Up the chain
The Interaction of Testosterone and Cortisol Is Associated With Attained Status in Male Executives
Gary Sherman et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are hormone levels associated with the attainment of social status? Although endogenous testosterone predicts status-seeking social behaviors, research suggests that the stress hormone cortisol may inhibit testosterone's effects. Thus, individuals with both high testosterone and low cortisol may be especially likely to occupy high-status positions in social hierarchies while individuals with high testosterone and high cortisol may not. We tested this hypothesis by recruiting a sample of real executives and examining testosterone, cortisol, and a concrete indicator of attained status: the number of subordinates over which the executive has authority. Despite the myriad nonhormonal factors that determine organizational promotion, the executives' endogenous testosterone and cortisol interacted to significantly predict hierarchical position: Testosterone positively predicted executives' number of subordinates, but only among low-cortisol executives. The results imply that reducing cortisol levels via stress reduction may be a critical goal not only because doing so will improve health but also because doing so may enhance leadership potential.
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John Chen & Pranav Garg
University of Florida Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
Research on star performers has primarily theorized about a star's contributions as an individual rather than about the star's contributions to teamwork. In contrast, we focus on organizations where stars and non-stars work closely and interdependently with each other. Central to our theory is the notion that, in such situations, building teamwork around a star is a complex learning process. In response, organizations simplify the learning process by prioritizing interpersonal interactions involving the star. Simplified learning improves organizational performance but also creates myopia. Our main claim is that the temporary absence of a star enables the organization to break this myopia by triggering a search for new routines. The organization may combine these new routines with those prior to the star's absence to improve teamwork upon the star's return. We predict that, as a result, an organization will perform better after a star's return than before her absence. We find support for our prediction using comprehensive data from the National Basketball Association. This study contributes to research on organizational learning and on the challenges associated with utilizing star performers in organizations.
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Devon Proudfoot, Aaron Kay & Heather Mann
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, September 2015, Pages 108-122
Abstract:
While employees might be expected to be especially vigilant to problems within their organization during times of economic instability, we build on motivational perspectives put forth by System Justification Theory to propose the opposite effect, namely that economic instability enhances employees' tendency to defensively ignore and diminish organizational problems. We experimentally manipulated perceptions of labor market trends and asked participants to report on problems within their own actual organization. As predicted, an ostensibly weak external labor market led employees to perceive their organization as less inefficient (Study 1), identify fewer organizational efficiency problems (Study 2), downplay the impact of organizational inefficiencies (Study 3), and generate a greater ratio of pros to cons regarding how their organization is run (Study 4), compared to employees exposed to relatively favorable labor market information. Results suggest an enhanced motivation to deny the existence of organizational flaws when employment alternatives are perceived to be scarce.
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The Impact of Rudeness on Medical Team Performance: A Randomized Trial
Arieh Riskin et al.
Pediatrics, September 2015, Pages 487-495
Background and objectives: Iatrogenesis often results from performance deficiencies among medical team members. Team-targeted rudeness may underlie such performance deficiencies, with individuals exposed to rude behavior being less helpful and cooperative. Our objective was to explore the impact of rudeness on the performance of medical teams.
Methods: Twenty-four NICU teams participated in a training simulation involving a preterm infant whose condition acutely deteriorated due to necrotizing enterocolitis. Participants were informed that a foreign expert on team reflexivity in medicine would observe them. Teams were randomly assigned to either exposure to rudeness (in which the expert's comments included mildly rude statements completely unrelated to the teams' performance) or control (neutral comments). The videotaped simulation sessions were evaluated by 3 independent judges (blinded to team exposure) who used structured questionnaires to assess team performance, information-sharing, and help-seeking.
Results: The composite diagnostic and procedural performance scores were lower for members of teams exposed to rudeness than to members of the control teams (2.6 vs 3.2 [P = .005] and 2.8 vs 3.3 [P = .008], respectively). Rudeness alone explained nearly 12% of the variance in diagnostic and procedural performance. A model specifying information-sharing and help-seeking as mediators linking rudeness to team performance explained an even greater portion of the variance in diagnostic and procedural performance (R2 = 52.3 and 42.7, respectively).
