•We investigate incivility using a controlled experimental team-task design.•Self-blame mediates the relationship between experienced incivility and task outcomes.•Witnessing incivility toward a ...fellow team member reduces the harmful task-related effects.•We integrate into a single model both mediating and moderating processes.
Although episodes of workplace incivility can lead to deleterious personal and performance outcomes, we suggest that differences in how incivility is experienced (i.e., as a singled-out target, or in the company of another who is also treated uncivilly) can have significant impact on the cognitions and behaviors that follow uncivil treatment. Drawing from Sociometer Theory, we test the notion that sharing the experience of incivility with another target can greatly diminish individual-level harm, and demonstrate that causal beliefs related to self-blame mediate consequent downstream effects. Using an experimental design within a team task environment, we found that experiencing incivility from a team member increased participants’ rumination about mistreatment, task-related stress levels, and psychological withdrawal behavior. Moreover, we found support for conditional indirect effects, such that viewing mistreatment of a fellow team member at the hands of the same uncivil team member (shared incivility) attenuates the harmful effects of incivility, by reducing self-blame.
Decision making processes and consequent policy decisions of top management teams often have tremendous impact on employee careers and wellbeing, but the difficulty of accessing executive decision ...making has made studying such processes especially difficult. Whereas scholars have often relied on their own professional networks to gather small samples of executives or leveraged proxy measures compiled from publicly-available documents, we propose and demonstrate an alternative approach which we term Experimental Shareholder Activism (ESA). ESA allows researchers to directly study executive leadership via the shareholder proposal process—under Rule 14a-8—by purchasing relatively small amounts of stock in a company, and experimentally manipulating features of shareholder proposals to elicit responses from key stakeholders within the company. This approach allows for the direct examination of executive decision making with the benefit of quasi-experimental design. We describe the method, identify vocational and career-relevant areas of inquiry best suited to ESA, and discuss manipulations readily embedded in shareholder proposals. We then provide a toolkit for scholars interested in studying executive decision making on employee career and Human Resource-related outcomes, and demonstrate the viability of such an approach via a pilot experiment.
•We present a novel approach for studying policy set by top executives using shareholder activism.•A robust pilot study resulted in an approximately 71% direct response rate from top executive teams.•Best practices for the implementation of this novel methodology are described.•Ethical and conflict of interest issues related to the methodology are addressed.•We propose a comprehensive toolkit for scholars studying executive decision making and human resource outcomes.
With rapid advancements in machine learning, we consider the epistemological opportunities presented by this novel tool for promoting organizational theory. Our paper unfolds in three sections. We ...begin with an overview of the three forms of machine learning (supervised, reinforcement, and unsupervised), translating these onto our common modes of research (deductive, abductive, inductive, respectively). Next, we present frank critiques of machine learning applications for science, as well as of the state of organizational scholarship writ large, highlighting contemporary challenges in both domains. We do so to make the case that machine learning and theory are not in competition but have the potential to play complementary roles in moving our field beyond siloed domains and incremental theory. Our final section speaks to this synergy. We propose that machine learning can act as a tool to test and prune midrange theory, and as a catalyst to expand the explanatory spectrum that theory can inhabit. Specifically, we outline how machine learning can support local but perishable theory targeting pragmatic problems in the here and now, and grand theory that is sufficiently bold and generalizable across contexts and time to serve the social-functional purposes of inspiring and facilitating long-term epistemological progress across domains.
While the study of lying within organizations typically has focused on lies told for rational-instrumental purposes (such as lying for economic gain within negotiations), we argue that lying is a ...relatively common social-functional behavior embedded within ongoing workplace relationships. Drawing from social identity theory, we develop a theory of lying as a socially motivated behavioral response to identity threats at the personal, relational, or collective levels of identity in organizational life. Specifically, we propose that perceived identity threats undermine the unique fundamental identity motives at each level of self, and that as threat sensitivity and threat intractability increase, individuals become more likely to use lying as a threat management response in their interactions with other organizational members. Further, we propose that identity-based characteristics of organizational members with whom threatened individuals interact (i.e., the audience) determine the likelihood that lying will occur by assuaging or amplifying threats during identity enactment. Thus, by applying an identity lens to examine normatively unethical behavior, we develop a comprehensive model of everyday lying as socially motivated and identity-based behavior with implications for ongoing workplace relationships.
