Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons^™

Fostering Creativity At The Workplace, Marko Pitesa, Roy Chua, Smu Office Of Research

Research@SMU Infographics

A study recently conducted by SMU researchers has shown that the environment in which one grew up in may influence the amount of creativity he/she displays at the workplace. Managers and parents alike can intervene to enhance the individuals' creativity.

Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines how target corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the economic gains for acquirers, as reflected in market reaction to acquisition announcement, from two distinct perspectives: stakeholder preservation versus stakeholder appropriation. The stakeholder preservation perspective suggests that positive market reaction to an acquisition stems from potential new value creation by honoring implicit contracts and maintaining good relationships with target stakeholders. By contrast, the stakeholder appropriation perspective posits that positive market reaction is primarily derived through wealth transfer to acquirers by defaulting on implicit contracts with target stakeholders. Using a dataset of acquisitions in the US, we find that target …

The Attractiveness Advantage At Work: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review, Kelly A Nault, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Compared with people of average attractiveness, the highly attractive earn roughly 20 percent more and are recommended for promotion more frequently. The dominant view of this “attractiveness advantage” is one of taste-based discrimination, whereby attractive individuals are preferred without justification in economic productivity. We conduct a comprehensive review of research on attractiveness discrimination, finding relatively more evidence that this phenomenon constitutes, to some extent, statistical (as opposed to solely taste-based) discrimination, in which decision makers assume that attractive people are more competent and discriminate based on instrumental motives. We then review research that speaks to whether decision makers might be …

Restore Your Sense Of Control — Despite The Pandemic, Eric M. Anicich, Trevor A. Foulk, Merrick R. Osborne, Jake Gale, Michael Schaerer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The coronavirus pandemic has wrought unprecedented levels of personal and professional upheaval upon many employees. It may irrevocably transform how we work, communicate, eat, shop, date, and travel. Clearly, these are not “normal” times. And yet, society continues to move forward.

Minding The Gap: Asymmetric Effects Of Pay Dispersion On Stakeholder Engagement In Corporate Environmental (Ir)Responsibility, Ying Zhang, Li Tong, Ji Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How does pay dispersion affect corporate environmental performance? Building on the tournament effect and equity perspective, we theorize that vertical pay dispersion and horizontal pay dispersion can impinge on corporate environmental performance. We develop the theoretical argument that vertical pay dispersion is negatively related to corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and positively related to corporate environmental irresponsibility (CEIR) due to the tournament competition among executives, and that horizontal pay dispersion is negatively related to CER and positively related to CEIR due to the unjust sense among executives. We then delve into the asymmetric effects of vertical pay dispersion and horizontal pay …

Scaling Big In India: Leveraging Behavioral Science To Help Feed Millions, Gita V. Johar, Shilpa Madan, K. Ganesh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A look at how a community kitchen initiative in India used insights from behavioral science to rapidly scale its services, delivering 4.5 million meals to homeless migrant workers even as the country instituted the world’s largest lockdown to combat COVID-19.

Power To The People? The Limits Of Equality-Based Involvement In Managing Strategic Change, Daniel Z. Mack

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing research has highlighted the importance of involving a wide representation of organizational members in the strategic change process to manage it effectively. We conducted a real-time inductive study of a strategic change at an organization in the hotel industry. Our findings suggest that the equality-based involvement – designed to promote equal opportunities for voice among employees – unintendedly undermined the implementation of strategic change. Although wide organizational involvement provided frontline employees with greater voice and autonomy, it also instilled greater fear in middle managers due to more escalating complaints to top management and newly created constraints in middle managers’ …

Effects Of Situation Descriptions On The Construct-Related Validity Of Construct-Driven Situational Judgment Tests, Philipp Christopher Schaepers, Jan-Philipp Freudenstein, Patrick Mussel, Filip Lievens, Stefan Krumm

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite the common belief that situation descriptions in SJTs are central to the measurement of targeted constructs, recent studies demonstrated that omitting situation descriptions had only minor effects on SJT performance and validity. However, these results might be due to the fact that traditional SJTs often fail to assess well-defined constructs. So, we aimed to examine the relationships between construct-driven SJT scores with and without situations and self- and peer-rated personality dimensions (N = 158). Results revealed almost no difference in construct-related validity between both versions. The conscientiousness facet emerged as the only exception, for which the SJT scores without …

