Research in Organizational Behavior最新文献

There are multiple topic areas relevant to human sustainability in organizational behavior. These have recently been integrated into Restricted Employee Sustainability Theory (REST). However, REST as currently formulated focuses on individual employees, leaving the theory undersocialized and undercontextualized. Moreover, REST leaves responsibility for human sustainability on individual employees. We extend rest to take a leader-focused perspective. We highlight how leaders can monitor employees who may be in different employee sustainability states, and how these different employees have different needs which should be managed differently. We discuss how leaders can build a culture which values human sustainability. We delineate three different tensions faced by leaders in the context of human sustainability (short term productivity versus long term human sustainability, protecting human capital versus avoiding paternalism, and maintaining lean payrolls versus maintaining a robust capacity for workload spikes). Finally, we close with a discussion of practical implications and future research. In doing so, we discuss how leaders can enhance the human sustainability of their subordinates and their organizations.

In order for the assistance we extend to others to be maximally effective—whether interpersonally or institutionally—we need both givers to extend the help and recipients to utilize the assistance made available to them. Although much organizational behavior research has explored ways to increase prosocial behavior and charitable giving, comparatively little organizational scholarship has explored the recipient’s perspective. We believe that organizational behavior scholars, and social scientists more broadly, need to broaden their focus to examining why recipients in need of help sometimes neglect to utilize help. This paper proposes our Aid Utility Theory as a new way of thinking about and tackling aid utilization neglect, while also synthesizing prior social scientific literature that aims to improve aid utilization. We conclude with future directions for organizational behavior scholars who are interested in researching the perspective of those receiving help and improving global aid effectiveness. (145 words)

Although ambiguity is a pervasive feature of organizations, its influence on organizational decision making is often overlooked. We aim to advance understanding of decision making under ambiguity in organizations by combining insights from organizational research within the Carnegie perspective with psychological research on fundamental human motives. We propose the Carnegie plus Self-Enhancement (CSE) model, integrating the influence of self-enhancement—a fundamental psychological motive—on organizational decision-making under ambiguity. To develop our model, we review existing literature on how self-enhancement influences interpretation of ambiguity in organizational decision making. We then expand on this research by linking self-enhancement to individuals’ social categories (gender and social class), identifying previously unexplored sources of variation in self-enhancement in organizational decision-making. Our analysis elaborates on how belonging to a social category influences decision-makers’ self-enhancement and, consequently, decision-making in ambiguous situations. This approach offers a nuanced decision-making model that considers societal positions, thereby contributing to a more complete understanding of organizational decision-making.

Studying corporate misconduct requires understanding how individuals coordinate in illegal activities while maintaining secrecy. Drawing on social network theory and analysis, we develop a systematic framework to explain how social relationships and their structures, as well as individuals’ cognitive perceptions of those structures, affect how individuals engage in collective corporate corruption. We distinguish four levels of analysis—topological, relational, individual, and cognitive—and offer arguments and propositions at each level. Using this framework, we integrate and categorize past research at the intersection of social networks and misconduct. A recurring theme in our analysis is the important role of trust among corrupt organizational members. Finally, we discuss how embracing a network lens to study misconduct can not only address unanswered questions, but also stimulate new areas of research.

Are experts overconfident? Some research finds experts are plagued by overconfidence whereas others conclude that they are underconfident. We reviewed the literature, taking an interdisciplinary approach, to answer this question. In doing so, we assessed whether there were theoretical differences in how overconfidence and expertise were conceptualized across the literature. For overconfidence, there are three distinct conceptualizations with a fourth captured by economic models. People can be overconfident because they forecast a narrow range of possibilities that the truth frequently falls outside of (i.e. overprecision), overrate their judgments as correct (i.e. overestimation), or overbelieve they outperform their peers (i.e. overplacement). In economic models, overconfidence is at times assessed by the likelihood of engaging in unwise behavior and making inaccurate predictions. Likewise, there are divergent definitions of expertise. People can be identified as experts because of their experience (i.e. time on task), because of enhanced performance on knowledge tests, or because of their job title or professional degree. These conceptual and theoretical inconsistencies are crucial in answering whether experts are overconfident. For overprecision, experts are overprecise across all theoretical definitions of expertise. However, this consistency is likely because overprecision is so robust across people regardless of whether they are experts. For overestimation, we found experts of experience and experts of title typically overestimated, with mixed results for the experts of knowledge. Studies of overplacement are limited, often defining experts via knowledge, but find that they tend to underplace their abilities. Last, when overconfidence is assessed via economic models, experts display overconfidence.

