Attribution theory: An introduction to the special issue

• Published date: 01 June 2019
• Date: 01 June 2019
• Author: Jeremy D. Mackey,Mark J. Martinko
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2397

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Attribution theory: An introduction to the special issue

Mark J. Martinko

1

|Jeremy D. Mackey

2

1

School of Business and Industry, Florida A&M

University, Tallahassee, Florida

2

Raymond J. Harbert College of Business

Department of Management, Auburn

University, Auburn, Alabama

Correspondence

Mark J. Martinko, School of Business and

Industry, Florida A&M University, 500 Gamble

Street, Tallahassee, FL 32307.

Email: mark.martinko@famu.edu

Summary

This special issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior was developed to further

extend attribution theory and its application to the field of organizational behavior.

In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of the motivation for this special

issue, a concise summary of the papers included in it, a discussion about progress

toward the field's goals, and suggestions for how future research can move the field

forward. In doing so, we describe how applying attribution theory to studies that uti-

lize a broad range of study designs, research contexts, and focal topics results in

insights that enhance our understanding of how attributional processes predict and

explain individuals' emotions and behaviors. We also provide suggestions for how

to further develop attribution theory so we can more clearly describe the generaliz-

ability of relationships across a wide variety of organizational contexts.

KEYWORDS

attribution, leadership, motivation

1|INTRODUCTION

Attribution theory provides the framework necessary to understand

how individuals explain why events in their environment happened

(i.e., they make causal ascriptions; Heider, 1958). Several factors stim-

ulated the need for this special issue on attribution theory. First,

recent journal articles have made it clear that the potential of attribu-

tion theory to contribute to the organizational sciences has not been

realized. In particular, an article by Martinko, Harvey, and Dasborough

(2011) pointed out that although a significant proportion of journal

space in social psychology is devoted to attributional perspectives of

human behavior, a disproportionally small amount of space is devoted

to attributional topics in organizational behavior journals. In that arti-

cle, they note that many researchers have misconstrued discussions

of attribution theory by downplaying the utility of the construct. A

recent article by Harvey, Madison, Martinko, Crook, and Crook

(2014) directly addressed the criticisms regarding the explanatory

power of attribution theory (Lord & Smith, 1983; Mitchell, 1982) by

demonstrating through a meta‐analysis that the amount of variance

in organizational outcomes that is accounted for by attributional con-

structs is similar to other more popular constructs, such as organiza-

tional justice and organizational citizenship behaviors. Although

recent articles document that attribution theory has the potential to

fill many of the gaps in our understanding of organizational behavior,

its potential has not been unrealized.

Despite the relative paucity of contributions focusing on attribu-

tional processes, recent contributions have been encouraging because

they document the importance of attributional processes. These

advances include a recent Academy of Management Review article by

Chan and McAllister (2014) that cites attribution theory as a core

explanation for subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision. Also,

an Academy of Management Review article coauthored by Terry

Mitchell and his colleagues (Eberly, Holley, Johnson, & Mitchell,

2011) explicated the construct of relational attributions. Finally, a

Journal of Organizational Behavior article by Burton, Taylor, and Barber

(2014) empirically tested the constructs of internal, external, and

relational attributions in subordinate/supervisory relations.

Attribution processes have also emerged as an important modera-

tor between supervisory behavior and subordinates' reports of

abusive supervision (Mackey, Frieder, Brees, & Martinko, 2017;

Martinko, Harvey, Brees, & Mackey, 2013; Martinko, Harvey, Sikora,

& Douglas, 2011), as a factor for explaining employee entitlement

(Harvey, Harris, Gillis, & Martinko, 2014), and as a process underlying

ethical decisions (Harvey, Martinko, & Borkowski, 2017). Attribution

Received: 25 March 2019 Accepted: 15 April 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2397

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:523–527. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 523