In recent years, the construct of mindfulness has gained growing attention in psychological research. However, little is known about the effects of mindfulness on interpersonal interactions and ...social relationships at work. Addressing this gap, the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of mindfulness in leader-follower relationships. Building on prior research, we hypothesize that leaders' mindfulness is reflected in a specific communication style ("mindfulness in communication"), which is positively related to followers' satisfaction with their leaders. We used nested survey data from 34 leaders and 98 followers from various organizations and tested mediation hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling. Our hypotheses were confirmed by our data in that leaders' self-reported mindfulness showed a positive relationship with several aspects of followers' satisfaction. This relationship was fully mediated by leaders' mindfulness in communication as perceived by their followers. Our findings emphasize the potential value of mindfulness in workplace settings. They provide empirical evidence for a positive link between leaders' dispositional mindfulness and the wellbeing of their followers, indicating that mindfulness is not solely an individual resource but also fosters interpersonal skills. By examining leaders' mindfulness in communication as an explanatory process, we created additional clarification about
leaders' mindfulness relates to followers' perceptions, offering a promising starting point for measuring behavioral correlates of leader mindfulness.
Gender differences in the initiation of negotiation have been suggested to reinforce unequal distributions of resources between men and women. Because previous research had yielded heterogeneous ...results, the authors conducted a meta-analysis investigating gender differences in initiating negotiation. On the basis of social role theory, they hypothesized that women are less likely to initiate negotiations than men, but also that the effect varies depending on characteristics of the immediate negotiation situation and the wider societal context. The meta-analysis comprised 55 effect sizes with 17,504 individuals, including both students and employees. A random-effects model confirmed that women were indeed less likely to initiate negotiations than men (g = 0.20). Additional moderator analyses, tested with mixed-effects models and metaregressions, revealed that gender differences were smaller when situational ambiguity regarding the appropriateness of negotiating was low rather than high as well as when situational cues were more consistent with the female gender role than with the male gender role. Gender differences decreased by year of publication (from 1977 to 2016) but were unrelated to the degree of gender inequality in the countries in which the studies were conducted. The authors conclude that gender differences in the initiation of negotiation exist, but they are small and context-bound. Finally, they discuss mechanisms that alter the gender difference with a particular focus on potential starting points for practical interventions.
Public Significance Statement
The present meta-analysis shows that overall women are less likely to initiate negotiations than men. While certain situational characteristics attenuate the gender difference (e.g., individuals are explicitly prompted to negotiate), others reinforce the gender difference (e.g., individuals are in doubt whether negotiating is appropriate). Addressing gender differences in the initiation of negotiation might ultimately help to minimize unequal distributions of resources between men and women (e.g., gender wage gap).
Since Darwin, adaptation to change has been associated with survival and fit. Yet, despite this, leaders and managers often get stuck in dominating approaches to conflict, and few scholars have ...examined the role of adaptation in managing conflicts effectively over time and across changing situations. The goal of this paper is threefold. First, we develop a new measure for assessing conflict adaptivity of managers the Managerial Conflict Adaptivity Assessment (MCAA), based on a situated model of conflict in social relations. We define conflict adaptivity as the capacity to respond to different conflict situations in accordance with the demands specified by the situation. The measure consists of 15 distinct work-conflict scenarios and provides five behavioral response options, which represent five primary strategies employed in conflict. Individuals who tend to respond to the conflicts in a manner consistent with the situations provided are considered to be more adaptive. Second, we test and find that managerial conflict adaptivity is related to higher levels of satisfaction with conflict processes at work as well as higher levels of well-being at work. Third, we test the MCAA’s construct validity and provide evidence that the MCAA is positively related to behavioral flexibility and self-efficacy.
