Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes最新文献

Although organizations increasingly seek to communicate allyship with the Black community, their ally statements can receive vastly different responses from Black observers. We develop and test a theoretical model outlining key drivers of allyship evaluations among these perceivers. Drawing from signaling theory and integrating insights from the literature on identity safety, we reveal the costliness and consistency of ally statements as critical determinants of Black perceivers’ evaluations of organizations as allies. Two studies—the first leveraging statements released by Fortune 500 companies and the second a more controlled follow-up experiment—demonstrate the interactive effects of cost and consistency on these assessments. Specifically, the most positive allyship evaluations emerged for organizations whose statements conveyed both high cost and high consistency. Our findings have implications for organizations and business leaders who aim to communicate allyship. To be recognized as allies, devoting resources and incurring costs is not enough; organizations must also signal a consistent commitment to supporting marginalized communities.

Reflecting trends in society, organizations are seeking to embrace personal distinctiveness and self-expression among their members. Doing so is more complicated than meets the eye, however. By its very nature, personal identity is complex and dynamic. As such, people often lack a comprehensive understanding of who they are. Here, I theorize that organizations can navigate this challenge by inviting their members to undergo a novel method of employee development – one designed to produce sudden, personally transformational realizations, or epiphanies. Organizations can promote and, in turn, support epiphanies through a range of practices that open people to the prospect of self-transformation and activate the psychological processes by which epiphanies arise. For these practices to prove effective, however, organizations must avoid the missteps identified here. Collectively, my theoretical claims reveal how organizations can help their members gain self-insight – and why doing so can enhance their reputation and attract job seekers.

Help exchange—whether for technical solutions, career advice, socioemotional support, or scarce resources—constitutes the very fabric of productive organizational life. Yet, a growing body of research has documented various ways in which help requesters and requestees misperceive each other, undermining their chances of giving and receiving help. So far, this line of research has focused on dyadic exchange and paid limited attention to triadic exchange involving third parties. To close this gap, the present research examines misperceptions that hinder requestees from offering referrals to potentially more willing or capable third parties. Six preregistered experiments (n = 2863) demonstrate what we term referral aversion, stemming from concerns about what offering unsolicited referrals instead of direct help might signal to requesters. Because of referral aversion, requestees overestimate how negatively requesters will react to unsolicited referrals versus (solicited or unsolicited) direct help. We also propose a simple intervention to mitigate referral aversion: making a generalized rather than personalized help request (i.e., asking for help from “you or someone you know” rather than “you”). In a field experiment (n = 541), participants who made generalized help requests to peers on a problem-solving task received higher quality help from both requestees and third parties, suggesting that seeking third-party help can promote help exchange in multiple ways. Altogether, these studies draw critical attention to the growing recognition that the process of reaching and connecting third parties is hardly automatic or frictionless and open new lines of inquiry on how to promote third party help exchange.

A preregistered meta-analysis, including 244 effect sizes from 85 field audits and 361,645 individual job applications, tested for gender bias in hiring practices in female-stereotypical and gender-balanced as well as male-stereotypical jobs from 1976 to 2020. A “red team” of independent experts was recruited to increase the rigor and robustness of our meta-analytic approach. A forecasting survey further examined whether laypeople (n = 499 nationally representative adults) and scientists (n = 312) could predict the results. Forecasters correctly anticipated reductions in discrimination against female candidates over time. However, both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead, selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed in sign starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-stereotypical jobs in our sample. Forecasters further failed to anticipate that discrimination against male candidates for stereotypically female jobs would remain stable across the decades.

Curiosity serves a basic function in increasing the probability of work engagement, productivity, creativity, and innovation. Much of what is known about curiosity in organizations has been limited to explorations of individuals. Here, we provide empirically supported insights on how curiosity operates at various levels spanning individuals, collaborations, teams, organizations, and societies. Additionally, we advance research and practice by addressing several neglected issues. There is a strange disconnect in how leaders and co-workers encourage curiosity yet often experience an adverse reaction during or after its occurrence. There is also a strange asymmetry in the field such that curiosity is often described as a universally positive asset/trait yet there are costs that are worthy of consideration such as decision-making speed (i.e., trade-offs). Depending on the type of curiosity and mode of expression, curiosity can have bright, dark, or mixed consequences. Our aim is to help scientists and practitioners to better understand and intervene when attempting to capitalize on curiosity.

