Knowledge that Transforms

The powerful effects of electronic word of mouth on employer branding and prehire outcomes suggest a need for employers to formulate effective responses to employer reviews on social media. Using machine learning and text-mining techniques, we identified three distinct types of employer responses to negative reviews (i.e., excuses, apologies, prosocial behavior) and two other types of responses to positive reviews (i.e., ingratiation, exemplification) from a Glassdoor data set. Integrating research on organizational impression management and stereotype content, we developed and tested a theoretical model of response types and their effects on talent attraction across two vignette experiments with undergraduate (Study 1) and working adult job seekers (Study 2). Across both studies, not responding to negative reviews resulted in the worst outcomes for employers. Results demonstrate that the effectiveness of responses differed by the target population; prosocial behavior was most effective among job-seeking professionals, whereas excuse and apology were more effective among students. While exemplification had positive effects in the student sample, neither assertive tactic had a significant effect on hypothesized outcomes in sample of job-seeking professionals. Furthermore, warmth and sincerity, but not competence, mediated the effect of responses on key prehire outcomes of employer reputation, organizational attraction, and job pursuit intentions. Taken as a whole, our study suggests that employer reviews represent both a threat and an opportunity. (PsycInfo Database Record

Interracial interactions are often laden with concerns about being assimilated by group stereotypes. This study examines the "White-and-prejudiced" stereotype threat, which can be triggered in White customers when interacting with Black frontline employees. Our findings, derived from two field studies and two experiments, reveal short-term positive effects of the White stereotype threat on the job performance effectiveness of Black frontline employees. For example, White customers buy more and intend to tip more when interacting with a Black relative to a White frontline employee. These short-term positive behavioral shifts toward Black frontline employees are especially present when the frontline employee is categorized in terms of race but diminished when the frontline employee is individuated. The implications of our findings are managerially relevant because employees from marginalized racial groups are often overrepresented in frontline and in service occupations in several countries including Europe and the United States. (PsycInfo Database Record

In an effort to extend experiential learning theory to the team level, we develop and test a model capturing and explaining the relative effects of two alternative team learning-based interventions, namely, after-action reviews (AAR) and design thinking (DT; a team problem-solving approach which we argue can be repurposed as a team development intervention). Integrating experiential learning theory with research on episodic team learning, we propose that by engaging the team in a more comprehensive set of experiential learning elements in each performance episode, relative to AAR, DT drives enhanced normative and cognitive team emergent states, and as a result, a greater short-term (i.e., 6-month) improvement in team performance, particularly for teams characterized by greater team task variety. Results from a multiwave field experiment of teams in a manufacturing company largely support this model, indicating that over the 6-month study period: (a) A DT intervention was associated with greater improvement in team performance than that associated with AAR, and (b) these effects are partially explained by differential changes in both team learning climate and transactive memory system specification. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record

s = 1,724, 16-75 years), including diverse samples of working individuals and using different operationalizations of SAB and voice. Studies 1a, 1b, and 2 demonstrate that older individuals who feel younger and younger individuals who feel older are more likely to speak up with work-related suggestions and concerns because of their higher self-efficacy. Study 3 shows that by activating negative age stereotypes, younger and older employees can be prompted to feel older (vs. younger), subsequently affecting their self-efficacy and voice behavior. This study contributes to a better understanding of SAB for younger and older individuals at work and highlights important implications for increasingly age-diverse organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record

The presence of historically underrepresented minority employees who defy negative stereotypes can have widespread organizational benefits. For example, hiring highly successful women and racial minority employees can reduce stereotypes about their groups, set a precedent for more inclusive norms, and create role models for members of stereotyped groups. Yet, defying stereotypes also makes these employees particularly salient, as their success in organizations conflicts with stereotyped expectations regarding their career outcomes. By integrating insights from the stereotype content model and the process of attribute substitution from dual process theory, we argue that the salience of highly successful women and racial minority employees can ironically have negative secondary consequences for the groups from which they hail. Specifically, we propose that exposure to successful women and racial minorities can lead to inflated perceptions of gender and racial diversity, as the salience of such stereotype defiers is used to evaluate their groups' prevalence. We further suggest that such inflated diversity perceptions can significantly hinder organizational efforts to advance the interests of the historically underrepresented minority groups in question. We test our predictions across four complementary studies: three experiments (including stimuli generated with real data for gender diversity in organizations in the United States) and a study that combines real gender diversity and gender pay gap data from organizations in the United Kingdom with experimental data on diversity perceptions. (PsycInfo Database Record

