Research in Organizational Behavior最新文献

Decades of research has demonstrated that people can arrive at starkly different perceptions in the same social situations. Divergent perceptions are not inherently dysfunctional. However, if divergent perceptions are not managed effectively, they can have deleterious effects that can undermine functioning in the workplace. Drawing on a motivated cognition perspective, we outline why divergent perceptions may emerge as well as overview the benefits and drawbacks of divergent perceptions in organizational contexts. Next, we highlight the complexities associated with divergent perceptions in the workplace, including why, how, and when divergent perceptions may become dysfunctional. We also showcase theoretical insights from a motivated cognition perspective that can enhance our understanding of how divergent perceptions can be effectively managed. We conclude by outlining key theoretical insights and avenues for future research, including how organizations can use a motivated cognition perspective to manage divergent perceptions related to complex societal issues and issuing a call to adopt a systems approach that recognizes the importance of contextual layers for understanding and effectively managing divergent perceptions in organizations.

There is an increasingly prevalent expectation in contemporary society that employees be passionate for their work. Here, we suggest that employers and employees can have different understandings of passion that potentially conflict. More specifically, we argue that although employers may often be well-intentioned, their emphasis on employee passion may at times amount to normative control and reflect a means to attain valued work outcomes. In contrast, employees may primarily view their pursuit of passion as an opportunity to self-actualize, and thereby, view passion as an end in itself. We propose that when employees notice that these two understandings of passion diverge, they experience uncertainty in adjudicating which understanding of passion—their own or their employer’s—to privilege. Critically, employees may feel responsible for and subsequently seek ways to reduce this uncertainty, and doing so places added demands that impedes employees’ ability to perform. We discuss why employers may not necessarily recognize how their understanding of passion can create challenges for employees, and examine the difficulties employers face in attempting to resolve the tensions employees experience. Subsequently, we develop an agenda for future research that highlights how individual, organizational, and cultural differences may lead to variation in divergent understandings of passion, and the critical role managers could play in helping address employees’ uncertainty.

Despite the centrality of differences as a driver of conflict, most of the empirical research on group conflict has focused on the group as a whole, paying little attention to the differing experiences of individuals during conflict—that is, the ways individuals perceive, make sense of, and emotionally experience a conflict episode. Although people process information about a conflict using the same general cognitive and emotional mechanisms, their personal characteristics (e.g., personality, cultural background), beliefs and motives (e.g., orientation toward conflict), and past experiences will influence how they make sense of what is occurring and their subsequent conflict behavior. Building on recent work that has taken a multi-level approach to understanding team conflict and drawing from related literature in social, cognitive, and personality psychology, we explicate an individual’s psychological experience of a conflict episode as a process by which individuals make sense of and emotionally experience what is happening, develop attitudes towards others in the group, and exchange and integrate knowledge about the conflict and others involved. We argue that a more nuanced understanding of the intraindividual experience of conflict generates important insight into understanding individual conflict behavior, helping us predict how people will behave in conflict situations and how conflict episodes will unfold. We conclude with implications for how to intervene to promote cooperative behavior and positive team outcomes, along with an agenda for future research.

Prior research on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has documented how specific CSR activities relate to responses of relevant stakeholders, mainly examining employees. However, it is as yet unclear whether these findings generalize to other types of CSR activities or to responses of other stakeholder groups. In fact, results from studies to date also show inconsistent effects in need of further explanation.

In this contribution we offer a new perspective on this literature. We extend current insights on organizational CSR activities and stakeholder support, by elaborating on the psychological mechanisms that can explain these relations. We draw together recent developments on organizational anthropomorphism with insights on organizational identification, to argue that the impact of CSR activities on a broad range of stakeholder responses depends on perceptions of organizational morality. We connect prior work on organizational ethics, CSR, and stakeholder support, to social psychological theory and research on impression formation, impression management, and impression updating. This new perspective allows us to broaden the current debate on CSR and stakeholder support.

Building on this analysis, we propose a new model that offers a roadmap for future research. We explain the impact of organizational CSR on stakeholder responses, by highlighting perceived organizational morality as a key mediating variable. We then proceed to consider likely moderators of this relation distinguishing between (a) characteristics of the organization, (b) characteristics of (communications about) CSR activities, and (c) characteristics of the perceivers. On the basis of this extended model we develop specific predictions, and review initial evidence supporting these prediction.