The role of moral intuition (i.e., a set of implicit processes which occur automatically and at the fringe of conscious awareness) has been increasingly implicated in business decisions and ...(un)ethical business behavior. But troublingly, because implicit processes often operate outside of conscious awareness, decision makers are generally unaware of their influence. We tested whether subtle contextual cues for identity can alter implicit beliefs. In two studies, we found that contextual cues which nonconsciously prime moral identity weaken the implicit association between the categories of "business" and "ethical," an implicit association which has previously been linked to unethical decision making. Further, changes in this implicit association mediated the relationship between contextually primed moral identity and concern for external stakeholder groups, regardless of self-reported moral identity. Thus, our results show that subtle contextual cues can lead individuals to render more ethical judgments, by automatically restructuring moral intuition below the level of consciousness.
•Gender threats motivate workplace deviance in men (but not women).•Gender threats inhibit citizenship behaviors in men (but not women).•These effects are mediated through need satisfaction for ...autonomy.•Threats to manhood (but not other threats) motivate these effects.
Drawing from precarious manhood theory, which proposes that manhood is an unstable social status and requires repair when threatened, we argue that gender threats at work motivate deviance and inhibit citizenship behavior for men, but not women. Beyond extending the tenets of precarious manhood theory into the work domain, we also integrate it with self-determination theory and explain why such effects are mediated by thwarted autonomy needs. We initially test these propositions in a survey study with working adults and an experiment, demonstrating that men respond with greater deviance when their gender status is threatened, relative to women. We then test our entire theoretical model in an experimental experience sampling (i.e., twice-daily diary) study within an organization. Here, our findings indicate that gender threats at the beginning of the workday (but not other threats to self-integrity) uniquely lead to increased daily workplace deviance and reduced daily organizational citizenship behavior for men (but not women), via autonomy needs thwarting (but not other self-determination needs). Collectively, our results shed light on the nature of gender threats, and their consequences for employee behavior.
Organizational scholars frequently rely on experiments using human confederates or descriptions of vignette characters to study a range of phenomena. Although experiments with confederates allow for ...realism and rigor, human confederates have several critical limitations. We present a novel and efficient alternative: the use of responsive electronic confederates for manipulating constructs in dyadic, group, and team contexts. Specifically, we (a) define electronic confederates in an organizational research context, identify their optimal qualities, and review studies that have used them; (b) discuss challenges of utilizing human confederates and how electronic confederates may address these; (c) identify boundary conditions around using electronic confederates and, within these conditions, identify the many types of inquiry that can be aided by electronic confederates; (d) discuss validation strategies for electronic confederates, while increasing their believability to study participants; (e) provide materials for two versions of an adaptable research platform involving electronic confederates; and (f) identify future opportunities for developing novel tools for behavioral research. Our article thus provides a toolkit for organizational researchers that empowers them to utilize electronic confederates in their own research.
The current article presents a systematic approach to theory pruning (defined here as hypothesis specification and study design intended to bound and reduce theory). First, we argue that research ...that limits theory is underrepresented in the organizational sciences, erring overwhelmingly on the side of confirmatory null hypothesis testing. Second, we propose criteria for determining comparability, deciding when it is appropriate to test theories or parts of theories against one another. Third, we suggest hypotheses or questions for testing competing theories. Finally, we revisit the spirit of ‘‘strong inference.’’ We present reductionist strategies appropriate for the organizational sciences, which extend beyond traditional approaches of ‘‘critical’’ comparisons between whole theories. We conclude with a discussion of strong inference in organizational science and how theory pruning can help in that pursuit.
