Organizational purpose has flourished in the professional management literature, yet despite increased scholarly interest, academic knowledge and empirical research on the topic remain scarce. Moreover, studies that have been conducted contain important oversights including the lack of a clear conceptualization and misinterpretations that hinder the further development and understanding of organizational purpose. In view of these shortcomings, our interview study aimed to contribute to academic and societal conversations on the contemporary meaning and function of organizational purpose considering the voices and (...) perspectives of 44 global experts. Employing template analysis, we defined organizational purpose as “an organization’s reason for being characterized by significance, aspiration, direction, unification, and motivation.” Moreover, we proposed an explanatory conceptual model, including drivers and outcomes of purpose, important boundary conditions, and explanatory mechanisms. Drawing on self-determination theory, person–organization fit theory, job characteristics theory, and conservation of resources theory, we were able to explain how and under what conditions these concepts are related to organizational purpose. In doing so, our research contributes to advancing the knowledge and understanding of organizational purpose and its effects on human lives within and outside organizations. Our study thereby enhances the understanding of the role of organizations in society and helps in evaluating whether organizations take responsibility by living their purpose in the society they are part of. As such, our study provides important insights for theory development, scale development, and further empirical research on organizational purpose and its effects in different streams such as OB, HRM, marketing, leadership, and strategy. (shrink)

This paper examines the emotional processes in Machiavellian leadership. The leadership literature portrays Machiavellians as ‘dark’ individuals that engage in unethical actions, causing employee dissatisfaction, distress, emotional exhaustion and high turnover. However, research has seldom questioned the processes behind these unethical and negative outcomes. This study explores Machiavellian emotional processes at multiple levels—within-persons and relational levels (between-persons and interpersonal interactions in organisations). In this study, emotions and leadership are not explored in isolation but as social processes that occur in relationships (...) between leaders and employees in evolving organisational settings. This study draws on 20 participants from four large multi-national construction firms in Sri Lanka. Open-ended semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the emotions of Machiavellians in organisations. The findings suggest that Machiavellianism influences leader and employee emotional processes. Furthermore, the emotional processes, influenced by Machiavellianism, appear to facilitate the development of leader and employee relationships and emotional experiences at within-persons and relational levels in organisations. (shrink)

Existing research on leader humility primarily demonstrates its positive effects. This study challenges this view by proposing the potential negative effects of leader humility on followers’ behaviors. Furthermore, this paper employs the person-situation interactionist perspective to extend the research on integrating followers’ personality traits and leader humility. Specifically, this study proposed that leader humility triggers their followers’ sense of power; moreover, this study wagers that whether followers’ sense of power encourages self-interested or prosocial behavior in followers depends on their particular (...) Machiavellian traits. The theoretical model was tested using the time-lagged supervisor–subordinate matched data obtained. Our findings revealed that follower Machiavellianism fosters the relationship between a sense of power and self-interested behavior but it weakens the relationship between a sense of power and prosocial behavior. Thus, this study provides a better understanding regarding the effect of follower personality and leader humility on follower behavioral reactions. (shrink)

The extant literature has largely conceptualized abusive supervision as a hot and impulsive form of aggression. In this paper, we offer a cold and strategic perspective on how abusive supervision might be used strategically to achieve goals. Drawing on the Machiavellian literature and social interaction theory of aggression, we develop a moderated serial mediation model, in which leader Machiavellianism predicts their strategic use of abusive supervision on subordinates via the mediating role of leaders’ guanxi with direct supervisor. We further theorize (...) that this mediation effect is more pronounced when guanxi among team members (team member guanxi, TMG) is stronger, because Mach leaders are more likely to perceive high TMG as a threat to their power. Finally, we propose that Mach leaders’ strategic use of abusive supervision has negative implications for team outcomes, manifested in low levels of team voice and team organizational citizenship behaviors toward fellow team members (OCBI). Analyses of two studies—Study 1 using multi-wave data (355 leaders) from a US sample and Study 2 using a multi-wave, multi-source, and multilevel data (1252 subordinates and 273 leaders) from a Chinese sample—corroborated our model. This study provides a comprehensive examination of who, how, and when strategic abuse unfolds in the workplace and its negative implication for team outcomes. (shrink)