Knowledge that Transforms

Role theory generally predicts that when the demands and norms of two roles are highly contrasted, individuals will construct a strong boundary to separate the roles. However, such predictions are grounded primarily in the Global North, emphasizing role pairings including “work–family” and hybrid “work–work.” Comparatively, the Global South is characterized by a lack of public services that creates a highly contrasted, highly salient, and yet understudied role pairing—“work–community.” Additionally, the socioeconomic features of the Global South (e.g., dense and overlapping community networks, financial poverty) call into question whether existing predictions surrounding boundary strength are likely to hold. We conducted a qualitative study of 73 Tanzanian participants who had both a self-employed work role and a family planning counselor community role. We found that highly contrasted roles can be simultaneously perceived as both incompatible and compatible. Specifically, the boundaries we observed were neither uniformly strong nor weak, but rather of asymmetric strength: strong when a social interaction was anchored in the community role, but weak when anchored in the work role. The specific role contrasts we identify, and the importance of role anchoring we observe, have important implications for role theory and boundary-setting more broadly.

Although teams of negotiators are widely assumed to be better at unlocking integrative solutions compared to individual negotiators, the interteam negotiation context is characterized by unique challenges that can make effective collaboration between teams difficult. We extend our theoretical understanding of interteam negotiations by offering novel insights about when and why teams realize their potential in integrative negotiations. Specifically, we propose a theoretical model that explains how hierarchical team structures reduce information elaboration within teams, which reinforces “fixed-pie” assumptions that prompt the reliance on value-claiming behaviors between teams and lower high-quality outcomes such as the joint gain achieved. Across four studies, each involving interactive team-on-team negotiations, we provide support for the hypothesized effects of formal intrateam hierarchies on joint gain, and test a useful intervention to mitigate the harmful effects of hierarchically structured teams at the negotiation table. Contributions to the literatures on team negotiations, interteam collaboration, and hierarchical differences within teams are discussed.

What makes social movements successfully deter entry in contested industries? We develop a contingency framework explaining how movements’ success depends on the internal fit between their private and public politics strategies with the tactics of mass and elite mobilization. We also highlight the importance of how these tactics fit with external conditions like the cognitive legitimacy of the industry and industry countermobilization. When movements rely on a private politics strategy to condemn an industry in the eyes of the public, social movement mass will be decisive. Alternatively, when movements use a public politics strategy to push for regulatory intervention, mobilization of elites is crucial. We develop our understanding of external contingency factors by exploring how cognitive legitimacy residuals from local ancestral populations affect both mass-driven private politics and elite-driven public politics, and how national-level industry countermobilization efforts affect elite-driven public politics strategies. We test these ideas in a historical study of the Scottish whisky distilling industry during the rise of temperance movements (1823–1921). We contribute to the social movements literature by showing how movements’ entry deterrence in contested industries depends on the internal fit between their strategies and mobilization tactics, as well as on their engagement with external contingencies.

Diversity training is a common initiative in organizations, yet also the focus of much debate. Legislative attempts have been made to eliminate diversity training, while research has presented mixed findings and contradictions. Although much is known about designs, pedagogies, and trainee outcomes of diversity training, we know far less about the diversity trainer, who bears the brunt of delivering training amid existing controversies. In this study, we examine the diversity trainer's experience, bringing to light the important use of the trainer's own identities in navigating the emotionally charged minefield of educating about bias and bridging across cultural and demographic differences. Through this qualitative investigation, we develop a grounded model that illustrates the process of brokering identities, a form of identity work diversity trainers engage in that involves their deliberate efforts to call themselves and others in during diversity training. We highlight the brokering self-efficacy trainers gain from their identity work, which helps to explain why diversity trainers continue to engage in the process of brokering identities despite the challenges and controversies they may face.

Although allocating resources (e.g., pay) between different job groups is a critical strategic decision, relevant research is limited. Focusing on the form of pay allocation across job groups, we consider the organizational consequences of between-group pay dispersion (BGPD). Building on the multiple social comparison literature, we propose that employees construe both large and small BGPD as fair when it is aligned with the size of explained within-group pay dispersion (WGPD). We also propose that the interaction effect of BGPD and WGPD on the distributive justice climate be extended to organizational performance via intergroup helping and employee stability (voluntary turnover rates). We present supportive evidence of the hypotheses using two multiwave studies (Study 1: 205 retail stores located in China and comprising 4,234 employees, 1,899 group leaders, and 303 senior managers, featuring objective pay data; Study 2: 123 bank branches of a large state-owned bank in China) and a supplementary qualitative study.

