s (2004) review of burnout research suggested a lingering need to examine the relationship between social support and burnout. We address that need by investigating Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and mentoring as sources of workplace social support. We used data from 422 employees in a health care setting to test three structural models investigating the direct and indirect effects of LMX, supervisory mentoring, and nonsupervisory mentoring on organizational socialization, role stress, and burnout. Results suggest that high-LMX supervisors and nonsupervisory mentors serve as resources that minimize emotional exhaustion through increased socialization and decreased role stress. This study advances the literature on burnout by clarifying the effects of different types of social support in reducing burnout.

While stewardship theory is often used to explain family business outcomes, no prior empirical study has used a validated measure of stewardship. We, therefore, surveyed 846 managers and subordinates from 221 family and nonfamily firms in the United States and Australia to develop a reliable and valid Stewardship Climate Scale. We found family firms have a stronger stewardship climate and the relationship between stewardship climate and performance is mediated by innovativeness, and the effects of stewardship are stronger in family firms, confirming the value of stewardship theory, and our scale, when explaining family business outcomes.

Contemporary work environments are growing increasingly competitive. However, some employees may "fi t" with such environments better than others. This study examined how the relationship between employees' goal orientations (learning, proving, and avoidance) and engagement is infl uenced by the competitive environment of their workplace. By investigating the interactive effect of goal orientation and competitive work environment, this research expands our understanding of factors leading to engagement. We tested our model using a sample of 345 working adults from a variety of organizations across several different industries. Results indicate that learning goal orientation was positively related to engagement while avoidance goal orientation was negatively related to engagement. Competitive work environment (CWE) interacted with learning orientation and proving orientation to predict engagement. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for human resource management.

Organizational learning is key to an organization’s capability for continuous change and renewal. As a result, scholarly interest in identifying the antecedents of organizational learning has greatly increased over the past couple of decades. This study focuses on (1) identifying and measuring the distinct subprocesses that make up the organizational learning construct to obtain a more detailed understanding of the construct and (2) exploring the effect that organizational culture and, more particularly, four dimensions of culture—participative decision making, openness, learning orientation, and transformational leadership—have on each of the organizational learning subprocesses. The authors use two samples of subject matter experts and the responses of 631 managers to test their propositions. Their results yielded five independent but interrelated subprocesses—information acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, knowledge integration, and organizational memory. Furthermore, their results indicate that the four different cultural antecedents studied have different kinds of significant relationships with each of the organizational learning subprocesses. This study contributes to the literature on organizational learning by identifying and validating the organizational learning subprocesses, and by offering a detailed picture of the relationship between key organizational antecedents to learning and the individual subprocesses of learning. In addition, since they use systematic and thorough methodological techniques to develop an instrument to test, measure, and validate those subprocesses of learning that constitute a common body of knowledge in this area, the authors’ instrument could prove to be a valuable tool for future research.

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