Conclusions: Rudeness had adverse consequences on the diagnostic and procedural performance of the NICU team members. Information-sharing mediated the adverse effect of rudeness on diagnostic performance, and help-seeking mediated the effect of rudeness on procedural performance.
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Sean Martin
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study draws on social identity theories of behavioral contagion and research concerning narratives in organizations to present and test a framework for understanding how narratives embed values in organizational newcomers' actions. Employing a field experiment using 632 newly-hired employees in a large IT firm that prioritizes self-transcendent values, this study explores how narratives varying in terms of the organizational level of main characters and the values-upholding or values-violating behaviors of those characters influence newcomers' tendencies to engage in behaviors that uphold or deviate from the values. Results indicate that stories about low-level organizational characters engaging in values-upholding behaviors are more positively associated with self-transcendent, helping behaviors and negatively associated with deviant behaviors, than are similar stories about high-level members of the organization. Stories in which high-level members of the organization violate values are negatively related to newcomers' engagement in both helping and deviance more strongly than are values-violating stories about lower-level members. Content analyses of the stories suggest that they convey values in different and potentially important ways. Implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed.
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Why Are Firms Rigid? A General Framework and Empirical Tests
Rui de Figueiredo, Evan Rawley & Christopher Rider
Organization Science, September-October 2015, Pages 1502-1519
Abstract:
We present a general framework for understanding why firms are slow to make major strategic changes in a wide range of empirical settings. We then apply this framework to investigate, more specifically, the relationship between firm age and scope in hedge funds. Our empirical analyses demonstrate that younger hedge funds outperform older hedge funds both before and after the launch of a new fund. Based on our framework, these results suggest that age-based rigidity in hedge funds is more attributable to internal political frictions that influence project selection than to constraints associated with exchange partners or implementation costs. We conclude by discussing how our framework can be used to identify the dominant source of rigidity in other contexts.
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Why the Referential Treatment: Evidence from Field Experiments on Referrals
Amanda Pallais & Emily Glassberg Sands
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
Referred workers are more likely than non-referred workers to be hired, all else equal. In three field experiments in an online labor market, we examine why. We find that referrals contain positive information about worker performance and persistence that is not contained in workers' observable characteristics. We also find that referrals performed particularly well when working directly with their referrers. However, we do not find evidence that referrals exert more effort because they believe their performance will affect their relationship with their referrer or their referrer's position at the firm.
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Wei Shi & Yinuo Tang
Journal of Corporate Finance, October 2015, Pages 32-46
Abstract:
Strategic alliance research has shown that national cultural similarity between partner firms can reduce transaction costs and positively influence cross-border alliance formation and performance. Yet, social identity research in psychology suggests that cultural similarity can give rise to in-group favoritism, which can lead partner firms sharing similar cultural backgrounds to cooperate with each other to defend their shared identity instead of pursuing economic efficiencies associated with cultural similarity. To investigate in-group favoritism associated with cultural similarity, we examine the influence of cross-regional religious similarity and ethnic similarity in the U.S. on domestic strategic alliance formation and alliance announcement returns. We find that cross-regional religious similarity and ethnic similarity in the U.S. positively affect the volume of interstate alliance activities, but are negatively associated with combined alliance announcement returns of partner firms. These findings suggest that cross-regional religious similarity and ethnic similarity facilitate interstate alliance activities between U.S. states, but investors seem to negatively interpret alliance decisions that can be potentially driven by in-group favoritism.
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Margo Monteith et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are hiring decisions affected by knowledge that a job applicant was previously laid off? We expected decisional biases to be linked with the motivational tendency to believe that society is fair and outcomes are just and deserved (hereafter, system justifying beliefs [SJBs]). Indeed, hiring decisions were more likely to disadvantage a laid off applicant as SJBs increased both when detailed job application information was reviewed for one laid off applicant (Study 1) and when the applicant was described as one of many laid off as the result of corporate downsizing (Study 2). Furthermore, both experiments supported a mediation model, whereby greater endorsement of SJBs was associated with greater perceptions of weaknesses in the laid off applicant, which in turn led to less sympathy, and finally to biased hiring decisions. Study 2 additionally demonstrated that all findings held when controlling for other ideologies.
