DSpace Repository :: Browsing by Author "Harms, Peter D."

Browsing by Author "Harms, Peter D."

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Beyond the Bright Side: Dark Personality at Work
(2015) Harms, Peter D.; Spain, Seth M.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Can you feel it?: how and when leader passion impacts follower performance
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2020) Landay, Karen; Harms, Peter D.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Despite popular opinion that passion is a necessary ingredient for leadership, scholars have little insight into how, when, or even if leader passion impacts follower outcomes. I therefore make several contributions towards increasing scholarly understanding in this area. First, I reviewed existing definitions and measures of passion relevant to the workplace and provided a new, more comprehensive definition of work passion that conceptually differentiates it from related constructs. I also used socioanalytic theory to distinguish between felt work passion, which contains affective and cognitive elements, and displayed work passion, which contains behavioral elements. Second, in order to better align theory and measurement, I developed and validated new measures of felt (self-report) and displayed (other-report) work passion in two samples of working adults. The scales showed good convergent validity with other measures of work-related passion, somewhat concerning discriminant validity with job attitudes such as engagement and job satisfaction, and evidence of criterion validity with leader-member exchange. Third, I integrated social cognitive theory with theories of emotion, motive, and goal contagion to conduct an initial test of a multilevel moderated mediation model of how leader felt and displayed work passion influence follower felt work passion and performance, contingent on the emotional intelligence of both leaders and followers. In a sample of leaders and followers employed by a staffing agency, although I did not find support for my hypotheses, analysis suggested that leader displayed passion may interact with follower characteristics to predict follower outcomes.
A connectionist model of the ideal organization: investigating nurse assessment of person-organization fit
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2019) Lowman, Graham Hughes; Harms, Peter D.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
The attraction and retention of nurses is a primary concern in the healthcare industry. I propose a context-sensitive connectionist model of person-organization (P-O) fit to provide a framework for understanding the cognitive information processing that nurses undergo when determining to accept a position or remain at an organization. Building on this framework, I develop and test an occupation-specific instrument for evaluating nurse P-O fit using a qualitative-to-quantitative method. This provides three primary contributions to the P-O fit literature and the study of nurse attraction and retention. First, the proposed model of P-O fit expands on prior P-O fit theories by 1) identifying where the ideal organization concept originates, 2) providing an explanation for why the ideal organization concept changes over time, 3) detailing the cognitive information processing and pattern matching process that dictates how P-O fit is determined by an individual, and 4) accommodating normative and distinctive fit preferences. Second, the development of the corresponding P-O fit instrument, the Nurse Ideal Organization Prototype (IOP), contributes to the literature by demonstrating the qualitative-to-quantitative process of creating an occupation-specific measure of P-O fit. Finally, by testing this measure utilizing overall, normative, and distinctive fit indices, contributions are also made by reinforcing the importance of normative fit relative to attitudinal outcomes and by comparing universal to occupation-specific measures of P-O fit. These contributions both expand current understanding of P-O fit and provide a novel perspective for addressing nurse attraction and retention.
Exchange without return: helping behaviors over time in positive and negative reciprocity relationships
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2015) Leon, Matthew R.; Halbesleben, Jonathon R. B.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
There is broad awareness that the health of coworker relationships is often built on reciprocity and assessments of member exchanges, where relationships are pursued or terminated based on benefits received. Both social exchange theory and equity theory propose that, when an exchange relationship is no longer favorable (i.e., a negative reciprocity relationship), an individual should terminate it to prevent resource losses. While this is economically rational, it often is impossible or impractical to terminate a relationship in a work context. The objective of this dissertation is to address this apparent mismatch between theories of helping behavior and typical workplace dynamics. I do so by exploring three possible explanations for this mismatch. First, I argue that the one of the key assumptions of social exchange theory, that the relationships are voluntary, may not always hold in a work setting. Second, I argue that fluctuations in investment behavior, specifically helping, changes in a non-linear fashion over time. Finally, I examine the impact of reciprocity, perceptions of team member efficacy, and third-party investment on helping behaviors in a sustained, negative reciprocity relationship. Across two experiments and one field study, I found that helping behaviors change discontinuously over time, individuals will help a partner complete an interdependent task regardless of reciprocation, and that helping is driven by a combination of factors including partner performance and general perceptions of a partner's helpfulness.
From Derailers to Dynamics: How Dark Personality Composition Shapes Team Communication Networks and Learning Processes
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2026) Cho, Younsung; Bachrach, Daniel G.
