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How social class shapes thoughts and actions in organizations
Publication date: 2011 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 31 Author(s): Stéphane Côté This chapter presents the premise that social class is a potent, robust, and distinct predictor of how people think and act in organizations. Drawing on theories of social cognition, I define social class as a dimension of the self that is rooted in objective material resources (via income, education, and occupational prestige) and corresponding subjective perceptions of rank vis-à-vis others. Informed by demonstrations of the psychological effects of social class, I describe how social class may shape behavior in...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

On the folly of principal's power: Managerial psychology as a cause of bad incentives
Publication date: 2011 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 31 Author(s): Joe C. Magee , Gavin J. Kilduff , Chip Heath Faulty and dysfunctional incentive systems have long interested, and frustrated, managers and organizational scholars alike. In this analysis, we pick up where Kerr (1975) left off and advance an explanation for why bad incentive systems are so prevalent in organizations. We propose that one contributing factor lies in the psychology of people who occupy managerial roles. Although designing effective incentive systems is a challenge wrought with perils for anyone, we believe the psycho...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Practical wisdom and organizations
Publication date: 2011 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 31 Author(s): Barry Schwartz When institutions are not working as they should, their leaders and policy makers typically reach for two tools with which to improve them—detailed rules and “smart” incentives. This paper argues that neither rules, no matter how detailed, nor incentives, no matter how smart, can do the job in any situation that involves human interaction. What is needed is character, and most especially the character trait that Aristotle called practical wisdom. People with practical wisdom have the moral will to do the right ...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Claiming authority: How women explain their ascent to top business leadership positions
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Hannah Riley Bowles Career stories of 50 female executives from major corporations and high-growth entrepreneurial ventures suggest two alternative accounts of how women legitimize their claims to top leadership positions: navigating and pioneering. In navigating accounts, the women legitimized their claims to top authority positions by following well institutionalized paths of career advancement (e.g., high performance in line jobs) and self-advocating with the gatekeepers of the social hierarchy (e.g., bosses, investors). In pion...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Women in high places: When and why promoting women into top positions can harm them individually or as a group (and how to prevent this)
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Naomi Ellemers , Floor Rink , Belle Derks , Michelle K. Ryan This contribution focuses on women in leadership positions. We propose that two convictions are relevant to the effects of having women in high places. On the one hand, women as a group are expected to employ different leadership styles than men, in this way adding diversity to management teams. On the other hand, individual women are expected to ascend to leadership positions by showing their ability to display the competitiveness and toughness typically required from...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

From bias to exclusion: A multilevel emergent theory of gender segregation in organizations
This article presents a multilevel emergent theory of organizational segregation linking gender bias in performance assessment (a micro-level phenomenon) to gender segregation in organizations (a macro-level phenomenon). Based on an integration of multilevel research, emergence and signaling theory, we propose the following: (a) gender segregation in organizations is an emergent phenomenon that arises from the collective behavior of individuals who express only a small bias in favor of males, in concert with the signals governing promotion decisions and organizational mobility; (b) the emergence of a gender-segregated orga...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Gender stereotypes and workplace bias
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Madeline E. Heilman This paper focuses on the workplace consequences of both descriptive gender stereotypes (designating what women and men are like) and prescriptive gender stereotypes (designating what women and men should be like), and their implications for women's career progress. Its central argument is that gender stereotypes give rise to biased judgments and decisions, impeding women's advancement. The paper discusses how descriptive gender stereotypes promote gender bias because of the negative performance expectations tha...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Motivated information processing in organizational teams: Progress, puzzles, and prospects
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Bernard A. Nijstad , Carsten K.W. De Dreu Much of the research into group and team functioning looks at groups that perform cognitive tasks, such as decision making, problem solving, and innovation. The Motivated Information Processing in Groups Model (MIP-G; De Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008) conjectures that information processing within such groups is strongly affected by two types of motivation: epistemic motivation (low–high) is thought to drive the depth of information processing, whereas social motivation ...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Corporate social responsibility as a source of employee satisfaction
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Christopher W. Bauman , Linda J. Skitka Corporate social responsibility has received an increasing amount of attention from practitioners and scholars alike in recent years. However, very little is known about whether or how corporate social responsibility affects employees. Because employees are primary stakeholders who directly contribute to the success of the company, understanding employee reactions to corporate social responsibility may help answer lingering questions about the potential effects of corporate social responsibi...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

The economic evaluation of time: Organizational causes and individual consequences
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Jeffrey Pfeffer , Sanford E. DeVoe People acquire ways of thinking about time partly in and from work organizations, where the control and measurement of time use is a prominent feature of modern management—an inevitable consequence of employees selling their time for money. In this paper, we theorize about the role organizational practices play in promoting an economic evaluation of time and time use—where time is thought of primarily in monetary terms and viewed as a scarce resource that should be used as efficiently as poss...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Unintended agency: Impression management support as a trigger of institutional change in corporate governance
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): James D. Westphal , Sun Hyun Park In this paper we describe an emergent process of institutional change in which institutional entrepreneurs are unintentional contributors to the change process. Our theory suggests how change in the predominant institutional logic of corporate governance at public U.S. companies resulted not from deliberate attempts by corporate leaders to change the criteria by which governance is evaluated, but from the cumulative efforts of top executives to provide “impression management support” (IM suppo...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Hawthorne revisited: Organizational implications of the physical work environment
Publication date: 2012 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 32 Author(s): Chen-Bo Zhong , Julian House The influence of the Hawthorne studies on the field of Organizational Behavior is pervasive. Originally intended to demonstrate the effect of the physical work environment on worker productivity, the Hawthorne studies reached an unexpected conclusion that social relations, but not the physical environment, shape organizational outcomes, spawning an enormously generative social relations movement. This chapter attempts to revisit the conclusions of the Hawthorne studies and revitalize interest in influe...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Chemicals, companies, and countries: The concept of diffusion in management research
Publication date: 2013 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 33 Author(s): Jennifer Whitson , Klaus Weber , Paul Hirsch , Y. Sekou Bermiss In the field of organizational behavior, the term “diffusion” has come to be implicitly paired with the concept of innovation and a peculiar set of conceptual choices. We explore how this came about, and examine the evolution of the concept “diffusion” from its inception in the English language through its use in the natural and social sciences to its current meaning in organizational research. A sensemaking perspective on researchers’ cognition helps us e...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Empathy wages?: Gratitude and gift exchange in employment relationships
Publication date: 2013 Source:Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 33 Author(s): James N. Baron Economists have argued that employers sometimes pay above-market premiums (efficiency wages) in order to attract, motivate, and/or retain valued personnel. Drawing on recent work examining reciprocity and gift exchange, this paper proposes the notion of “empathy wages,” in which the effect of the premium paid depends on the extent to which it elicits gratitude from recipients. We argue that a particular gift (monetary or otherwise) offered by an employer is likely to elicit more gratitude among “non-stars”: w...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research

Underestimating our influence over others at work
We present evidence suggesting that employees are constrained by cognitive biases that lead them to underestimate their influence over others in the workplace. As a result of this underestimation of influence, employees may be reluctant to spearhead organizational change, discount their own role in subordinates’ performance failures, and fail to speak up in the face of wrongdoing. In addition to reviewing evidence for this bias, we propose five moderators that, when present, may reverse or attenuate the underestimation effect (namely, comparative judgments, the objectification or dehumanization of an influence target, th...
Source: Research in Organizational Behavior - November 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research