation with higher per capita GDPs, economy growth rates, accounting standards, financial system development, and property right protection.     

The Effect of Removing Geographic Restrictions on Banking in the United States: Lessons for Europe*

In this paper the author argues that cross‐border, intra‐European bank mergers are likely to generate benefits similar to those enjoyed in the United States when interstate banking restrictions were removed. These benefits include greater banking efficiency, higher economic and employment growth, more entrepreneurial activity, and reduced economic volatility.     

Were the Good Old Days That Good? Changes in Managerial Stock Ownership Since the Great Depression

We document that ownership by officers and directors of publicly traded firms is on average higher today than earlier in the century. Managerial ownership has risen from 13 percent for the universe of exchange-listed corporations in 1935, the earliest year for which such data exist, to 21 percent in 1995. We examine in detail the robustness of the increase and explore hypotheses to explain it. Higher managerial ownership has not substituted for alternative corporate governance mechanisms. Lower volatility and greater hedging opportunities associated with the development of financial markets appear to be important factors explaining the increase in managerial ownership.     

Equilibrium Versus the Invisible Hand

Twentieth century equilibrium modeling depicts an end state toward which an economy tends, whereas the invisible hand, as Adam Smith depicted it, suggests an economy continually progressing as an increased division of labor is produced by growing markets. Thus, there is an inherent tension between the concepts of an equilibrium outcome versus the invisible hand process. The paper discusses different concepts of equilibrium, and relates entrepreneurship to the invisible hand. The paper concludes that the invisible hand concept provides a more fruitful framework for economic analysis than the twentieth century equilibrium framework.     

Combining forecasts: An application to elections

We summarize the literature on the effectiveness of combining forecasts by assessing the conditions under which combining is most valuable. Using data on the six US presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, we report the reductions in error obtained by averaging forecasts within and across four election forecasting methods: poll projections, expert judgment, quantitative models, and the Iowa Electronic Markets. Across the six elections, the resulting combined forecasts were more accurate than any individual component method, on average. The gains in accuracy from combining increased with the numbers of forecasts used, especially when these forecasts were based on different methods and different data, and in situations involving high levels of uncertainty. Such combining yielded error reductions of between 16% and 59%, compared to the average errors of the individual forecasts. This improvement is substantially greater than the 12% reduction in error that had been reported previously for combining forecasts.