Learning And Adaptation Under Uncertainty And Ambiguity, Lei Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The first essay is about how high and moderate aspiration levels compare in terms of affecting the decision making and reinforcement learning in an uncertain environment. After developing a thought experiment and a computational model, I used lab experiments to test the model’s predictions: a high (moderate) aspiration level reduces (increases) feedback ambiguity about the relative attractiveness of different options, thus increases the exploitation (exploration) tendency of the decision maker. The behavioural difference suggests that high aspirations lead to better performance in stable environments, but worse performance after disruptive shocks. The second essay investigates whether organizations should commit more (or …

Individuals Responses To Economic Cycles: Organizational Relevance And A Multilevel Theoretical Integration, Nina Sirola

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The state of the economy represents a concern for individuals and shapes their behavior in profound ways. The current review of studies on how individuals respond to economic cycles reveals that organizational relevance of such responses has often not been considered, and the literature is characterized by a variety of seemingly disconnected explanations for how and why individuals respond to the perceived state of the economy. I develop a theoretical framework that systematizes the literature and accounts for the seemingly disparate findings, highlighting the underlying functionality of such responses for individuals. I then integrate the literature on individual responses to …

Getting Back To The “New Normal”: Autonomy Restoration During A Global Pandemic, Eric M. Anicich, Trevor A. Foulk, Merrick R. Osborne, Jake Gale, Michael Schaerer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the psychological recovery process of full-time employees during the two-week period at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Past research suggests that recovery processes start after stressors abate and can take months or years to unfold. In contrast, we build on autonomy restoration theory to suggest that recovery of impaired autonomy starts immediately even as a stressor is ongoing. Using growth curve modeling, we examined the temporal trajectories of two manifestations of impaired autonomy—powerlessness and (lack of) authenticity—to test whether recovery began as the pandemic unfolded. We tested our predictions using a unique experience-sampling dataset collected over …

Robustness, Sensitivity And Sampling Variability Of Pareto-Optimal Selection System Solutions To Address The Quality-Diversity Trade-Off, Wilfried De Corte, Paul Sackett, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In case that both the goals of selection quality and diversity are important, a selection system is Pareto-optimal (PO) when its implementation is expected to result in an optimal balance between the levels achieved with respect to both these goals. The study addresses the critical issue whether PO systems, as computed from calibration conditions, continue to perform well when applied to a large variety of different validation selection situations. To address the key issue, we introduce two new measures for gauging the achievement of these designs and conduct a large simulation study in which we manipulate 10 factors (related to …

Followers’ Reactions To Leader Differentiation, Yuchuan Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Leaders generally differentiate their relationships with followers, for example, by providing some with more respect, trust, support, or information than others (Liden & Graen, 1980). However, the effects of such leader differentiation on followers remain inconclusive such that research suggests that leader differentiation may have negative, positive, or null effects on favorable employee work-related outcomes (for a recent review, see Martin et al., 2018). To better understand the effects of leader differentiation, utilizing leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, I considered three inherently connected properties in the leader differentiation process – LMX differentiation, LMX quality and LMX social comparison (Martin et al., …

Attention, Entrainment, And Rules In High Reliability Organizations, Tingting Lang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Chapter 1: How institutions enhance mindfulness: interactions between external regulators and front-line operators around safety rules (with Ravi S. Kudesia and Jochen Reb) How is it that some organizations can maintain nearly error-free performance, despite trying conditions? Within research on such high-reliability organizations, mindful organizing has been offered as a key explanation. It entails interaction patterns among front-line operators that keep them attentive to potential failures—and relies on them having the expertise and autonomy to address any such failures. In this study, we extend the mindful organizing literature, which emphasizes local interactions among operators, by considering the broader institutional context …

Power And Negotiation: Review Of Current Evidence And Future Directions, Michael Schaerer, Laurel Teo, Nikhil Madan, Roderick I. Swaab

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This review synthesizes the impact of power on individual and joint negotiation performance. Although power generally has positive effects on negotiators’ individual performance (value claiming), recent work suggests that more power is not always beneficial. Taking a dyadic perspective, we also find mixed evidence for how power affects joint performance (value creation); some studies show that equal-power dyads create more value than unequal-power dyads, but others find the opposite. We identify the source of power, power distribution, and competitiveness as critical moderators of this relationship. Finally, we suggest that future research should move beyond studying alternatives in dyadic deal-making, identify …

