Producers
Understanding contemporary forms of exploitation: Attributions of passion serve to legitimize the poor treatment of workers
Jae Yun Kim et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The pursuit of passion in one’s work is touted in contemporary discourse. Although passion may indeed be beneficial in many ways, we suggest that the modern cultural emphasis may also serve to facilitate the legitimization of unfair and demeaning management practices — a phenomenon we term the legitimization of passion exploitation. Across 7 studies and a meta-analysis, we show that people do in fact deem poor worker treatment (e.g., asking employees to do demeaning tasks that are irrelevant to their job description, asking employees to work extra hours without pay) as more legitimate when workers are presumed to be “passionate” about their work. Of importance, we demonstrate 2 mediating mechanisms by which this process of legitimization occurs: (a) assumptions that passionate workers would have volunteered for this work if given the chance (Studies 1, 3, 5, 6, and 8), and (b) beliefs that, for passionate workers, work itself is its own reward (Studies 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8). We also find support for the reverse direction of the legitimization process, in which people attribute passion to an exploited (vs. nonexploited) worker (Study 7). Finally, and consistent with the notion that this process is connected to justice motives, a test of moderated mediation shows this is most pronounced for participants high in belief in a just world (Study 8). Taken together, these studies suggest that although passion may seem like a positive attribute to assume in others, it can also license poor and exploitative worker treatment.
Too Good to Hire? Capability and Inferences about Commitment in Labor Markets
Roman Galperin et al.
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine how signals of a candidate’s capability affect perceptions of that person’s commitment to an employer. In four experimental studies that use hiring managers as subjects, we test and show that managers perceive highly capable candidates to have lower commitment to the organization than less capable but adequate candidates and, as a result, penalize high-capability candidates in the hiring process. Our results show that managers have concerns about a high-capability candidate’s future commitment to the organization because they view highly capable candidates as having lower levels of organizational interest — meaning they care less about the mission and values of the organization and exert a lower level of effort toward those ends — and because they assume highly capable candidates have more outside job options, increasing their flight risk. Our findings highlight that capability signals do not necessarily afford candidates an advantage in selection, suggesting an upper limit on credentials and other signals of capability in helping candidates get jobs. Our study contributes to research on labor markets, human capital, and credentialing by offering a theory for why and when capability signals can negatively influence job candidate selection decisions.
Examining the “I” in team: A longitudinal investigation of the influence of team narcissism composition on team outcomes in the NBA
Emily Grijalva et al.
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that narcissism is unrelated to job performance, yet this individual-level effect may be underestimating narcissism’s wider influence on organizational performance. To assess this possibility, we draw on social exchange theory and the agency model of narcissism to investigate how team narcissism composition affects team coordination and performance. Our model was tested using game-level longitudinal data from National Basketball Association (NBA) teams. Teams with higher mean and maximum levels of narcissism as well as higher narcissism members in core roles (i.e., central and influential roles) had poorer coordination and in turn performance than teams with lower levels. In addition, having higher team familiarity amplified the effects of narcissism for team mean and core role narcissism. The nature of the observed interaction, however, was surprising. Originally, we hypothesized that narcissism would lead to greater decrements in coordination as familiarity increased. Instead, we found that teams with higher mean and core role narcissism maintained the same levels of coordination over time, whereas teams with lower narcissism experienced improvements in coordination. Thus, team-level narcissism appears to prevent teams from capitalizing on normative coordination gains that occur as familiarity increases. These results underscore the importance of considering narcissism when forming teams.
On Ladders and Pyramids: Hierarchy’s Shape Determines Relationships and Performance in Groups
Siyu Yu et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hierarchies take different forms, which individuals mentally represent using different geometric shapes. We propose and empirically demonstrate that individuals’ mental representations of the shape hierarchy takes affect its consequences. Five studies compared two common mental representations of hierarchy shapes — ladders and pyramids — to explore whether, why, and how individuals’ perceptions of hierarchy’s shape undermine constructive relationships within groups and group performance. Study 1 demonstrated that individuals commonly mentally represent hierarchies as ladders and pyramids. In Studies 2 and 3, employees who perceived their workplace hierarchies to be shaped like ladders (as compared with pyramids) experienced worse intragroup relationships. Finally, Studies 4 and 5 experimentally manipulated groups’ hierarchical shape in the lab and found that ladder-shaped hierarchies undermined social relationships and group performance relative to pyramid-shaped hierarchies. Taken together, these findings enhance our understanding of hierarchies’ multifaceted consequences and help shed light on the (dis)utility of hierarchy for group functioning.
