Hierarchical Differences in Work Outcomes: How Job Roles Predict Self- Reported Employee Empowerment, Engagement, and Pro-Social Behaviors

Authors:

Diego A. Faria Fuentes, Sumer Vaid, Ashley Whillans

Date Created:

2025-01-01

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

This study investigates the relationship between organizational the highest levels of psychological empowerment, engagement, job roles and a wide spectrum of individual and team-based team learning, helping behaviors, voice behaviors, and perceptions work outcomes among full-time employees, a cross-sectional of organizational creativity, with significant decrements seen as survey across industries (White collar = 11/14 industries, 77% rolesshifttowardnon-managementstaffandskilledofficeworkers of workers), sampled from a group of knowledge workers who (N = 166/404, 41%). Notably, non-managerial staff and skilled couldworkremotely(N=404). Participantsreportedtheirprimary office workers were significantly less likely to report engaging in job role and completed validated assessments of psychological pro-social team actions, to feel empowered, or to perceive their empowerment, job satisfaction, work engagement, team learning, environment as creative and supportive of innovation, compared psychological safety, helping and voice behaviors, team trust, and to their executive counterparts. Differences in job satisfaction, perceptions of organizational encouragement and creativity. The psychological safety, and team trust across job roles were recruited employees’ roles ranged from executive management comparatively modest and generally non-significant, suggesting (e.g., CEO, President, Partner), to management (i.e., Senior, these experiences may be more uniformly distributed across Middle, Junior manager) to staff (i.e., senior staff, skilled officorganizational hierarchies. Adjustment for demographic and work worker). Results indicate that employees in executive and non- context variables such as gender, tenure, parents’ education, age, executive management (N = 235/404, 58%) consistently reported sex and industry did not substantially alter these patterns. 72 Program for Research in Markets and Organizations The Immigrant Touch: Enhancing U.S. Innovation through Cross-Cultural Collaboration Payton Garcia, Sachin Srivastava, Paul Gompers Howard University | Economics | 2027 Immigrants play a critical role in U.S. innovation and geographically in venture capital hubs such as California, entrepreneurship, driving substantial economic growth. Previous Massachusetts, and New York. Furthermore, U.S. universities research highlights the productivity advantages of immigrant serve as key gateways for immigrant talent, as an increasing share inventors and entrepreneurs, but less is understood about how ofimmigrant-foundedstartupsemergenearfounders’almamaters, collaboration with high-skilled immigrants affects native-born generating significant local economic impacts. professionals. This study explores immigrants’ contributions both directly, through patents and entrepreneurship, and indirectly,o analyze spillover effects, the study examines patent throughpositivespilloversontheirnativecollaborators’innovation citations, scholarly publications, and career advancement metrics, assessing whether native-born inventors and entrepreneurs and productivity. experience greater professional success through collaboration with Using comprehensive data from Infutor, Dow Jones immigrants. Preliminary results suggest positive externalities: VentureSource, and U.S. patent records, immigrant status was collaboration with immigrant innovators increases the productivity identified previously by exploiting Social Security number and innovation capacity of native-born professionals. assignment patterns. Immigrants represent roughly 16–20% Future directions will expand analysis to further quantify these of inventors and startup founders in the U.S., yet they account for approximately 23% of total innovation output, spillovers and clarify their implications for immigration and measured by patents and associated economic value. Immigrant education policy. By highlighting the outsized role of immigrant talent, this research emphasizes the importance of policies that entrepreneurs predominantly focus on technology-intensive attractandretainhigh-skilledimmigrants, ultimatelystrengthening industries, particularly information technology, and cluster the competitive advantage of the U.S. innovation economy.

Abstract:

This study investigates the relationship between organizational the highest levels of psychological empowerment, engagement, job roles and a wide spectrum of individual and team-based team learning, helping behaviors, voice behaviors, and perceptions work outcomes among full-time employees, a cross-sectional of organizational creativity, with significant decrements seen as survey across industries (White collar = 11/14 industries, 77% rolesshifttowardnon-managementstaffandskilledofficeworkers of workers), sampled from a group of knowledge workers who (N = 166/404, 41%). Notably, non-managerial staff and skilled couldworkremotely(N=404). Participantsreportedtheirprimary office workers were significantly less likely to report engaging in job role and completed validated assessments of psychological pro-social team actions, to feel empowered, or to perceive their empowerment, job satisfaction, work engagement, team learning, environment as creative and supportive of innovation, compared psychological safety, helping and voice behaviors, team trust, and to their executive counterparts. Differences in job satisfaction, perceptions of organizational encouragement and creativity. The psychological safety, and team trust across job roles were recruited employees’ roles ranged from executive management comparatively modest and generally non-significant, suggesting (e.g., CEO, President, Partner), to management (i.e., Senior, these experiences may be more uniformly distributed across Middle, Junior manager) to staff (i.e., senior staff, skilled officorganizational hierarchies. Adjustment for demographic and work worker). Results indicate that employees in executive and non- context variables such as gender, tenure, parents’ education, age, executive management (N = 235/404, 58%) consistently reported sex and industry did not substantially alter these patterns. 72 Program for Research in Markets and Organizations The Immigrant Touch: Enhancing U.S. Innovation through Cross-Cultural Collaboration Payton Garcia, Sachin Srivastava, Paul Gompers Howard University | Economics | 2027 Immigrants play a critical role in U.S. innovation and geographically in venture capital hubs such as California, entrepreneurship, driving substantial economic growth. Previous Massachusetts, and New York. Furthermore, U.S. universities research highlights the productivity advantages of immigrant serve as key gateways for immigrant talent, as an increasing share inventors and entrepreneurs, but less is understood about how ofimmigrant-foundedstartupsemergenearfounders’almamaters, collaboration with high-skilled immigrants affects native-born generating significant local economic impacts. professionals. This study explores immigrants’ contributions both directly, through patents and entrepreneurship, and indirectly,o analyze spillover effects, the study examines patent throughpositivespilloversontheirnativecollaborators’innovation citations, scholarly publications, and career advancement metrics, assessing whether native-born inventors and entrepreneurs and productivity. experience greater professional success through collaboration with Using comprehensive data from Infutor, Dow Jones immigrants. Preliminary results suggest positive externalities: VentureSource, and U.S. patent records, immigrant status was collaboration with immigrant innovators increases the productivity identified previously by exploiting Social Security number and innovation capacity of native-born professionals. assignment patterns. Immigrants represent roughly 16–20% Future directions will expand analysis to further quantify these of inventors and startup founders in the U.S., yet they account for approximately 23% of total innovation output, spillovers and clarify their implications for immigration and measured by patents and associated economic value. Immigrant education policy. By highlighting the outsized role of immigrant talent, this research emphasizes the importance of policies that entrepreneurs predominantly focus on technology-intensive attractandretainhigh-skilledimmigrants, ultimatelystrengthening industries, particularly information technology, and cluster the competitive advantage of the U.S. innovation economy.

Source:

Harvard / Brigham Young University | Psychology | 2026 / 2025

Topics:

immigrant, role, innovation, job, team, work, employee, behavior, psychological, industry, worker, executive

Co-authors:

@diegoafariafuentes214 , @sumervaid215 , @ashleywhillans216