Our study examines the training transfer dynamics of action-oriented entrepreneurship training to understand when and how a positive impact on the alleviation of poverty and unemployment among young adults unfolds. We theorize about the training transfer dynamics in terms of absolute changes and developmental trajectories. To test our hypotheses, we conducted field experiments across seven countries with 6,257 university students who we randomly assigned to a training group or a nonintervention control group. We collected data before the implementation of an entrepreneurship training program (T1), directly after the training program (T2), as well as 9-18 (T3) and 19-32 months (T4) after the baseline, with a total number of 15,660 observations. Results from discontinuous growth curve modeling show that action-oriented entrepreneurship training can increase income and employment in the short and long term. We further demonstrate that training transfer dynamics can unfold in the form of a "catch-up" effect, which is characterized by nonsignificant or even negative short-term absolute changes but positive long-term developmental trajectories in economic effectiveness outcomes. Our results contribute to the literature on training transfer and hold important practical implications for policymakers regarding the evaluation of future entrepreneurship training interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record

As empowering leadership becomes increasingly needed in today's complex organizations, so does the need to understand what motivates leaders to give more (or less) empowering leadership to followers. We draw on threat rigidity theory to examine how followers' challenging and supportive voice differentially impact the extent to which leaders empower their followers. We argue that leaders perceive followers' challenging voice as more threatening and tend to empower them less, whereas leaders perceive followers' supportive voice as reflective of their goal congruence with followers, which motivates leaders to give them more empowering leadership. We further leverage threat rigidity theory to explain how leader-directed helping moderates the degree to which leaders respond to each type of voice in terms of threat and goal congruence perceptions and ultimately, with empowering leadership. We argue that leader-directed helping buffers challenging voice's positive effect on perceived threat and amplifies supportive voice's positive effect on leaders' perceptions of goal congruence with followers, which, subsequently, affects leaders' willingness to empower them. We mostly find support for these predictions in a time-lagged, multisource field study and a scenario-based experiment conducted across different countries and cultures. We discuss our theoretical contributions to the literature and practical implications for followers and leaders. (PsycInfo Database Record

From Aristotle through René Descartes, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin, surprise has been a source of fascination and many questions in philosophy and social sciences. Yet, the definitions of surprise, as well as its implications for individuals in organizations, have been siloed leading to notable confusion and debates in recent research. This integrative review synthesizes insights from psychology, management, and other related fields to provide a comprehensive understanding of surprise in organizational contexts. We explore the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that underlie surprise as well as key organizational moderators-organizational memory and emotional capabilities-that shape how surprise is experienced and managed. Based on this synthesis, we present a theoretical framework and detailed propositions that explain the conditions under which surprise leads to variance creation or variance reduction behaviors. Finally, we discuss important paths for future research and practical propositions for studying surprise experiences and their impact on organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record

(i.e., meaningfulness). Additional interviews culminated in a theoretical model where the raw materials of the close brush with death (loss of life, errors by the crew) created stories with more versus less dramatic tension. Differences in dramatic tension then shaped how story work (humor, poetic license) was used to craft the tale, how the tellings were experienced (teller emotions, audience reactions), and how gains in meaning as fulfillment (significance, belonging, esteem) were realized. In the end, participants with more and less dramatic tension in their stories were both able to use tellings to cultivate meaning as fulfillment, albeit in distinct and varying ways. Our findings therefore illustrate that the literatures connecting storytelling to the meaning of work have given short shrift to the power of stories. We discuss the implications of our theorizing for the meaning of work and storytelling at work literatures. (PsycInfo Database Record

= 493). Our results contribute to the theory on the reputational implications of criminal records, impression management, and employment discrimination. Additionally, our findings have implications for policies and practices intended to promote successful reintegration. (PsycInfo Database Record