Research in Organizational Behavior最新文献

This chapter calls attention to a paradigmatic shift in the organizational justice literature, in which fairness serves as the dependent rather than independent variable. Drawing on two taxonomic dimensions, we structure approaches to studying fairness as a consequence rather than as a cause. One dimension refers to the focal party whose reactions are being examined (the actor, the recipient, and the observer) whereas the other consists of the nature of the reaction itself (behavior, desire, and perception). We sample selectively from the nine cells emanating from the 3 × 3 classification scheme, emphasizing conceptual and empirical works that advance our understanding of fairness or connect fairness with other literatures in organizational and social psychology, such as ethics, social hierarchy, trust, self-handicapping, and construal level theory. Thus, we illustrate how the study of fairness as a dependent variable enriches not only theory and research in organizational justice, but also how it may contribute to other literatures. Additionally, we consider some of the practical implications and future research possibilities related to studying fairness as a dependent variable.

What is the purpose of business? While most agree that business minimally involves the creation of value, a blurred double image of value haunts our discussion of purpose. The image of what counts as value for a single firm is laid atop an image of what counts as value for business in general. These two images cannot match. Indeed, the resulting conceptual blurriness is a classic example of a composition fallacy. We should never mistake the properties of a part for the properties of the whole. A theory of the firm is ill equipped to handle the many expectations we hold for business practice. As such, we seek to establish the beginnings of a theory of business, one that is both empirical and normative. Offering four central propositions about the purpose, accountability, control and success of business, we close with a consideration of several important theoretical issues and practical opportunities that await us in the years ahead.

To achieve goals, individuals and organizations must understand how to effectively motivate themselves and others. We review three broad strategies that people employ to increase motivation: giving feedback, setting goal targets, and applying incentives. Although each of these strategies can effectively motivate action under certain circumstances and among certain people, they can also result in unintended consequences: not helping or even hurting motivation. For example, employers may give positive feedback that leads employees to relax their effort or negative feedback that undermines employees’ commitment, organizations may set goals that are overly ambitious and consequently reduce motivation, and certain incentives might appear attractive before pursuing an action but uncertain incentives better motivate action during goal pursuit. By identifying when and how these common motivational strategies work versus fail, we are able to prescribe a specific set of guidelines that will help people understand how to motivate themselves and others.

Almost all academic literature across disciplines and most of the news media explain racial inequality as the result of the discrimination and racism of whites toward nonwhites. In contrast, I argue that it is the favoritism or advantages that whites provide to other whites that is the primary mechanism by which racial inequality is reproduced in the post-civil rights period in the U.S. I provide evidence for my argument with data at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. I also discuss how my argument accords with management theory about diversity and inequality, considering the literature on anti-racism, implicit or unconscious bias, micro-inequities (or micro-aggressions), the need for mentors, and white privilege. I end with a discussion of objections that might be raised with regard to my framing of racial inequality as the result of whites providing advantages to other whites, including concerns about egregious negative acts toward nonwhites. Overall, I argue that my argument that favoritism takes precedence over racism and discrimination is consistent with the research evidence in the field.

Recent research in social psychology has examined how psychological power affects organizational behaviors. Given that power in organizations is generally viewed as a structural construct, I examine the links between structural and psychological power and explore how their interrelationships affect organizational behavior. I argue that psychological power takes two forms: the (nonconscious) cognitive network for power and the conscious sense of power. Based on this view, I identify two causal pathways that link psychological power and structural power in predicting organizational behavior. First, the sense of power is likely to induce a sense of responsibility among (but not exclusively among) structural powerholders, which in turn leads structural powerholders to be more responsive to the views and needs of others. Second, the sense of power, when brought into conscious awareness, activates a non-conscious association between power and agentic behaviors, which in turn leads structural powerholders to enact agentic behaviors. I discuss the ways in which these predictions diverge from previous theorizing, and I address methodological challenges in examining the relationship between structural and psychological power. In doing so, I suggest that certain features of the predominant methodological approaches to studying psychological power may have induced a bias in the empirical findings that obscures the crucial link between power and responsibility.

Due to current economic circumstances (e.g., stagnating wages, increasing material aspirations, mounting student debt), an increasing number of employees are prone to experiencing economic scarcity, defined here as the perception that one has fewer financial resources than one's needs require. In this paper, we focus primarily on an under-studied population in the organizational sciences: The working poor—employees who hold jobs but do not earn enough to sustain a reasonable standard of living for themselves and their dependents. Taking into account recent research suggesting that scarcity can have profound psychological consequences, we argue that organizations have a vested interest in reducing feelings of financial deprivation among its employees because the psychology of scarcity has the potential to spill over into organizational functioning. Furthermore, we assert that most organizations’ approaches to managing low-wage work are not only ineffective at reducing the spillover effects of scarcity on organizational outcomes, but also increase their endurance because they do not account for the behavioral consequences of financial deprivation. As such, we present more sustainable initiatives through which organizations can reduce scarcity among its employees. Finally, we discuss ways in which organizational researchers can become more involved in relevant public policy debates.

Micro and macro scholars alike have long warned about “incongruent” work environments that sow confusion by sending inconsistent normative signals to employees. We argue that these warnings rest on the debatable assumption that employees do not have cognitive bandwidth and emotional resilience to do more than single-mindedly pursue internally consistent goals. Challenging this assumption, we argue that employees in today's complex knowledge economies often face tasks that require balancing opposing risks such as those of conforming too closely to standard practices against those of deviating too far. Given this reality, we explain how congruity can sometimes be maladaptive and incongruity, adaptive. Congruent combinations of process accountability and collectivism can trigger excessive conformity and congruent combinations of outcome accountability and individualism can induce excessive deviation. But incongruent combinations can motivate employees to rethink tacit assumptions and explore better ways of reaping the benefits of conformity (deviation) at a lower cost of the other value. That said, managing tradeoffs can be exhausting—and congruity affords needed guidance. Organizations should therefore introduce incongruity in carefully calibrated quasi-experimental doses. The likelihood of successful implementation of this advice hinges on managers’ ideological resistance to incongruity as well as their ability to mobilize employee “buy in.” Our chapter highlights the dialectical interplay between incongruity which encourages mindfulness and congruity which provides a respite from the burdens of choice.

An important source of organizational variation in communities is institutional legacies: institutions that persist and affect the community over long periods of time. Institutional legacies have received attention in the past, but recently there has been increased interest in their origins and effects. We examine three carriers of institutional legacies—legal structures, voluntary organizations, and intra-community relations—and show some work on each of these carriers. We discuss how research on institutional legacies presents a particular challenge in causal identification, but we also offer potentially viable solutions to this challenge. Finally, we outline extensions of research on institutional legacies through work that documents how the interrelationships between community organizations and businesses are shaped by institutional legacies and in turn contribute to their evolution.

We develop the notion of image as a “covering concept,” one that subsumes several major ideas in organization study. We draw on a number of literatures, including social psychology, marketing/branding, political science and organization studies, to make the case that “image is everything.” We consider not only the pervasiveness of image, but also the power of image including its transformational potential for altering the character of even our most fundamental concepts in personal and organizational study, including identity. We articulate two major theses: (1) image harbors the power to transform substance into image, and more radically that (2) image can itself become substantive. We therefore articulate not only a substance → image transformation, but also an image → substance transformation.