Antoinette Weibel

Public and academic opinion remains divided regarding the benefits and pitfalls of datafication technology in organizations, particularly regarding their impact on employees. Taking a dual-process perspective on trust, we propose that datafication technology can create small, erratic surprises in the workplace that highlight employee vulnerability and increase employees’ reliance on the systematic processing of trust. We argue that these surprises precipitate a phase in the employment relationship in which employees more actively weigh trust-related cues, and the employer should therefore engage in active trust management to protect and strengthen the relationship. Our paper develops a framework of symbolic and substantive strategies to guide organizations’ active trust management efforts to (re-)create situational normality, root goodwill intentions, and enable a more balanced interdependence between the organization and its employees. We discuss the implications of our paper for reconciling competing narratives about the future of work and for developing an understanding of trust processes.

Organizations increasingly rely on algorithm-based HR decision-making to monitor their employees. This trend is reinforced by the technology industry claiming that its decision-making tools are efficient and objective, downplaying their potential biases. In our manuscript, we identify an important challenge arising from the efficiency-driven logic of algorithm-based HR decision-making, namely that it shifts the delicate balance between employees’ personal integrity and compliance toward favoring compliance. The reason is that algorithm-based HR decision-making may marginalize human sense-making, promote blind trust in rules, and replace moral imagination. We suggest that critical data literacy, ethical awareness, the use of participatory design methods, and private regulatory regimes within civil society can help overcome these challenges. Our paper contributes to literature on workplace monitoring, critical data studies, personal integrity and literature at the intersection between HR management and corporate responsibility.

Theorizing about trust has focused predominantly on cognitive trust cues such as trustworthiness, portraying the trustor as a relatively passive observer reacting to the attributes of the other party. Using self-determination and control theories of motivation, we propose a model of trust motivation that explores the intraindividual processes involved in the volitional aspects of trust decision-making implied by the definition of trust as a willingness to be vulnerable. We distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of trust and propose a two-phase model of trust goal setting and trust regulation. Our model offers a dynamic view of the trusting process and a framework for understanding how trust cognition, affect and behavior interact over time. Furthermore, we discuss how trust goals may be altered or abandoned via a feedback loop during the trust regulation process. We conclude with a discussion of potential implications for existing theory and future research.

In the course of the New Public Management reform movement, public administrations have increasingly implemented output-oriented control schemes, including systems to evaluate employees’ performances. However, contradictory evidence exists about how such output control that fundamentally differs from traditional bureaucratic control affects performance-relevant employee attitudes and behaviors. In this paper, we present evidence that performance evaluations have positive or negative consequences depending on the specific design of the system. Analyzing survey data from 184 employees and 60 supervisors from the German municipal administration by structural equation modelling, we find performance evaluations employed as Management by Objectives (MbO) have a positive impact on trust in the employer and that those designed as Systematic Performance Appraisal (SPA) affect trust negatively. Both relationships are mediated by perceived cooperative climate. These findings advocate employing performance evaluations that are participative, adaptive, learning-oriented, and transparent and thus enable fair cooperation between organizational members.

In most theories that address how individual financial incentives affect work performance, researchers have assumed that two types of motivation—intrinsic and extrinsic—mediate the relationship between incentives and performance. Empirically, however, extrinsic motivation is rarely investigated. To explore the predictive validity of these theories of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in work settings, we tested how both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affected supervisor-rated work performance, affective and continuance commitment, turnover intention, burnout, and work–family conflict. In the course of three studies (two cross-sectional and one cross-lagged) across different industries, we found that intrinsic motivation was associated with positive outcomes and that extrinsic motivation was negatively related or unrelated to positive outcomes. In addition, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation were moderately negatively correlated in all three studies. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the study and directions for future research.

Human resource (HR) practices used to inject internal competition into the workplace are the subject of heated debates in business practice; this is however not the case in the field of human resource management (HRM)research. In this article, we first augment previous research in the field to offer an initial conceptualization of competitive HR practices. We then develop a conceptual framework that explains the processes and conditions that drive and determine the impact of competitive HR practices on employees at work. Blending insights from social comparison theory and uncertainty research, we theorize a set of conditions that specify when competitive HR practices unfold their “dark” side, and when the “not so bad” or even “a good side” of competitive HR practices might emerge.