It's Lonely At The Bottom (Too): The Effects Of Experienced Powerlessness On Social Closeness And Disengagement, Trevor A. Foulk, Irene E. De Pater, Michael Schaerer, Christilene Du Plessis, Randy Lee, Amir Erez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although powerlessness is a pervasive experience for employees, prior social power research has predominantly focused on consequences of powerfulness. This has led to contradictory predictions for how experienced powerlessness influences employees’ social perceptions and behaviors. To resolve this theoretical tension, we build on Social Distance Theory (Magee & Smith, 2013) to develop a theoretical model suggesting that experienced powerlessness reduces social closeness and subsequently causes social disengagement behaviors both at work (reduced helping, increased interaction avoidance) and at home (increased withdrawal). Our model also elucidates the processes that cause powerlessness to reduce social closeness, demonstrating that employees’ affiliation motive and …

Transparency And Fairness In Organizational Decisions: An Experimental Investigation Using The Paired Ultimatum Game, Jared Nai, Reddi Kotha, Phanish Puranam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Organizations often keep secret their decisions about what employees receive (e.g., salary, budgets, benefits) to manage fairness concerns. We propose that this can be counterproductive because of a mechanism we call the “escalation of deservingness under secrecy”, where the existence of peers can inflate one’s own sense of deservingness, even when the actual allocations to peers are unknown. Building on the ultimatum game, we developed a Paired Ultimatum Game (PUG) in which a player and a peer respondent engage with the same offeror simultaneously but with no direct competition between respondents. Across three experiments- a live interaction study as well …

Across The Great Divides: Gender Dynamics Influence How Intercultural Conflict Helps Or Hurts Creative Collaboration, Roy Y. J. Chua, Mengzi Jin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Collaborating across cultures can potentially increase creativity due to access to diverse ideas and perspectives, but this benefit is not always realized. One reason is that the conflict that arises in intercultural creative collaboration is a double-edged sword and how it is managed matters. In this research, we examine how the gender of collaborating dyads influences the link between intercultural conflict (task and relationship) and creative collaboration effectiveness. Through two studies (a laboratory study and a field survey), we found that intercultural task conflict has a negative effect on creative collaboration in men dyads but a positive effect on creative …

The Profile Of The ‘Good Judge’ In Hrm: A Systematic Review And Agenda For Future Research, François S. De Kock, Filip Lievens, Marise P. Born

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In light of the pivotal importance of judgments and ratings in human resource management (HRM) settings, a better understanding of the individual differences associated with being a good judge is sorely needed. This review provides an overview of individual difference characteristics that have been associated with the accurate judges in HRM. We review empirical findings over >80 years to identify what we know and do not know about the individual difference correlates of being an accurate judge. Overall, findings suggest that judges' cognitive factors show stronger and more consistent relationships with rating accuracy than personality-related factors. Specific intelligences in the …

A Dynamic Account Of Self-Efficacy In Entrepreneurship, Michael M. Gielnik, Ronald Bledow, Miriam S. Stark

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We present a dynamic account of self-efficacy in entrepreneurship that integrates social–cognitive and control theory. According to our dynamic account, variability in self-efficacy energizes action because it involves self-motivation and discrepancy perception as competing motivational processes. We argue that variability and the average level in self-efficacy nascent entrepreneurs display over time support the enactment of entrepreneurial intentions and predict business ownership. The proposed positive effect of variability further implies an inverted u-shaped relationship between self-efficacy at a single point in time and business ownership. To test these hypotheses, we repeatedly assessed entrepreneurial self-efficacy of nascent African entrepreneurs during a 12-week …

Mindfulness Arrives At Work: Deepening Our Understanding Of Mindfulness In Organizations, Jochen Reb, Tammy Allen, Timothy J. Vogus

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Mindfulness has become an increasingly popular practice and in parallel scholarly research has grown considerably. However, the study of mindfulness at work remains limited and motivates this special issue on “Mindfulness at Work: Pushing Theoretical and Empirical Boundaries.” In this introduction to the special issue we offer a brief initial grounding in the literature on mindfulness at work and in organizations. We then turn attention to how the six articles in this special issue advance this nascent field. We use both as a point of departure for considering the benefits and limits of mindfulness in organizations as well as the …

Equality In The Workplace, Siow-Heng Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Strengthening Social Fabric And Quality Of Life, Singapore Management University

Research Collection Office of Research

In this booklet, read about our research in the area of “Strengthening Social Fabric and Quality of Life”.

