Building on theoretical and empirical work considering the implications of accountability on individual behavior, the authors explored the antecedents and consequences of individual perceptions of accountability for job performance. Using data from two field samples, the authors considered whether the manager’s monitoring behavior thought to enhance perceptions of accountability for behaviors and outcomes predicted greater perceived accountability for task performance and interpersonal facilitation performance. They also explored whether perceived accountability mediated the relationship between monitoring behavior and subsequent performance. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that subordinates of managers whose monitoring behavior reinforced perceptions of accountability perceived greater accountability for performance and that this perception mediated the relationship between managerial monitoring behavior and performance. The implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

This study explored how context influences accountability in a performance appraisal context. Results demonstrate that audience characteristics influence rating quality, as raters accountable to higher status or mixed-status audiences provided more accurate ratings, whereas those accountable to a lower status audience provided more inflated ratings. Participant note taking also mediated the relationship between accountability to higher status or mixed-status audiences and rating accuracy. Raters required to account for ratings in person as opposed to in writing were more accurate when accountable to higher status or mixed audiences and provided more positive indicators of behavior when accountable to a lower status audience.

PurposeThe unprecedented dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced firms to re-envision the customer experience and find new ways to ensure positive service encounters. This context has underscored the reality that drivers of customer delight in a “traditional” context are not the same in a crisis context. While research has tended to identify hedonic need fulfillment as key to customer well-being and, ultimately, to invoking customer delight, the majority of studies were conducted in inherently positive contexts, which may limit generalizability to more challenging contexts. Through the combined lens of transformative service research (TSR) and psychological theory on hedonic and eudaimonic human needs, we evaluate the extent to which need fulfillment is the root of customer well-being and that meeting well-being needs ultimately promotes delight. We argue that in crisis contexts, the salience of needs shifts from hedonic to eudaimonic and the extent to which service experiences fulfill eudaimonic needs determines the experience and meaning of delight.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing the critical incident technique, this research surveyed 240 respondents who were asked to explain in detail a time they experienced customer delight during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed their responses according to whether these incidents reflected the salience of hedonic versus eudaimonic need fulfillment.FindingsThe results support the notion that the salience of eudaimonic needs become more pronounced during times of crisis and that service providers are more likely to elicit perceptions of delight when they leverage meeting eudaimonic needs over the hedonic needs that are typically emphasized in traditional service encounters.Originality/valueWe discuss the implications of these findings for integrating the TSR and customer delight literatures to better understand how service experiences that meet salient needs produce customer well-being and delight. Ultimately, we find customer delight can benefit well-being across individual, collective and societal levels.

Organizations invest substantial resources in research and development (R&D) to increase long-term performance. Despite these investments, contextual contingencies can impact innovation. Our fi ndings show that Chinese manufacturers with cultures emphasizing innovation and teamwork more effectively use fi nancial resources in the innovation process. Findings also demonstrate that the impact of education on innovation is greater with low stability and high teamwork and innovation orientations. Results also indicate that a culture emphasizing outcomes and stability leads to lower levels of innovation irrespective of fi nancial and human resources invested. Finally, we found a negative curvilinear interaction between R&D spending and outcome orientation on innovation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s use of four types of humour relate to employee job satisfaction, organisational pride, organisational commitment and self-esteem. Supervisor favourability is also examined as a mediating variable in these relationships. Design/methodology/approach An online survey of 216 working individuals provided data on the effect of supervisor use of humour on employee attitudes. Findings Perceptions of positive forms of humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) positively related to employee various attitudes, while aggressive humour was negatively associated with those attitudes. Results also support the intervening role of supervisor favourability in the relationship between supervisors’ positive use of humour and employees’ job satisfaction, affective commitment and organisational pride. Research limitations/implications Studies of the effects of workplace humour can benefit from using more fine-grained operationalisation of positive and negative humour. Research can also benefit from considerations of intervening mechanisms to the humour–work outcome relationship. Practical implications The results underscore the benefits of affiliative and self-enhancing humour on employee attitudes in the workplace. While negative humour can have an undesirable effect, there may be circumstances under which self-defeating humour is not negatively received. Originality/value This paper fulfils an identified need to better understand supervisors’ use of different, more discriminating forms of humour on employee attitudes.