Work teams are increasingly understood as complex adaptive systems where collective outcomes emerge through ongoing interaction patterns rather than simple additive effects. However, existing research has predominantly focused on bright-side traits and distal outcomes, leaving a "black box" regarding how socially problematic tendencies shape the interpersonal dynamics and structural patterns of team interaction. This dissertation addresses this gap by investigating how personality derailers—subclinical tendencies that emerge under stress—function as interpersonal coping strategies that drive team emergence. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory, I conceptualize derailers not as static liabilities, but as interpersonal coping tendencies—Moving Away (withdrawal), Moving Against (dominance), and Moving Toward (compliance)—that shape members' expectations regarding the costs, benefits, and reciprocity of interaction. Using a multilevel, longitudinal design with 90 self-managed undergraduate project teams across three time points, I examine how these individual orientations aggregate into team-level configurations to drive emergent communication network structures and subsequent team learning. The findings demonstrate that the impact of derailers is fundamentally contingent upon their compositional configuration. Teams with high mean levels of Moving Away tendencies developed sparse, weakly reciprocal networks, consistent with relational disengagement and fragmentation. In contrast, teams characterized by greater heterogeneity in Moving Against tendencies exhibited functional dominance complementarity, which was associated with denser and more reciprocal communication networks. The primary contribution of this research is the identification of network reciprocity—the mutuality of exchange—as the critical proximal mechanism linking personality to team outcomes. By demonstrating that reciprocity, rather than interaction frequency (density), is the primary driver of both reflexive and experimental learning, this dissertation shifts the theoretical focus from "who is in the team" to "how members are organized within systems of exchange". These results offer a process-based alternative to trait-centric models, providing practical guidance for managing early interaction patterns to foster the mutual engagement necessary for collective adaptation.
Physiological evidence of contentment as a withdrawal-motivated affect
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2016) Neal, Lauren Browning; Gable, Philip A.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Emotions motivate humans to either approach or avoid stimuli in their environment. While most emotion theorists associate all positive emotions with approach-motivation, there may be some positive emotions associated with withdrawal-motivation. Post-goal states of contentment may prompt an individual to withdraw from the environment to protect and savor goal objects. The current study examined whether post-goal contentment led to withdrawal-motivation using behavioral and psychophysiological measures. Participants wrote an essay evoking contentment, enthusiasm, or neutral affect. Then, participants completed behavioral tasks measuring aspects of withdrawal motivation while EEG and EMG were recorded. Asymmetric frontal activity assessed using electroencephalography (EEG) differed between the contentment and neutral conditions. Specifically, contentment evoked less relative left frontal activation, a neurophysiological marker of approach motivation. Participants in the contentment condition demonstrated less approach motivation than a neutral condition. Participants in the contentment condition demonstrated a trend towards more activity of the zygomaticus major than participants in the neutral condition, suggesting that the content state was experienced as positively valenced. Behavioral measures of risk taking and protective behavior did not reveal differences between conditions. Physiological evidence suggests that contentment is experienced as a positive but possibly withdrawal-motivated state, while behavioral evidence is inconclusive.
The Role of Stress Among Cybersecurity Professionals
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2021) Singh, Tripti; Johnston, Allen C.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
The concept of stress has gained significant attention from researchers across several disciplines. Among this research, information systems (IS) scholars have contributed to our understanding of stress by detailing individual experiences of stress that occur from the use of technology, adherence to information security requirements, and other workplace circumstances such as work overload. Yet, even among this IS focused research, there are different conceptualizations and operationalizations of stress; how it is formed, how it is measured, and how individuals respond to it. This dissertation seeks to provide some needed clarity and insight to this stream of research and does so by focusing on one of the most stress-prone, but least understood segments of the information security (InfoSec) practice community, cybersecurity professionals. In this two-essay dissertation, we accomplish two broad goals. First, in essay one we synthesize the trends, gaps, and limitations of the research on stress as it applies to cybersecurity professionals and develop a set of opportunities for future research. Second, in essay two we describe and test a demand appraisal model for cybersecurity professionals to show how cybersecurity professionals experience and respond to stress stemming from the demands associated with implementing and/or maintaining their organizations’ electronic monitoring and surveillance (EMS) technologies.