Blurred Lines: How the Collectivism Norm Operates Through Perceived Group Diversity to Boost or Harm Group Performance in Himalayan Mountain Climbing
Jennifer Chatman et al.
Organization Science, March-April 2019, Pages 235–259
Abstract:
We develop a theory explaining how collectivism causes people to “blur” demographic differences, that is, to see less diversity than actually exists in a group, and reconciling contradictions in how collectivistic norms influence group performance. We draw on the perceived diversity literature, hypothesizing that collectivistic norms cause group members to blur demographic differences, resulting in perceptions that group members are more similar than they actually are. Whether this benefits or harms group performance depends on the group’s objective diversity and the relevance of the perceived diversity attribute for accomplishing the task. For conjunctive tasks, the group’s performance is determined by its weakest member, demanding high levels of cohesion. Our theory suggests that collectivism benefits group conjunctive performance when objective national diversity is high by blurring divisive relational differences but has no effect in groups with low objective national diversity. In contrast, for disjunctive tasks, the group’s performance is determined by its best member. We predict that collectivism harms group disjunctive performance when objective expertness diversity is high by blurring differences in task-relevant expertness but has no effect in low objective expertness diversity groups. We find support for our theory in two studies, an archival study of 5,214 Himalayan climbing expeditions and a laboratory experiment assessing 366 groups. Our results show that collectivism has benefits and detriments for diverse groups and that these contradictory effects can be understood by identifying how the collectivistic blurring of perceived group diversity helps or hurts groups based on the type of tasks on which they are working.
Start-up Inertia versus Flexibility: The Role of Founder Identity in a Nascent Industry
Tiona Zuzul & Mary Tripsas
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Through an inductive, comparative study of four early entrants in the nascent air taxi market, we examine why start-ups, generally characterized as flexible, malleable entities, might instead exhibit inertial behavior. While two of the firms engaged in ongoing experimentation and adaptation, two firms actively reinforced their original venture concepts, even in the face of environmental shifts and declining firm performance. Comparisons of the firms revealed the importance of founders’ identities. Two founders saw themselves as “revolutionaries” building novel ventures to drive radical change. In contrast, two sets of founders saw themselves as “discoverers” identifying new opportunities and exploiting them to build successful businesses. We propose that these identities contributed to the firms’ inertia and flexibility primarily through the mechanism of identity affirmation. Acting in a manner consistent with their self-views, revolutionary founders committed to and actively reinvested in radical venture concepts, rejecting potentially adaptive changes that they felt compromised novelty. In contrast, discoverer founders prioritized experimentation and change in reaction to shifting conditions. We propose an emergent framework exploring how, in a nascent industry, a founder’s identity can set off self-reinforcing cycles of firm inertia or flexibility.
Ecological Rationality: Fast-and-Frugal Heuristics for Managerial Decision Making under Uncertainty
Shenghua Luan, Jochen Reb & Gerd Gigerenzer
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Heuristics are often viewed as inferior to “rational” strategies that exhaustively search and process information. Introducing the theoretical perspective of ecological rationality, we challenge this view and argue that under conditions of uncertainty common to managerial decision making, managers can actually make better decisions using fast-and-frugal heuristics. Within the context of personnel selection, we show that a heuristic called Δ-inference can more accurately predict which of two job applicants would perform better in the future than logistic regression, a prototypical rational strategy. Using data from 236 applicants at an airline company, we demonstrate in Study 1 that despite searching less than half of the cues, Δ-inference can lead to more accurate selection decisions than logistic regression. After this existence proof, we examine in Study 2 the ecological conditions under which the heuristic predicts more accurately than logistic regression using 1,728 simulated task environments. Finally, in Study 3, we show in an experiment that participants adapted their strategies to the characteristics of a task, and increasingly so the greater their previous experience in selection decisions. The aim of this article is to propose ecological rationality as an alternative to current views about the nature of heuristics in managerial decisions.
Thin slices of workgroups
Patricia Satterstrom et al.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2019, Pages 104-117
Abstract:
In this paper, we explore whether perceivers can accurately assess the effectiveness of groups, how perceivers use group properties to inform their judgement, and the contextual and individual differences that allow some perceivers to be more accurate. Across seven studies, we present consistent evidence that perceivers can judge workgroup effectiveness in videos of different lengths — 60, 30, and 10 s — and in 10-second silent videos and 10-second audio clips. We find that perceptions of collective properties of groups, including cohesion, affective trust, and cognitive trust partially mediate perceivers’ ability to accurately judge groups. Furthermore, increased attentional focus improves perceivers’ ability to judge group effectiveness. Finally, we find that perceivers with higher levels of social sensitivity are more accurate at judging group effectiveness. We discuss the implications of these findings for the groups literature and social perception literature.
