Tae-Yeol Kim | China Europe International Business School (original) (raw)

Papers by Tae-Yeol Kim

Human Relations, Jan 6, 2020

Although we know that individuals who tend to reveal their true selves to others at work are bett... more Although we know that individuals who tend to reveal their true selves to others at work are better performers, little is known about why this is the case or in which workplace environments this trait will be most helpful. In the present study, we leveraged selfverification theory to better understand the internal and interpersonal effects that self-verification striving has on employees. Specifically, we proposed and found that self-verification striving serves to increase both employee vigor and demand-ability fit, ultimately leading to better job performance. Results of a multilevel, two-wave study involving 222 employees and their supervisors further revealed that ethical climates also play a critical role in affecting the self-verification striving-employee outcome relationship. Specifically, self-verification striving leads to higher vigor and better demand-ability fit and subsequently higher job performance only in teams with high

We theorized and tested the performance implications of the lateral hiring by professional servic... more We theorized and tested the performance implications of the lateral hiring by professional service firms (i.e. law firms). Using a longitudinal dataset of lateral partner hires in 148 US law firms between the years of 2004 and 2008, the results indicated that the size of lateral hiring had a reversed U-shape relationship with the financial performance of a firm. In addition, the leverage ratio (i.e. the ratio between associate lawyers and partners) significantly moderated the reversed U-shape relationship between lateral hiring and firm performance, such that the placement of the bend in the curvilinear relationship, that is, the threshold, occurred more quickly at a low than at a high leverage ratio. This study contributes to the literature on strategic human resource management in professional service firms by providing empirical evidence on the effect of lateral hires and by emphasizing that lateral partner hiring should be considered with other important HR issues to fully capitalize lateral partners.

Social Science Research Network, 2007

ABSTRACT This study examined how situational factors influence the effects of work overload on em... more ABSTRACT This study examined how situational factors influence the effects of work overload on employee creativity. Specifically, we examined the negative impact of goal commitment on the relationship between work overload and creativity and how feedbacks from supervisor and reward for competence mitigate the negative impact of goal commitment. To test these issues, we conducted a survey using 221 full-time employees in Hong Kong and used hierarchical regression analyses. The results indicate that goal commitment significantly moderates the relationship between work overload and employee creativity. Specifically, the relationship between work overload and creativity was positive but not significant when goal commitment is low, whereas it was negative and significant when goal commitment is high. In addition, the negative effects of goal commitment on the relationship between work overload and employee creativity was mitigated by feedbacks from supervisors and organizational rewards for competence. That is, employees with high work overload exhibited the lowest creativity (1) when goal commitment is high and positive task feedback from the supervisor is low, and (2) when goal commitment is high and organizational reward for competence is low. These results provide interesting implications about how supervisors’ task feedback and organizations’ reward can mitigate the negative effects of work overload on employee creativity.

Human Relations, 2019

How does diversity of social ties influence creativity? Moving beyond the information argument, w... more How does diversity of social ties influence creativity? Moving beyond the information argument, we theorize creative self-efficacy as a motivational explanation for the relationship between diversity of social ties and creativity. We further posit tie strength as a boundary condition for this mechanism. We collected social ties data from 309 employees and creativity data from 98 direct supervisors. Results showed that diversity of social ties had a direct positive relationship with creative self-efficacy and an indirect positive relationship with employee creativity via creative self-efficacy. These direct and indirect relationships were fortified when tie strength was reinforced. We contribute to and advance theory development by identifying and testing creative self-efficacy as a motivational mechanism for diversity of social ties. We show the importance of diversity of social ties and tie strength and their synergistic role in the motivational process linking social ties to creat...

Workplace offense and victims’

The Journal of Creative Behavior, 2020

Adopting a motivational perspective on creativity, we theorized when and how perceived cognitive ... more Adopting a motivational perspective on creativity, we theorized when and how perceived cognitive diversity in teams was associated with creativity by focusing on the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of learning orientation. We further expanded our contribution by examining these relationships at both the individual and team levels. We used a sample of 382 Chinese employee-supervisor pairs nested within 106 teams to test our hypotheses. The results revealed that, at both the individual and team levels, learning goal orientation significantly moderated the positive association between perceived cognitive diversity and intrinsic motivation such that the latter relationship became stronger as learning goal orientation increased. Furthermore, our findings confirmed that learning goal orientation enhanced the indirect positive relationship between perceived cognitive diversity and creativity through intrinsic motivation.