Contents:

Well-being of People, Groups, Organisations, Societies

• Serving the Underserved
• Does Family Background Affect Socioeconomic Mobility?
• Becoming a Happy Analyst
• Effective Childcare Subsidies
• Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Successful Ageing of People, of Populations

• Economic and Social Aspects of Ageing Successfully
• Exploring the Effectiveness of Smart Technologies in Eldercare
• Keeping our Silver Edge Sharp
• Sleep Quality & Dementia

Social Inclusion, Exclusion, Inequality

• The Helping Hand of Diversity
• Protecting Vulnerable Adults
• Finding the Path to an Inclusive Society
• Well-being of Singapore Youth …

It Won’T Be Business As Usual After Covid-19, Arnoud De Meyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As customer behaviours change, they will reshape business models in the post-coronavirus world.

Win-Win In Distributive Negotiations: The Economic And Relational Benefits Of Strategic Offer Framing, Michael Schaerer, Martin Schweinsberg, Nico Thornley, Roderick I. Swaab

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In distributive negotiations, people often feel that they have to choose between maximizing their economic outcomes (claiming more value) or improving their relational outcomes (having a satisfied opponent). The present research proposes a conversational strategy that can help negotiators achieve both. Specifically, we show that using an offer framing strategy that shifts offer recipients’ attention to their reservation price (e.g., “How does my offer compare to your minimum price?”) leads to both (a) an assimilation effect whereby recipients make more favorable counteroffers (economic benefit) as well as (b) a contrast effect whereby recipients feel more satisfied with the negotiation (relational …

Multiple Speed Assessments: Theory, Practice, And Research Evidence, Christoph N. Herde, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper presents Multiple Speed Assessments as an umbrella term to encompass a variety of approaches that include multiple (e.g., 20), short (e.g., 3 min), and often integrated interpersonal simulations to elicit overt behavior in a standardized way across participants. Multiple Speed Assessments can be used to get insight into the behavioral repertoire of a target person in situations sampled from a predefined target domain and their intraindividual variability across these situations. This paper outlines the characteristics and theoretical basis of Multiple Speed Assessments. We also discuss various already existing examples of Multiple Speed Assessments (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, Multiple …

"I Like It, But I Don't Use It": Impact Of Carsharing Business Models On Usage Intentions In The Sharing Economy, Ruediger Hahn, Felix Ostertag, Adrian Lehr, Marion Buettgen, Sabine Benoit

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Carsharing is often promoted as a potentially environmental-friendly alternative to individual car ownership. However, various carsharing programs have displayed limited success in the past. An initial field study of a new carsharing service is such a story of failure: The introduction of this new service at a medium-sized German university generated unexpectedly low adoption rates so that the service was eventually scaled down and then suspended. Quantitative field study results as well as additional qualitative focus groups reveal that missing compatibility is a key barrier to adoption. Drawing on extant conceptual frameworks of user participation in sharing business models, a …

Managing Talent In The Gig Economy: Human Capital Implications, Richard Raymond Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

As digital technologies continue to open new connections and ways of working, the era of the gig economy will continue to thrive.

Familiarity, Attitudes, And Self-Regulatory Challenges Related To Mindfulness, Alissa J. Mrazek, Michael D. Mrazek, Leandro A. Calcagnotto, Jonathan N. Cloughesy, Abigail M. Holman, Theodore C. Masters-Waage, Jonathan W. Schooler

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Objectives: Despite growing evidence demonstrating the benefits of mindfulness for physical and mental health, little is known about the barriers that dissuade individuals from practicing mindfulness. The present study sought to examine the self-regulatory barriers that most commonly prevent mid-life adults from engaging in mindfulness practice. Methods: The present study surveyed a nationally representative sample of 385 mid-life adults (ages 50-64) in the USA to assess familiarity, attitudes, and prior experiences with mindfulness, as well as self-regulatory challenges that may hinder consistent practice. Specifically, this research focused on the self-regulatory elements of (i) goal setting, (ii) limiting beliefs, (iii) habit …

Is It All In The Eye Of The Beholder? The Importance Of Situation Construal For Situational Judgment Test Performance, Jan-Philipp Freudenstein, Philipp Schaepers, Lena Roemer, Patrick Mussel, Stefan Krumm

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recent research challenges the importance of situation descriptions for situational judgment test (SJT) performance. This study contributes to resolving the ongoing debate on whether SJTs are situational measures, by incorporating findings on person x situation interactions into SJT research. Specifically, across three studies (N-Total = 1,239), we first tested whether situation construal (i.e., the individual perception of situations in SJTs) predicts responses to SJT items. Second, we assessed whether the relevance of situation construal for SJT performance depends on test elements (i.e., situation descriptions and response options) and item features (i.e., description-dependent vs. description-independent SJT items). Lastly, we determined whether …