Organizational gatekeepers rely on tacit proxy signals of quality to evaluate creative work: status and status characteristics, elite networks, cultural capital, and a set of signals we refer to as symbolic dexterity. We argue that this reliance is due to the “push” of uncertainty and the “pull” of the culturally dominant person-centered view of creativity. Evaluators are “pushed” toward these proxy signals because the quality of creative work is fundamentally uncertain. Evaluators are “pulled” toward these proxy signals because the person-centered view of creativity makes these signals legitimate and easily available decision heuristics. Since members of privileged social groups are advantaged in producing and understanding the importance of such signals, we argue that access to creative work and success within it are largely a privilege. Given that privilege-based selection in creative work is both entrenched and ethically problematic, we explore its implications for organizational performance and organizational reputation and propose strategies that may help organizations reduce its discriminatory impact. We conclude by presenting questions for future research arising at the intersection of the literatures on evaluation in creative work and on social inequality.

Diversity has been thought to influence innovation and economic growth in many ways. The mechanisms proposed as underlying these relationships interestingly operate at different spatial scales. Differing estimates across levels of spatial resolution therefore provide empirical insight into the processes underlying regional differences in innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. After discussing these mechanisms and why they operate at different spatial scales, this essay revisits a number of the existing studies of diversity through this lens. Diversity appears to have had the largest effects at fine-grained scales, suggesting that its economic value to regions emerges most strongly from facilitating innovation and information exchange through serendipitous interactions.

We consider how entrepreneurship and employment differentially shape opportunities for social mobility across people and contexts. Specifically focusing on changes in an individual’s social status, or vertical mobility, we propose three metaphors for studying entrepreneurship: (1) production (i.e., increased status); (2) preservation (i.e., maintained status); and (3) consumption (i.e., decreased status). Each metaphor features theoretical mechanisms that account for how founding an organization can facilitate inter-occupational transitions and, thus, enable status mobility. We offer a proposed research agenda for studying entrepreneurship’s role in social mobility processes, including mechanism-specific propositions at the individual and population levels of analysis as well as guidance on sampling and measurement.

Evolutionary social psychologists have demonstrated that powerholders generally attain and maintain rank in social hierarchies through two distinct types of behaviors: associative (prestige-based) strategies or dissociative (dominance-based) strategies. However, the dual-strategies literature lacks a theoretical account of when and why people adopt one approach over the other. We provide a theoretical model of power to address this question and also expand the focus to include low-power versions of associative (persuasion-based) and dissociative (passivity-based) strategies. To develop our framework, we build on the distinction between power (i.e., asymmetric control over valued resources) and volitional influence (i.e., the ability to produce willful changes in others). We posit that individuals who perceive high volitional influence with regard to another party are in a state of social alignment, because their interests and those of the other party are, or can easily become, aligned. As a result, they pursue associative strategies (prestige for high-power actors, or persuasion for low-power actors). In contrast, individuals with low perceived volitional influence are in a state of social misalignment, because their interests and those of the other party are misaligned. As a result, they pursue dissociative strategies (dominance for high-power actors, or passivity for low-power actors). To help distinguish between power and volitional influence, we offer a new capital-based typology of power and outline key antecedents of volitional influence. We conclude by outlining future directions for research on power and key topics in organizational behavior.

Speaking up is critical for organizational and individual success. Yet, while some employees speak up, others hesitate to voice their concerns and needs. Why? We propose the answer is found in a single word: Hierarchy. In the current article, we review the employee voice literature and the role that the power and status of both the voicer and the voice target play in the decision to speak up, as well as the communication, appraisals, attributions, and reactions to that voice. Identifying the vital role hierarchy plays in the voice process, including the desire to ascend a hierarchy, led us to offer a new, broader definition of voice that acknowledges both prosocial and self-interested motivations. We define employee voice as any voluntary, internal, and upward communication intended to achieve one or several goals related to a person’s work, position, or needs within their organization; the work, position, or needs of other organizational stakeholders; and/or the functioning of their organization. To synthesize past findings and offer a generative theoretical lens, we introduce the Hierarchy of Voice framework. This framework extends prior perspectives by offering a dyadic approach that incorporates the perspective of the voice target. In doing so, our framework also captures the dynamic relationship between voice and hierarchy, where voice can reinforce or alter the standing of the voicer and the target. We use the Hierarchy of Voice framework to offer avenues for future research that can deepen our understanding of the dynamic role that hierarchy plays in employee voice.