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Full-Text Articles in Business

Speaking Truth To Power: The Effect Of Candid Feedback On How Individuals With Power Allocate Resources, Burak Oc, Michael R. Bashshur, Celia Moore Mar 2015

Speaking Truth To Power: The Effect Of Candid Feedback On How Individuals With Power Allocate Resources, Burak Oc, Michael R. Bashshur, Celia Moore

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Subordinates are often seen as impotent, able to react to but not affect how powerholders treat them. Instead, we conceptualize subordinate feedback as an important trigger of powerholders’ behavioral self-regulation, and explore subordinates’ reciprocal influence on how powerholders allocate resources to them over time. In two experiments using a multi-party, multi-round dictator game paradigm, we find that when subordinates provided candid feedback about whether they found prior allocations to be fair or unfair, powerholders regulated how self-interested their allocations were over time. However, when subordinates provided compliant feedback about powerholders’ prior allocation decisions (offered consistently positive feedback, regardless of the …


Anchors Weigh More Than Power: Why Absolute Powerlessness Liberates Negotiators To Achieve Better Outcomes, Michael Schaerer, Roderick I. Swaab, Adam D. Galinsky Feb 2015

Anchors Weigh More Than Power: Why Absolute Powerlessness Liberates Negotiators To Achieve Better Outcomes, Michael Schaerer, Roderick I. Swaab, Adam D. Galinsky

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The current research shows that having no power can be better than having a little power. Negotiators prefer having some power (weak negotiation alternatives) to having no power (no alternatives). We challenge this belief that having any alternative is beneficial by demonstrating that weak alternatives create low anchors that reduce the value of first offers. In contrast, having no alternatives is liberating because there is no anchor to weigh down first offers. In our experiments, negotiators with no alternatives felt less powerful but made higher first offers and secured superior outcomes compared with negotiators who had weak alternatives. We established …


Is It Me Or Her? How Gender Composition Evokes Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior On Collaborative Cross-Boundary Projects, Michele Williams, Evan Polman Dec 2014

Is It Me Or Her? How Gender Composition Evokes Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior On Collaborative Cross-Boundary Projects, Michele Williams, Evan Polman

Michele Williams

This paper investigates how professional workers’ willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity is influenced by the gender and power of their interaction partners. We call into question the idea that mixed-gender interactions involve more interpersonal sensitivity than all-male interactions primarily because women demonstrate more interpersonal sensitivity than do men. Rather, we argue that the social category “women” can evoke more sensitive behavior from others such that men as well as women contribute to an increase in sensitivity in mixed-gender interactions. We further argue that the presence of women may trigger increased sensitivity such that men can also be the recipients …