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Supervisor and subordinate competence and role stress were ex amined as explanatory variables of the vertical exchange within supervisor/subordinate dyads. Three hypotheses were proposed to examine these linkages: (1) subordinate competence is directly related to the vertical exchange between supervisors and subordi nates; (2) this competence/exchange relationship is moderated by the role stress experienced by the parties; and (3) the subordinate competence/exchange relationship is moderated by the supervisor's competence. These hypotheses were tested using a heterogeneous sample of (626) supervisor-subordinate dyads within social service organizations. Multiple hierarchical regression that included inter action terms supported the first and third hypotheses. As subordi nate competence increased, the vertical exchange reported increased. The results also demonstrated that congruence between supervisor/ subordinate competence resulted in higher level exchanges than did incongruence in competence levels.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to increase one's understanding of psychological contracts by proposing and testing relationships between employees' personalities and their psychological contracts and to consider the influence of gender on psychological contracts.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 163 employees in ten organizations. Regression analysis was used to explore the relationships between each of nine psychological contract dimensions plus gender and the Big Five personality dimensions.FindingsIt was found that personality is related to five of the nine psychological contract dimensions and that each personality dimension is related to one or more of the psychological contract dimensions. It was also found that gender had a significant impact on our results. Women held stronger obligation attitudes than did men. The personality of men related to varying obligation attitudes, whereas, women's attitudes did not vary significantly within personality dimensions. The study suggests that employees' psychological contracts may be more emotionally based than cognitively based.Research limitations/implicationsThe self selection of participants limits the generalizability of the results. The data is cross‐sectional precluding inference of causality. The paper assumed a linear career model for participants and did not consider alternate modelsPractical implicationsPersonality would appear to be an important factor in our understanding of psychological contracts, particularly in men. Personality provides a basis for psychological contracts being idiosyncratic. The interaction of personality and gender complicates the psychological contract management process.Originality/valueDespite 17 years of research, the factors underlying employees' idiosyncratic psychological contracts remain to be adequately explored through empirical research. This is the first study that connects employees' personality to their beliefs about employee and organizational obligations. Gender appears to play a role in the development of psychological contracts.

The moderating effects of attitudes about the work group and task structure on the relationships between leader behavior dimensions and job satisfaction facets were explored. The results indicated that this variable was an important added moderator of leader behavior dimensions. The significant main effects and interaction effects found reaffirmed the complexity of the leadership role for practicing managers.

Generally, this study contributes to our understanding of the situations when conflict facilitates performance versus when it hampers performance. More specifically, the study distinguishes between conflict potential, conflict stimulus, and actual conflict. We present two hypotheses that compare two competing views to further disentangle whether and when conflict is functional. Our empirical tests, using a sample of Mennonite congregations, lead us to speculate that conflict may be functional for individual‐centered performance measures, but dysfunctional for group‐based performance measures.