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Employee Treatment and Firm Innovation
Connie Mao & Jamie Weathers
Temple University Working Paper, August 2015
Abstract:
We identify firm innovation as a new channel by which employee treatment affects firm value. Growth and innovation incentive theories support positive effects of "good" employee treatment on innovation. Alternatively, entrenchment theory suggests such treatment will lead to complacency and shirking, hence deterring innovation. These opposing views merit investigation since in the "new economy," human capital is increasingly essential to firm value and the growth and success of a firm has become more reliant on corporate innovation. Using the KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. SOCRATES database and newly acquired patent/citation data, we find an overall significant positive relationship between positive employee treatment and innovation input (R&D), quantity (Patents), and quality (Citations). Furthermore, we find that favorable employee treatment improves innovation focus - innovation projects more related to firms' core business. These findings, robust to an alternate data source and endogeneity concerns, are consistent with the theories of growth and innovation incentive and suggest corporate innovation represents a channel by which employee treatment enhances firm value.
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Mahour Mellat-Parast et al.
Journal of Operations Management, September 2015, Pages 14-24
Abstract:
Developing an understanding of the relationship between service quality and profitability is of central importance to operations management scholars. In this study we seek to reconcile inconsistencies between extant theory and empirical findings regarding the relationship between service quality and profitability in the airline industry. More specifically, we draw on theories from strategic management, operations strategy, and economics to explain why the relationship between measures of service quality and profitability will be moderated by an airline's competitive strategy. We test our hypotheses by fitting mixed-effects models to longitudinal data obtained from several governmental databases in the context of the US domestic airline industry. We find that airline strategy moderates the relationship between some service failures and profitability. Specifically, we find that mishandled baggage and customer complaints more negatively affect the profitability of focused than non-focused airlines. We also find the relationship between arrival delays on profitability is universally negative for focused airlines, but displays an inverted U-shaped relationship for non-focused airlines. Our findings provide significant contributions to the existing body of knowledge in service quality and operations strategy. We further outline the implications of these findings for practice and future research.
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Perceptions of employee volunteering: Is it "credited" or "stigmatized" by colleagues?
Jessica Rodell & John Lynch
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
As research begins to accumulate on employee volunteering, it appears that this behavior is largely beneficial to employee performance and commitment. It is less clear, however, how employee volunteering is perceived by others in the workplace. Do colleagues award volunteering "credit"- for example, associating it with being concerned about others - or do they "stigmatize" it - for example, associating it with being distracted from work? Moreover, do those evaluations go on to predict how colleagues actually treat employees who volunteer more often? Adopting a reputation perspective, we draw from theories of person perception and attribution to explore these research questions. The results of a field study revealed that colleagues gave credit to employee volunteering when they attributed it to intrinsic reasons and stigmatized employee volunteering when they attributed it to impression management reasons. Ultimately, through the awarded credits, volunteering was rewarded by supervisors (with the allocation of more resources) and coworkers (with the provision of more helping behavior) when it was attributed to intrinsic motives - a relationship that was amplified when stigmas were low and mitigated when stigmas were high. The results of a laboratory experiment further confirmed that volunteering was both credited and stigmatized, distinguishing it from citizenship behavior, which was credited but not stigmatized.
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Merit pay and wage compression with productivity differences and uncertainty
Till Gross, Christopher Guo & Gary Charness
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, September 2015, Pages 233-247
Abstract:
This paper experimentally investigates wage setting and effort choices in a multi-worker setting when there is heterogeneity in worker productivity and managers' perception of this productivity is imperfect. Worker ability is assigned via an aptitude test and, in an innovative design, manager uncertainty concerning this ability is related to the manager's own test performance. We propose a merit-pay hypothesis, that higher-ability workers will reduce their effort if they are not paid more than coworkers with lower ability, but not vice versa. Based on a simple model, we also predict that the higher the uncertainty about employee ability levels, the more managers compress wages between perceived high- and low-ability workers. We find strong experimental support for both hypotheses.