Understanding how organizations respond to failure is important to management research, yet prior studies have offered contrasting findings for whether, in a multiunit hierarchical organization, a corporate office improves business unit search following product failure. To better understand how a corporate office affects business unit search, we focus on the role of corporate proximity (hierarchical, geographic, and cognitive) between the corporate office and constituent units. We argue that corporate proximity improves a business unit’s local search process through two mechanisms—vertical linkages and corporate attention—that positively condition the likelihood of persisting, that is, re-entering a product market after having experienced a prior product failure in that market. We find support for our theory using data on reentry in the U.S. medical device industry following exit from the market due to product failure. We also explore how age of the product market and characteristics of the failure—cause and severity—further moderate corporate proximity’s role in business unit reentry. Overall, our study offers a better understanding of how complex organizations respond to failure, thereby contributing to literatures on search, corporate headquarters, and product entry.

This work documents a contemporary organizational problem — a gap between selection policies and individual selection decisions — and suggests one intervention to address it. In college admissions and workplace hiring contexts, we find that decision-makers are more likely to favor disadvantaged applicants over applicants with objectively higher achievements when choosing between selection policies than choosing between individual applicants. We document this policy – people gap among admissions officers, working professionals, and lay people using both within-subject and between-subject designs and across a range of stimuli. We find that the gap is driven in part by shifting standards of fairness across the two types of decisions. When choosing between individuals, compared to choosing between policies, decision-makers are more likely to prioritize what is fair to individuals (a microjustice standard of fairness) over what is fair in the aggregate (a macrojustice standard of fairness). As a result, an intervention that has decision-makers prioritize the same standard of fairness across the decisions mitigates the policy – people gap. This research helps us understand why decision-makers ’ choices so frequently violate espoused organizational policies and suggests one way to increase the representation of disadvantaged groups in organizations.

Do the clothes worn to work impact employees’ thoughts and behaviors? Despite the universal necessity of wearing clothes and the fact that employees make decisions about this daily, organizational scholars have not yet addressed this question. We integrated sociometer and enclothed cognition theories to propose that aspects of clothing—their aesthetics, conformity, and uniqueness—hold symbolic meanings that have implications for employees’ state self-esteem and subsequent task and relational behaviors (i.e., goal progress, social avoidance). We first provide evidence for the nature of the symbolic meanings associated with these three dimensions of work clothing in a set of within-person experimental studies. Then, the results of a 10-day field study of employees from four organizations generally supported our predictions, showing that daily clothing aesthetics and uniqueness had effects on state self-esteem and downstream behavioral consequences. The effects of daily clothing conformity emerged under the condition of greater interaction frequency with others in the workplace. Our manuscript contributes to both major theories from which we draw and further offers theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on organizational clothing.

Why would some firms persist with continued operations when facing unfavorable economic conditions? Although prior studies have investigated the roles of uncertainty and sunk costs as sources of inertia, an unacknowledged type of sunk cost associated with temporary suspensions of operations is related to the erosion of existing capabilities. Building on the resource-based view and real options theory, we argue that resource idling contributes to capability erosion and that the anticipated capability loss motivates firms to refrain from idling their resources under demand uncertainty in the first place. The negative effects of uncertainty on resource idling are likely to be particularly strong for firms with superior capabilities and for those having a greater reliance on human capital. Using data on oil drilling contractors in Texas, the empirical evidence lends support to our theoretical arguments. Our insights suggest that resource idling shapes the development path of capabilities and risks jeopardizing firms’ competitive advantages. The seemingly operational decision of temporarily idling resources can therefore be quite strategic for a firm, and “hysteresis,” or inertia in continuing operations, can preserve firms’ capabilities.

We propose a novel process through which status shocks may enhance performance. Specifically, we theorize that when status shocks include a ritualistic conferment of social prestige—such as in the case of “tournament rituals”—participating in that ritual enactment may increase tournament winners’ productivity and improve the inputs they receive, thereby improving their overall performance. We also consider the duration of that performance improvement, finding a decay that is consistent with our theorized mechanisms that are based on emotional energy. Our study shows that status shocks carry not only informational value, as signals of quality, but also symbolic and social value that change the behavior of individuals who receive these shocks and of the input providers with whom they interact. We employ difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs on game-level data from the National Basketball Association (NBA) to provide causal evidence for our hypotheses.