Human Resource Management, 2018

This study examined how social comparison (i.e., comparing one's pay to similar others' pay) and ... more This study examined how social comparison (i.e., comparing one's pay to similar others' pay) and deserved comparison (i.e., comparing one's pay to one's deserved pay) affect pay fairness perceptions, and the individual differences in the comparison processes. Results based on a field study with a sample of 167 employees showed pay fairness was low when employees received lower pay than a similar other (or what they deserved), increased as their pay exceeded that of a similar other (or deserved pay) to some extent, and then decreased when overpayment was considerable. Second, pay fairness increased as one's actual and similar others' pay levels both increased while pay fairness remained the same as one's actual and the deserved pay levels both increased. In addition, the "threshold" that people start to perceive overpayment as less fair occurred more quickly for those with higher preference for consistency in social comparison and for those with higher preference for the merit principle in deserved comparison. We also conducted experiments, and the results generally replicated the findings in the field study. These findings offer theoretical implications regarding organizational justice, as well as practical implications for designing and executing a compensation system.

The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2015

Via a scenario-based experiment, we tested when employee retaliation against supervisory mistreat... more Via a scenario-based experiment, we tested when employee retaliation against supervisory mistreatment (termed the “mistreatment-retaliation effect”) was more versus less likely to occur. Administered in the U.S. and Korea, the scenario manipulated whether an employee had/had not been mistreated by a supervisor and whether the supervisor was/was not similar to the employee; we measured supervisory- and organizational-directed forms of retaliation. As predicted, the mistreatment-retaliation effect differed across countries; but surprisingly, the Koreans rather than U.S. Americans were generally more likely to retaliate against the supervisor. Interestingly, no country-difference occurred with regard to organizationally-directed retaliation. As expected, several factors (e.g., cultural values and the supervisor’s ingroup vs. outgroup status) moderated the mistreatment-retaliation effect. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 2019

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test whether self-verification striving serves as an indi... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test whether self-verification striving serves as an individual difference antecedent of emotional labor and explore whether various emotional labor tactics acted as mediating mechanisms through which self-verification striving relates to employee outcomes. Design/methodology/approach The sample used in this paper consisted of supervisor–subordinate dyads working in six hotels in South Korea and used multi-level analyses and the Monte Carlo method to test the research hypotheses presented in this paper. Findings Self-verification striving was positively and directly related to job performance as well as two out of three forms of emotional labor (i.e. the expression of naturally felt emotions and deep acting). Self-verification striving also indirectly related to job satisfaction through the expression of naturally felt emotions and indirectly related to job performance through deep acting. Practical implications The findings of this paper sugg...

While humor has received much attention in the field of psychology, recently management scholars ... more While humor has received much attention in the field of psychology, recently management scholars have begun to examine the effects of humor on individual and organizational effectiveness. Recent research supports the use of humor as an effective strategy to manage the work environment, and high profile case studies involving companies such as Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry’s, and Sun Microsystems demonstrate the potential of humor as a significant management tool. Specifically, employing humor at work has been associated with high job performance, effective leadership and communication, positive employee psychological well-being, improved organizational commitment, and increased employee creativity.Although current studies have enhanced our understanding about the relationship between humor and individual and organizational effectiveness, researchers have yet to address several important issues. First, most studies to date have considered humor as a single dimension in their analys...