The cubicle deconstructed: Simple visual enclosure improves perseverance
Adam Roberts et al.
Journal of Environmental Psychology, June 2019, Pages 60-73
Abstract:
The design of an office can affect productivity and work performance. Though social distraction (acoustic and visual distractions from other co-workers) certainly impacts performance, the effects of the spatial characteristics of the office environment per se are less known. We tested visual enclosure by simply adding a cubicle partition around a desk, and show in two studies that even this minor change improves perseverance, a central function underlying many job tasks. A third study suggests that this effect is likely caused by adjusting the allocation of mental effort depending on the environment, with larger spaces requiring a greater effort allocation. These findings suggest that environmental characteristics affect human performance by influencing the effort allocated to various tasks (effort allocation hypothesis) rather than by activating concepts related to enclosure (semantic priming). Overall, we suggest that visual enclosure in itself could be beneficial in tasks requiring perseverance.
Do sunk costs affect expert decision making? Evidence from the within-game usage of NFL running backs
Quinn Keefer
Empirical Economics, May 2019, Pages 1769–1796
Abstract:
The presence of the sunk-cost fallacy in expert decision making is tested by examining the within-game usage of players in the National Football League (NFL). Using the exogenous variation in compensation from the NFL’s free agency rules, we show that compensation, which is a sunk cost, significantly increases the number of rushing attempts for NFL running backs. The relationship between rushing attempts and compensation is estimated to be unit elastic. The increase in compensation from being eligible for unrestricted free agency has an equivalent effect on the number of rushing attempts as an additional 174–222 rushing yards in the previous season, which has a value of 13.9–17.8 offensive points.
Early-career setback and future career impact
Yang Wang, Benjamin Jones & Dashun Wang
Northwestern University Working Paper, March 2019
Abstract:
Setbacks are an integral part of a scientific career, yet little is known about whether an early-career setback may augment or hamper an individual's future career impact. Here we examine junior scientists applying for U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 grants. By focusing on grant proposals that fell just below and just above the funding threshold, we compare "near-miss" with "near-win" individuals to examine longer-term career outcomes. Our analyses reveal that an early-career near miss has powerful, opposing effects. On one hand, it significantly increases attrition, with one near miss predicting more than a 10% chance of disappearing permanently from the NIH system. Yet, despite an early setback, individuals with near misses systematically outperformed those with near wins in the longer run, as their publications in the next ten years garnered substantially higher impact. We further find that this performance advantage seems to go beyond a screening mechanism, whereby a more selected fraction of near-miss applicants remained than the near winners, suggesting that early-career setback appears to cause a performance improvement among those who persevere. Overall, the findings are consistent with the concept that "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Whereas science is often viewed as a setting where early success begets future success, our findings unveil an intimate yet previously unknown relationship where early-career setback can become a marker for future achievement, which may have broad implications for identifying, training and nurturing junior scientists whose career will have lasting impact.
Learning-by-Moving: Can Reconfiguring Spatial Proximity Between Organizational Members Promote Individual-level Exploration?
Sunkee Lee
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research proposes that individual-level exploration can be promoted by reconfiguring the spatial proximity between organizational members’ workspaces. To test this idea, I exploit a natural experiment in an e-commerce company where the spatial distances between organizational members’ workspaces were reconfigured. Consistent with the theory I develop on learning, results suggest that individuals whose workspaces were moved closer to those of previously separated peers engaged in more individual-level exploration. This pattern was stronger for individuals who had higher prior organizational experience and those who did not have ties with previously separated peers. Finally, I found that the relocated individuals also achieved higher financial performance. Overall, this study highlights the importance of an underexamined organization design element — spatial design — and its implications for organizational learning, individual-level exploration, and firm performance.
Corporate social responsibility as a defense against knowledge spillovers: Evidence from the inevitable disclosure doctrine
Caroline Flammer & Aleksandra Kacperczyk
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine whether companies respond to the threat of knowledge leakage by strategically increasing their engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR). To obtain exogenous variation in the threat of knowledge leakage, we exploit a natural experiment provided by the rejection of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) by several U.S. states. Using a difference‐in‐differences methodology we find that, following the rejection of the IDD, companies significantly increase their CSR. Our proposed rationale is that CSR helps mitigate knowledge leakage by i) reducing employees’ propensity to join a rival firm, and ii) reducing employees’ propensity to disclose the firm’s valuable knowledge even if they join a rival firm. Evidence from a laboratory experiment, an online experiment, and a survey of knowledge workers is supportive of these arguments.
