SELF-INTEREST AND OTHER-ORIENTATION 923
SELF-INTEREST AND OTHER-ORIENTATION 923
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Study Limitations and Conclusions organizations performing different jobs provides a sound basis for such experiments to be designed, and we see this as an important
Across studies, we surveyed a large number of employees and direction for new research on the SCOOM hypothesis. their supervisors coming from a variety of industries (e.g., health care, service industry, public administration, and governance) and performing a great number of different jobs. With the exception of
Concluding Thoughts
typical “blue-collar” work and production jobs, we obtained a In principle, the SCOOM hypothesis applies to all individual- fairly representative sample of the (Dutch) working force. This
level attributes and to all group-level attributes (for a review, see means that our conclusions are relatively context-free and should
Chen & Kanfer, 2006). We would expect the VIE model of work not be taken as informing us about typical jobs or industries.
motivation (Vroom, 1964) to have greater predictive validity Three issues constrain our conclusions. First of all, common-
among employees high rather than low in self-concern. We would source variance provides a validity threat in Study 3. However,
also expect social-information processing accounts of job satisfac- because the main findings closely correspond to those of the other
tion (e.g., Salancik & Pfeffer, 1977) to have greater predictive three studies, in which we used data from multiple sources,
validity among employees high rather than low in other- common-source variance seems an unlikely alternative explana-
orientation.
tion in this particular case. Second, there is the issue of common- These possibilities notwithstanding, the studies support three method variance—we assessed all independent and dependent
general conclusions. First, self-concern is conceptually and empir- variables using the same method. However, we took care in using
ically different from other-orientation. Second, self-concern mod- validated and reliable measures, and zero-order correlations among
erates the effects of individual-level variables, such as job char- critical constructs were small to moderate, which is generally taken
acteristics on work behavior. Third, other-orientation moderates as evidence against common-method variance. Finally, common-
the effects of group-level variables, such as perceived justice method variance provides a more serious validity threat to conclu-
climate on work behavior. Thus, an exclusive focus on self- sions about main effects than to conclusions about interaction
concern and self-interest leads to incomplete theories in organiza- effects. In fact, common-method variance undermines the possi-
tional psychology. Including other, broader concerns, such as bility to detect interaction effects (G. H. McClelland & Judd,
other-orientation, is less parsimonious but leads to a more accurate 1993). Thus, although we cannot exclude common-method vari-
and sophisticated understanding of all kinds of work-related be- ance as a validity threat, we built in a number of mitigating factors
haviors, including task performance, prosocial behavior, and per- (Spector, 2006) and note that our focus on interactions reduces this
sonal initiative. It allows for theoretical integration, and it provides concern.
tools for understanding, directing, and improving system design Second, the proportion of variance explained across studies was
and organizational interventions.
rather small. One explanation is that we used heterogeneous sam- ples of employees in a variety of functions and roles. Relatedly, testing for interaction effects in regression analysis is a rather
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