Human Resource Management

We developed and tested a research model in which employee well-being human resource (HR) attribu... more We developed and tested a research model in which employee well-being human resource (HR) attribution differentially influences the intention to change jobs across organizations (i.e., external job change intention) versus that within the same organization (i.e., internal job change intention). Furthermore, we posited that task idiosyncratic deals (I-deals) moderated the relationships between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intentions. Results indicated that employee well-being HR attribution was negatively related to external job change intention, but positively related to internal job change intention. Further, task Ideals significantly moderated the relationships between employee well-being HR attribution and external and internal job change intention. Specifically, employee well-being HR attribution played a less important role in reducing external job change intention when task Ideals were high rather than low. On the other hand, high task Ideals significantly strengthened the positive relationship between employee well-being HR attribution and internal job change intention. Our study extends the careers literature by differentiating the impact of employee well-being HR attribution on job change intentions within an organization compared with that across organizations and the important role of supervisors in enhancing or mitigating these effects. K E Y W O R D S employee well-being HR attribution, external job change intention, internal job change intention, task idiosyncratic deals 1 | INTRODUCTION Jobs are at the heart of the employment relationship and are considered the building blocks of careers (Baruch & Rosenstein, 1992). Careers research has evolved from focusing on traditional organizational careers (i.e., job movements inside an organization) to a model characterized by increased job mobility across and within organizational boundaries (Lyons, Schweitzer, & Ng, 2015; Sullivan & Baruch, 2009). However, external job changes (i.e., changes in jobs across organizational boundaries) and internal job changes (i.e., changes in jobs within an organization) may have different implications for the organization and the employee (Inkson, Gunz, Ganesh, & Roper, 2012). For example, research on job changes (e.g., Bidwell & Keller, 2014; Bidwell & Mollick, 2015; DeVaro & Morita, 2013) have shown the different effects of external and internal job changes on the career outcomes of employees and their ultimate impact on firm performance. Despite these advances, existing studies have yet to examine the differences between external and internal job change intentions. External job change intention is defined as the intention to change jobs by moving to a different organization. Internal job change

Group & Organization Management

This study examined how person–organization fit and friendship from coworkers combine to affect p... more This study examined how person–organization fit and friendship from coworkers combine to affect people’s self-verification, and how self-verification ultimately relates to employee outcomes (job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors). Based on a sample of 117 employee–supervisor pairs, multilevel analyses revealed a positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of person–organization fit and self-verification, and also showed that the relationship was facilitated by friendship from coworkers. Specifically, person–organization fit and self-verification perceptions were positively related when friendship from coworkers was high, but nonsignificant when friendship from coworkers was low. In addition, employees’ self-verification perceptions were positively and significantly associated with job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors. Our research suggests that enhancing person–organization fit and promoting friendship from coworkers in the workplace o...

This study examined how supervisors react to subordinate’s objection to a company policy that mig... more This study examined how supervisors react to subordinate’s objection to a company policy that might bring harm to employees and how employee cynicism and the suboridnates’ communication styles affect the supervisor reactions. Based on a sample of 185 middle managers working in various organizations in South Korea, results showed that supervisors attributed the objection more positively and felt less disgust when the subordiante was trusting (rather than cynical) one. In additoin, supervisors more likely attributed the objection with moral concerns when trusting (rather than cynical) subordinate communicated in an assertive way. However, employee cynicism and communication styles did not signficatnly affect supervisors’ short-term behavioral reactions (e.g., ignore the objection). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Corporate socially responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major multidisciplinary and multilevel r... more Corporate socially responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major multidisciplinary and multilevel research topic within organizational sciences. Whereas the literature suggests that employees respond positively to CSR, we argue that both motivational and cultural characteristics can place boundary conditions on these effects. Integrating the multiple-needs model of organizational justice, self-determination, and cross-cultural theories, we propose and test if the association between employees’ perceptions of CSR and their work engagement is moderated by employees’ self-determination and individualism. Using 673 working adults from five different countries/regions (Canada, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and France), the results show that among employees with low individualism, the relationship between CSR and work engagement was stronger among those with less CSR-related relative autonomy. In contrast, among employees with high individualism, this relationship was stronger among...

Journal of Management, 2013

A significant amount of research has examined firms’ decisions to adopt poison pills; however, fi... more A significant amount of research has examined firms’ decisions to adopt poison pills; however, firms today are increasingly repealing or allowing poison pills to expire. Based on agency theory, the authors examine competing perspectives of governance mechanisms as having complementary or substitutive effects within the context of poison pill repeal. They test whether firms repeal poison pills when governance is strong (complementary effects) or allow for other governance mechanisms to compensate for potential agency costs associated with poison pill renewal (substitutive effects). Using a sample of 288 firms who made decisions to terminate or renew poison pills, the authors find that firms with CEO duality, fewer directors nominated by the CEO, and higher levels of outside director ownership and pressure-resistant institutional shareholdings are more likely to repeal poison pills. A curvilinear relationship between managerial ownership and poison pill repeal is also found. The resul...