Choice architects reveal a bias toward positivity and certainty
David Daniels & Julian Zlatev
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2019, Pages 132-149
Abstract:
Biases influence important decisions, but little is known about whether and how individuals try to exploit others’ biases in strategic interactions. Choice architects — that is, people who present choices to others — must often decide between presenting choice sets with positive or certain options (influencing others toward safer options) versus presenting choice sets with negative or risky options (influencing others toward riskier options). We show that choice architects’ influence strategies are distorted toward presenting choice sets with positive or certain options, across thirteen studies involving diverse samples (executives, law/business/medical students, adults) and contexts (public policy, business, medicine). These distortions appear to primarily reflect decision biases rather than social preferences, and they can cause choice architects to use influence strategies that backfire.
Learning by Seconding: Evidence from National Science Foundation Rotators
Christos Kolympiris, Sebastian Hoenen & Peter Klein
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study knowledge flows between organizations through secondments, short-term employee assignments at an organization different from the home institution. Secondments allow the sending organization to capture knowledge and network resources from the receiving organization without an organization-level contract, alliance, or colocation, a process we term learning by seconding. We focus on the National Science Foundation (NSF) rotation program, under which the NSF employs academics, called rotators, on loan from their university, to lead peer reviews. We ask how rotators affect the behavior of their academic colleagues after returning from a secondment. Using difference in differences estimations, we show that rotators’ colleagues raise considerably more research funds than similar scientists who do not have a rotator colleague. Additional quantitative and qualitative evidence implies that the treatment effect occurs via knowledge transfer, as rotators help generate ideas, frame proposals, and explain processes, rather than rent-seeking on the part of the rotator. Overall, the results suggest that strong ties and shared social identity play an important role in organizational knowledge acquisition.
Duality in Diversity: How Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Cultural Heterogeneity Relate to Firm Performance
Matthew Corritore, Amir Goldberg & Sameer Srivastava
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does cultural heterogeneity in an organization relate to its underlying capacity for execution and innovation? Cultural diversity is commonly thought to present a tradeoff between task coordination and creative problem solving, with diversity arising primarily through cultural differences between individuals. In contrast, we propose that diversity can also exist within persons when individuals hold multiple cultural beliefs about the organization. We refer to these different forms as interpersonal and intrapersonal cultural heterogeneity. We argue that the former tends to undermine coordination and portends worsening firm profitability, while the latter facilitates creativity and supports greater patenting success and more positive market valuations. To evaluate these propositions, we use computational linguistics to identify cultural content in employee reviews of nearly 500 publicly traded firms on a leading company review website and then develop novel, time-varying measures of cultural heterogeneity. Our empirical results lend support for our two core propositions, suggesting the need to rethink the performance tradeoffs of cultural heterogeneity: it may be possible to reap the creativity benefits of higher intrapersonal heterogeneity and, at the same time, the efficiency benefits of lower interpersonal heterogeneity.
Increasing population size can inhibit cumulative cultural evolution
Nicolas Fay et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2 April 2019, Pages 6726-6731
Abstract:
The extent to which larger populations enhance cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is contentious. We report a large-scale experiment (n = 543) that investigates the CCE of technology (paper planes and their flight distances) using a transmission-chain design. Population size was manipulated such that participants could learn from the paper planes constructed by one, two, or four models from the prior generation. These social-learning conditions were compared with an asocial individual-learning condition in which individual participants made repeated attempts at constructing a paper plane, without having access to any planes produced by other participants. Larger populations generated greater variation in plane performance and gave participants access to better-adapted planes, but this did not enhance CCE. In fact, there was an inverse relationship between population size and CCE: plane flight distance did not improve over the experimental generations in the 2-Model and 4-Model conditions, but did improve over generations in the 1-Model social-learning condition. The incremental improvement in plane flight distance in the 1-Model social-learning condition was comparable to that in the Individual Learning condition, highlighting the importance of trial-and-error learning to artifact innovation and adaptation. An exploratory analysis indicated that the greater variation participants had access to in the larger populations may have overwhelmed their working memory and weakened their ability to selectively copy the best-adapted plane(s). We conclude that larger populations do not enhance artifact performance via CCE, and that it may be only under certain specific conditions that larger population sizes enhance CCE.