Systems Perspective of Amazon Mechanical Turk for Organizational Research: Review and Recommendations
(Frontiers, 2017) Keith, Melissa G.; Tay, Louis; Harms, Peter D.; Purdue University; Purdue University West Lafayette Campus; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is becoming a prevalent source of quick and cost effective data for organizational research, but there are questions about the appropriateness of the platform for organizational research. To answer these questions, we conducted an integrative review based on 75 papers evaluating the MTurk platform and 250 MTurk samples used in organizational research. This integrative review provides four contributions: (1) we analyze the trends associated with the use of MTurk samples in organizational research; (2) we develop a systems perspective (recruitment system, selection system, and work management system) to synthesize and organize the key factors influencing data collected on MTurk that may affect generalizability and data quality; (3) within each factor, we also use available MTurk samples from the organizational literature to analyze key issues (e.g., sample characteristics, use of attention checks, payment); and (4) based on our review, we provide specific recommendations and a checklist for data reporting in order to improve data transparency and enable further research on this issue.
Testing the Continuum of Harm: the Role of Generlized Harassment and Leader Tolerance for Sexual Harassment in Predicting Survivor Outcomes
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2021) Brady, Lisa; Harms, Peter D.; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
At the time, high-profile events such as the Navy Tailhook Scandal in 1993, the Air Force Academy scandal in Colorado in 2003, and the scandals at West Point and the Naval Academy in 2013 shocked the nation. Despite decades of media and research attention to the topic of sexual harassment and assault in the U.S. military, violent crimes, such as the murder of Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen by a fellow solder at the Army base in Fort Hood in Texas in 2020, have not stopped. While not all incidents of sexual harassment are violent, the DoD’s continuum of harm model is used widely in research and practice to depict how seemingly innocent sex-related behaviors or “jokes” can create environments in which these behaviors escalate to violent crimes. To reduce the extent of harm to survivors’ mental health and job attitudes, it is critical to identify risk factors beyond sexual harassment that may belong on the continuum of harm. In this dissertation I explore two potential risk factors: 1) experiencing generalized (nonsexual) abuse, and 2) having leadership that is tolerant of sexual harassment. Regression-based analyses reveal that both generalized harassment and leader tolerance for sexual harassment across all levels of leadership are important risk factors that have adverse effects on survivors’ mental health and job attitudes, and that these variables interact to significantly exacerbate the effects of generalized harassment on survivors’ PTSD symptomology. These results provide empirical support for incorporating these risk factors in the DoD’s sexual harassment and assault prevention efforts.
Winning is Everything: a Meta-Analytic and Field Examination of Trait Competitiveness
(University of Alabama Libraries, 2026) Fezzey, Tyler Nicole Abayon; Harms, Peter D.
Competitiveness is a critical personality trait that influences important work-related outcomes, including job performance, deviance, and organizational commitment. Yet, trait competitiveness has remained relatively understudied within organizational behavior and is often mischaracterized as a unidimensional construct. This dissertation offers a reconceptualization of trait competitiveness by integrating large-scale meta-analytic and field evidence. In Study 1, I conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis of 399 studies yielding 1,630 usable independent effect sizes (N = 2,040,333) to examine how general trait competitiveness relates to a wide range of adaptive (e.g., performance, transformational leadership, job satisfaction) and maladaptive (e.g., deviance, stress, Dark Triad) constructs, suggesting that competitive individuals are high-performing employees, but also present unique challenges to the workplace. Moderators, such as the gender composition of the samples, publication status, and sample country, were examined to explain heterogeneity in effect sizes. Study 2 built on these findings through a field study at the United States Naval Academy (USNA), using a unique archival dataset of over 1,000 cadets. In this high-stakes, performance-driven environment, I tested how general trait competitiveness (GTC), competitive dominance (COMDOM), and competitive enhancement (COMENH), as measured by the validated Competitive Dominance and Enhancement Questionnaire (CDEQ) that I developed, predicted cadets' academic performance, military performance, company rank percentile, formal leadership role occupancy, and conduct offenses, seeking to show that competitiveness can be parceled into adaptive and maladaptive subdimensions that explain diverging outcomes. I examined gender as a potential moderator and probed quadratic effects. Findings partially supported expectations from socioanalytic and role congruity theories, but gender moderation effects were limited and inconsistent, and results were likely attenuated by range restriction and selection effects at the USNA. Together, these studies offer theoretical and practical insights into the role of competitiveness in the workplace.

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Browsing by Author "Harms, Peter D."

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