ABSTRACT Most of the organizational politics derive either from achieving the organizational goal by organizational members, or from the purpose of maximizing self-interests. Therefore, Perceptions of Organizational Politics (POPs) might influence the perception of need satisfaction or outcome and affect job involvement and job performance. The purpose of the study is to understand the relationship among POPs, job involvement and job performance. Through empirical survey, there are several outcomes as follows: 1. Females have more political perceptions of organizational policy and practice than males do. 2. Members under 35 years old have more perceptions of supervisors¡¦ political behavior and have more perceptions of coworkers¡¦ and cliques¡¦ political behavior than members over 35 years old do. 3. Single members¡¦ POPs is higher than married members¡¦. 4. Non-managers¡¦ POPs and perceptions of coworkers¡¦ and cliques¡¦ political behavior are higher than managers. 5. The higher the managers¡¦ level, the higher the job involvement. 6. The dimensions of POPs are negatively relative to job involvement. 7. By controlling sex, marriage, age, education, service seniority, and position to examine the relationship between POPs and job performance. 7.1 Females, single, under 35 years old, college and above, seniority and managers have higher perceptions of supervisors¡¦ political behavior and lower job performance, task performance, and contextual performance. 7.2 Females, college and above, seniority, and managers have higher political perceptions of organizational policy and practice, and higher job performance. 7.3 Males, under 35 years old, college and above, less years spent on the job, non-managers have higher political perceptions of organizational policy and practice and higher task performance. 7.4 Females, seniority, and managers have higher political perceptions of organizational policy and practice and higher contextual performance. 8. As an interference variable, job involvement doesn¡¦t significantly interfere the relationship between POPs and job performance.

Previous literature has typically assumed that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) are beneficial to both employees and organizations. Researchers have begun to question this assumption. This paper seeks to identify situations when OCBs are detrimental to employees or organizations. Specifically, two variables (burnout and role overload) are hypothesized to moderate the relationship between OCBs and outcomes (job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and task performance), such that when burnout and role overload are high, negative outcomes occur. Moderated regression was used to test the hypotheses. There was little evidence for burnout as a moderator, but interactions involving role overload were significant; however, the directions of the relationships were not as hypothesized. Alternative hypotheses were tested, which provided support for the general theory that OCBs can result in negative outcomes.

The present study has two primary contributions to the existing literature linking stressors to employee reactions. First, job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion are proposed to mediate the relationship between stressors and both forms of voluntary workplace behaviors, specifically OCB and CWB. A comprehensive framework, which includes both streams of voluntary workplace behaviors (OCB and CWB) will expand the common practice of investigating them separately and helps us better understand the parallel mechanisms linked to OCB and CWB. Secondly, the role of proactive personality will be investigated to gain insights into how it relates to job attitudes and voluntary work behaviors. We will have new look at the dispositional antecedents of OCB and CWB by investigating how proactive people react, feel, and behave in the organizational context.

This dissertation examines decision making as discourse to capture subtle characteristics and processes within top management team discussions and examines their influence on decision outcomes. Additionally, this approach allows for exploration of decision making processes in real time by utilizing audio analysis techniques that can provide a more dynamic and integrative view of conversations and discussions as they relate to the dialogue and debate that goes on within top management teams, as well as providing an alternate pathway of study for top management team and group research, decision making studies, and the fields of communication and conversational analysis.

Background: For children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), the acquisition and performance of everyday visual-motor activities such as buttoning, shoe tying, cutting with scissors or writing, presents a major challenge. Regardless of the activity considered, children with DCD are typically slower and less accurate than their peers. Given the well-acknowledged difficulties of children with DCD, it is surprising to find very few research studies systematically exploring visual-motor skill acquisition and performance in children with DCD. Objective: The overall objective of this study was to systematically describe visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance in children with DCD. Methods: Twenty-four children (8 years 11 months to 12 years 11 months) were recruited for this study; 12 children with DCD, 12 children developing typically with regards to their motor skills. A computer-based aiming task completed with three different cursor controls of increasing levels of difficulty (mouse, joystick, novel controller) was designed for this study. Mixed-effect modelling and visual graph analyses were performed to describe the influence of motor ability and task difficulty on visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance. Results: Motor ability modulated the impact of task difficulty on visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance. Children with DCD were as fast and as accurate as their peers in their initial performance of the simple, well-learned task (mouse). However, they were slower and less accurate when performing the complex and novel visual-motor task. Over repeated trials, the visual-motor task performance of children with DCD improved on all tasks, even for the simple. With regard to the complex, novel task, once children with DCD understood the features of the task, their performance also improved and approached that of their peers. Conclusion: While children with DCD can generally be characterized as less accurate and slower than their peers, this characterization needs to be specified and qualified; it is probably best not applied to a well-learned task.

Extra-role helping, defined as assisting co-workers with their work tasks, and extra-role voice, defined as arguing for constructive change, are believed to be functional for work groups. However, the mechanisms by which helping and voice might contribute to group effectiveness have not been described in detail, and relatively little empirical research has addressed the effects that helping and voice actually have within groups, or their relationships with outcomes relevant to group effectiveness. I argue that helping and voice will have their most direct and immediate effects on fellow group members, and that these effects may influence the subsequent performance of the group as a whole. I present a cross-level model of task facilitation, which describes the impact that group level helping may have on the task performance of individual group members. I present a cross-level model of climate building, which describes the impact that group level helping and voice may have on the climate perceptions of individual group members. I test hypotheses drawn from these models in three studies. Study one was conducted with 1086 Australian air traffic controllers in 45 groups. The results provided support for the task facilitation mechanism, and showed that group level helping was positively associated with the task performance and effectiveness of individual air traffic controllers. Study two was conducted in an Australian public sector organisation employing over 4000 individuals in 177 groups. The results of this study provided support for the climate building mechanism. Group level helping was positively associated with individual perceptions of affective climate. The effects of group level voice depended on the level of goal clarity within the group. I argued that group members would perceive a greater need for voice when group goal clarity was low, and that under these circumstances, group members would attribute voice behaviour to a genuine desire to benefit the group. Under conditions of high goal clarity, however, group members would not perceive a need for voice, and so the voice behaviours would be attributed to self-serving motives to gain power, influence or resources. Results supported these arguments, with group voice having a negative effect on climate perceptions when goal clarity was high, and a positive effect on climate perceptions when goal clarity was low. In study three I examined the impact of attributions for voice behaviour directly. I conducted an experiment with 69 second year management students. Students were placed in a simulated organisational context by way of a written vignette. The level of co-worker voice and the motives for voice were manipulated within this vignette to form a two by two factorial design in which the level of voice (no voice vs. some voice) was crossed with co-worker motives (self-serving vs. altruistic). Manipulation checks showed that participants attributed the co-worker's behaviour to self serving motives in the self-serving condition, and to altruistic motives in the altruistic condition. The results showed that voice behaviour had a negative impact on climate perceptions when self-serving attributions were made. When altruistic attributions were made, the presence or absence of voice did not influence climate perceptions. The results of the three studies suggest that extra-role helping and voice form important parts of the technical, social and psychological environment in which group members work. Furthermore, this environment can have important effects on the task performance and climate perceptions of group members. To the extent that group effectiveness depends on high levels of individual task performance and positive climate perceptions, these outcomes will influence subsequent group effectiveness. I close by discussing the contribution of the task facilitation and climate building models, and the practical implications of the results obtained within this thesis.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2002. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Vita. "May 2008" Includes bibliographical references.

Mémoire (M.P.M.O.)--Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1998. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2010.