In working teams, each member has an individual understanding of the social rules and norms that underlie social relationships in the team, as well as about what behavior is appropriate and what ...behavior can be expected from others. What happens if the members of a team are not “on the same page” with respect to these social rules and norms? Drawing on relational models theory, which posits four elemental relational models that people use to coordinate their social interactions, we examined the effects of a common understanding of relational models in teams (i.e., “shared relational models”) on various aspects of cooperative and uncooperative behaviors. We hypothesized that a shared understanding of relational models in a team is positively related to justice perception and negatively related to relationship conflict, which are in turn related to helping behavior and knowledge hiding. We conducted a field study, collecting data from 46 work teams (N = 189 total participants) in various organizations, and found support for all proposed hypotheses. Our findings emphasize the importance of a shared understanding of relational models for (un)cooperative behavior in teams, thereby opening a new door for research on relational models in organizations.
When people work together in teams, they ideally have a common understanding, a shared mental model regarding various aspects of teamwork. This common understanding refers not only to task-related ...aspects of teamwork but also to the elemental social rules and norms that underlie social interactions among team members. Relational models theory proposes that social rules and norms can be seen as the implementation and combination of four elemental relational models that people use to coordinate their social interactions. Since each of these relational models encompasses a distinct moral motive, which determines expectations of fairness and appropriate behaviors in social interactions, we propose that the degree of sharedness of individuals’ perceptions regarding the applicable relational models in teams (i.e., shared relational models) is positively related to various aspects of team viability, mediated by perceived justice and relationship conflict. In two field studies collecting data from
N
= 40 and
N
= 46 work teams in organizations, we found reproducible support for most of our hypotheses. Our studies’ findings emphasize the importance of shared relational models among team members for justice perceptions, conflict and team viability in organizational settings.
Decision-making in organizations is often complex and involves groups, which have access to the pool of perspectives and knowledge their members hold individually. However, groups frequently fail to ...use their full decision-making potential. The concept of integrative complexity (IC) captures how complex decision-making profits from the differentiation and integration of diverse perspectives and knowledge. In a laboratory experiment with 4 conditions (N = 12 groups of 4 students per condition), we found that group dissent enhanced differentiation and a stepwise recapitulation of the group discussion enhanced integration, thereby raising group-level IC. Dissent groups who performed a stepwise recapitulation reached the highest levels of group IC compared to ordinary dissent groups, consent groups, and individuals working alone. They also exceeded their own best member and achieved an equal level of IC to that of the best members of nominal groups. The study contributes to the body of research identifying factors that support groups in exploiting their potential and reaching more informed decisions and judgments.
Given the pervasiveness of conflict at work and its potential negative consequences, it is important to know how managers can deal with conflicts constructively. Employees and managers are often ...required to navigate through a multiplicity of conflicts, including disputes with their supervisors and supervisees of either a cooperative, win-win or competitive, win-lose nature. The goal of this study was to examine how the capacity of South Korean workers to respond adaptively to different or changing types of conflict situations impacts their job-related well-being and turnover intentions. Specifically, we hypothesized and found that more adaptive responses to conflict - those that utilize different behavioral strategies that are aligned with the normative demands of presenting conflict situations - were positively related to satisfaction with conflict outcomes, job-related well-being, and lower intentions to quit one's job among managers and employees in South Korea. These findings are consistent with those from similar studies in the United States, providing support for the generalizability of the model to other cultural contexts. Theoretical and practical implications of the results as well as directions for future research are discussed.
Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst Coleman, Peter T.; Kugler, Katharina G.; Vallacher, Robin ...
The International journal of conflict management,
02/2019, Letnik:
30, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose that a more
optimal regulatory focus
in conflict reflects a
mix of promotion and prevention
considerations because conflict often elicits needs for ...promoting well-being as well as needs for preventing threats to security and interests. Two studies using distinct methodologies tested the hypothesis that social conflict is associated with better outcomes when the parties construe the conflict with a regulatory focus that reflects a combination of both promotion and prevention orientations.