Curiosity has increasingly been deemed to hold pivotal influence over the ventures founders create. While this growing body of knowledge has helped us understand the origins of a venture, what is less well understood is the process by which individual curiosity gets externalized to the organizational level. Yet, the externalization of curiosity has been recognized as central for rallying organizational members behind innovation initiatives. To understand how curiosity externalizes and thereby translates into a venture’s collective property, we conducted an in-depth case study of Rasmus Munk and his two Michelin-starred restaurant Alchemist. Our empirically grounded process model draws attention to the pivotal role identity mechanisms assume in externalizing curiosity in a venture: Promoting originality through de-familiarizing the familiar at the individual level is counter-balanced by familiarizing the unfamiliar into a coherent venture story at the organizational level.

Under conditions of economic threat, such as during economic downturns, organizations can benefit from employees’ willingness to go beyond the call of duty and engage in organization-directed citizenship behavior (OCBO). Yet, such behavior is discretionary and competes for time with employees’ other interests and priorities. I integrate life history theory with the temporal dilemma perspective on organizational citizenship behavior to propose that childhood environments sensitize individuals to prioritize different goals in response to economic threat later in life. Consistent with strategies for responding to threat that are functional in their childhood environments, employees from wealthier backgrounds respond to economic threat by focusing on the future and allocating more time to OCBO, whereas employees from poorer backgrounds exhibit the opposite response. Two pre-registered multi-source field surveys found support for the theory and also showed that the effects of economic threat may lead to a reproduction of childhood inequalities by impacting employees’ promotion potential. A pre-registered experiment replicated the effects on future focus and OCBO and found that they can be attenuated through a future focus induction. I discuss implications for research on employee responses to economic threat, influences of early-life conditions on employee psychology and behavior later in life, and organizational dynamics as drivers of inequality.

Prior research suggests that female negotiators often obtain worse outcomes than male negotiators. The current research examines whether this pattern extends to the large subset of men and women who identify as gays and lesbians. In particular, we interweave scholarship on gender stereotypes with work on intersectionality and MOSAIC theory to develop a theoretical model that anticipates how male and female negotiators will be treated at the bargaining table based on whether they are perceived to be heterosexual or homosexual. This model predicts that homosexual women, like heterosexual men, will receive more beneficial negotiation offers and outcomes than heterosexual women and homosexual men. Additionally, it suggests that this will happen because people hold markedly different behavioral expectations for male and female heterosexual and homosexual negotiators. The results of five experimental and audit studies involving diverse samples of participants including Masters Students in the U.S. and India, individuals selling items on Craigslist, and street vendors in India provide robust support. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of considering gender and sexual orientation in tandem when studying negotiation.

When do people make optimistic forecasts about goal adherence? Nine preregistered studies find that a recent streak of goal-consistent behavior increases the predicted likelihood that the individual will persist, compared to various other patterns holding the rate of goal adherence constant. This effect is due to perceiving a higher level of commitment following a streak. Accordingly, the effect is larger when the behavior requires commitment to stick with it, compared to when the same behavior is enjoyable in its own right. Furthermore, the effect is weaker in the presence of another diagnostic cue of commitment: when the individual has a high historic rate of goal adherence. People also behave strategically in ways consistent with these inferences (e.g., are less likely to adopt costly goal support tools following a streak, choose partners with recent streaks for joint goal pursuit). Together, these results demonstrate the significance of streaky behavior for forecasting goal adherence.

This research examines a perplexing but all too common phenomenon in which people actively forego nearly costless opportunities to switch from less-preferred tasks to preferred alternatives. The authors investigate such failures to change and identify a novel underlying cause—entrenchment, a state of heightened tedious task-set accessibility. A series of experiments demonstrate that a significant subset of participants choose to continue a less-preferred task when given an opportunity to change to a preferred alternative (Studies 1-4a). The more participants repeat a less-preferred task, the more difficult constructing a new task set feels, increasing the proportion who do not switch to their preferred task (Studies 2a-2b). Finally, disrupting task continuity attenuates entrenchment and increases switching (Studies 3-4b). This research contributes to the understanding of why people get stuck in ruts, continuing less-preferred activities when they could easily switch to better alternatives, and provides insights to help manage behavior change.