Research shows that perceived authenticity conveys value in many disparate domains. The analytical attention of this research focuses on producers of products and services, identifying which actions and structures the typical individual associates with authenticity. Far less is known about how individuals and audiences differ in their interest, receptiveness and response to potentially authentic entities and services. Even less is known about how regulators, certifiers, critics and other third parties play a role in the social construction of authenticity. Yet the perception and valuation of a product or service as authentic rests largely with heterogeneous audiences and interpretive third parties. Accordingly, in this chapter, we review and develop theory and empirical research about how targeted entities (producers, persons, products, services), audiences and third parties combine to produce authenticity. For targets, we examine the range of actions and structures of various entities that have been empirically associated with authenticity. For audiences, we explore variations in interests in authenticity based on domain engagement, cosmopolitanism, and cross-cultural differences. For third parties, we consider the roles of other audience members, certifiers and regulators. Finally, we conceptualize a co-evolutionary process whereby targets, audiences and third parties combine to generate social pockets where authenticity is recognized and highly valued.

As the organizational landscape becomes increasingly turbulent and the gig economy grows, the conventional anchors for a work-based sense of identity – a relatively stable organization, workgroup, and occupation – are losing relevance. We argue that a “network identity,” defined as the core, distinctive, and more or less enduring character of a set of social ties (e.g., “we are high-achievers”), helps fill this growing void because individuals’ networks often reflect agency and have more or less fluid boundaries and portability. These attributes enable individuals to develop or join networks that may transcend specific contexts and adapt to change. An individual’s network identity simultaneously implicates all three levels of self – individual, relational, and collective – such that it is a potentially very powerful means for realizing his or her identity motives. Crossing the dimensions of network boundary strength and network density, we offer a 2 × 2 typology of networks and discuss their implications for members’ network identities and what kinds of individuals might prefer each network.

Scholars have highlighted the use of punishment as a tool to defend laws and norms, deter deviance, and restore justice in the aftermath of organizational misconduct. However, current theory and research primarily draw on a micro-oriented lens to understand how punishment occurs in response to deviant actors within organizations, neglecting macro-oriented questions of whether and how organizations are punished for their misconduct. We review sociological and macro-organizational work that suggests punitive severity can vary with three key attributes of the organization: status, reputation, and embedded ties. We then develop a mezzo-lens framework motivated at the intersection of micro- and macro-perspectives on organizational misconduct to shed light on opportunities for theoretical expansion by crossing levels of analysis.

Negotiations are a careful balancing act between cooperation and competition—a successful negotiation requires extracting maximal value without offending and alienating a counterpart (i.e., the negotiator’s dilemma). It is thus surprising that negotiation scholars have largely overlooked a pervasive feature of negotiations: they entail “polite” speech. In this paper, we introduce politeness as a communicative strategy that is critical to solving the negotiator’s dilemma. By strategically adjusting their utterances to signal deference and respect, negotiators can make ambitious requests without derailing the exchange. Starting with an overview of politeness and a review of the relevant negotiation literature, we offer testable propositions regarding how attempts at polite speech manifest in negotiations, who is especially likely to express them, under what conditions, and to what effect. We also consider the conditions under which this communication strategy undermines negotiators. We hope our review and theorizing will open up broader discussions on the role of polite speech in deal making and conversational dynamics.

To effectively manage planned change and understand differences in leaders’ and recipients’ responses to it, it is essential to understand how change is cognitively represented by organization members. In this theory-development article, we draw upon construal-level theory (CLT) and conceptually explore the role of change construal level in explaining responses to organizational change. We discuss differences between change leaders’ and recipients’ change construals, and differences in the relationships between change construal level and the response to change as a function of the change activities taking place. Specifically, we argue that high-level (i.e., abstract) construals of change will facilitate the effective initiation of change when the focus is on equilibrium-breaking activities, and that low-level (i.e., concrete) construals will facilitate the effective implementation of change when the focus is on institutionalization of the change. We further propose that leaders’ engagement in visionary leadership increases the likelihood that their generally higher level construal of change will be integrated into recipients’ change construals, elaborating and elevating them, and that recipients’ engagement in upward prohibitive voice behaviors will increase the likelihood that their generally lower construal of change will be integrated into leaders’ change construals, elaborating and concretizing them. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our framework.