Design/methodology/approach
Study 1 was an experiment that framed the same low-intensity conflict scenario as either prevention- or promotion-focused, or as both. In Study 2, we mouse-coded stream-of-thought accounts of participants’ actual ongoing high-intensity conflicts for time spent in both promotion and prevention focus.
Findings
In Study 1, the combined framing resulted in greater satisfaction with expected conflict outcomes and goal attainment than did either prevention or promotion framing alone. However, a promotion frame alone was associated with greater process and relationship satisfaction. These results were replicated in Study 2.
Originality/value
Prior research on regulatory focus has emphasized the benefits of a promotion focus over prevention when managing conflict. The present research offers new insight into how these seemingly opposing motives can operate in tandem to increase conflict satisfaction. Thus, this research illustrates the value of moving beyond dichotomized motivational distinctions in conflict research, to understand the dynamic interplay of how these distinctions may be navigated in concert for more effective conflict engagement. It also illustrates the value of mouse-coding methods for capturing the dynamic interplay of motives as they rise and fall in salience over time.
Morals matter in economic games Brodbeck, Felix C; Kugler, Katharina G; Reif, Julia A M ...
PloS one,
12/2013, Letnik:
8, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Contrary to predictions from Expected Utility Theory and Game Theory, when making economic decisions in interpersonal situations, people take the interest of others into account and express various ...forms of solidarity, even in one-shot interactions with anonymous strangers. Research in other-regarding behavior is dominated by behavioral economical and evolutionary biological approaches. Psychological theory building, which addresses mental processes underlying other-regarding behavior, is rare. Based on Relational Models Theory (RMT, 1) and Relationship Regulation Theory (RRT, 2) it is proposed that moral motives influence individuals' decision behavior in interpersonal situations via conscious and unconscious (automatic) processes. To test our propositions we developed the 'Dyadic Solidarity Game' and its solitary equivalent, the 'Self-Insurance Game'. Four experiments, in which the moral motives "Unity" and "Proportionality" were manipulated, support the propositions made. First, it was shown that consciously activated moral motives (via framing of the overall goal of the experiment) and unconsciously activated moral motives (via subliminal priming) influence other-regarding behavior. Second, this influence was only found in interpersonal, not in solitary situations. Third, by combining the analyses of the two experimental games the extent to which participants apply the Golden Rule ("treat others how you wish to be treated") could be established. Individuals with a "Unity" motive treated others like themselves, whereas individuals with a "Proportionality" motive gave others less then they gave themselves. The four experiments not only support the assumption that morals matter in economic games, they also deliver new insights in how morals matter in economic decision making.
We studied the behavioral and emotional dynamics displayed by two people trying to resolve a conflict. 59 groups of two people were asked to talk for 20 minutes to try to reach a consensus about a ...topic on which they disagreed. The topics were abortion, affirmative action, death penalty, and euthanasia. Behavior data were determined from audio recordings where each second of the conversation was assessed as proself, neutral, or prosocial. We determined the probability density function of the durations of time spent in each behavioral state. These durations were well fit by a stretched exponential distribution, Formula: see text with an exponent, Formula: see text, of approximately 0.3. This indicates that the switching between behavioral states is not a random Markov process, but one where the probability to switch behavioral states decreases with the time already spent in that behavioral state. The degree of this "memory" was stronger in those groups who did not reach a consensus and where the conflict grew more destructive than in those that did. Emotion data were measured by having each person listen to the audio recording and moving a computer mouse to recall their negative or positive emotional valence at each moment in the conversation. We used the Hurst rescaled range analysis and power spectrum to determine the correlations in the fluctuations of the emotional valence. The emotional valence was well described by a random walk whose increments were uncorrelated. Thus, the behavior data demonstrated a "memory" of the duration already spent in a behavioral state while the emotion data fluctuated as a random walk whose steps did not have a "memory" of previous steps. This work demonstrates that statistical analysis, more commonly used to analyze physical phenomena, can also shed interesting light on the dynamics of processes in social psychology and conflict management.
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