Knowledge that Transforms

Although considerable research has examined various antecedents of employee absence, relatively little research has examined the effects of organizational absence control initiatives on different types of absence, or how differences in employee perceptions of these initiatives may influence employee absences. Through the lens of organizational justice, the authors address this gap in the literature by tracking absenteeism in two manufacturing plants that implemented, at different times, absence control initiatives designed to increase the salience of absence outcomes via explicit rewards and punishments. Results showed that the policy changes had the intended effect of reducing casual absence, but also the unintended effect of increasing Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) absence. The results for disability-based absence were mixed. Individual employee perceptions of both the salience of absence outcomes and the fairness of the absence policies showed differential effects on casual and FMLA absence. These perceptions interacted such that employees who perceived the policies to be more salient and unfair had the highest instances of FMLA absence. Implications for absence and justice research and practice are discussed.

An integrative self-definition model is proposed to improve our understanding of how procedural justice affects different outcome modalities in organizational behavior. Specifically, it is examined whether the strength of different levels of self-definition (collective, relational, and individual) each uniquely interact with procedural justice to predict organizational, interpersonal, and job/task-oriented citizenship behaviors, respectively. Results from experimental and (both single and multisource) field data consistently revealed stronger procedural justice effects (1) on organizational-oriented citizenship behavior among those who define themselves strongly in terms of organizational characteristics, (2) on interpersonal-oriented citizenship behavior among those who define themselves strongly in terms of their interpersonal relationships, and (3) on job/task-oriented citizenship behavior among those who define themselves weakly in terms of their distinctiveness or uniqueness. We discuss the relevance of these results with respect to how employees can be motivated most effectively in organizational settings.

In this work, the author analyzes agency costs and their effect on efficiency in the context of small family firms. In particular, the author examines the effect that factors such as self-management, having related managers, and family employees exert on firm efficiency. The author offers some reasoning that may help to clarify agency problems for small firms. The author uses stochastic frontiers to measure and explain efficiency. The author’s focus is on small firms in the fishing sector, which are very important entities for the development of certain local communities.

The authors explore to what extent there is persistence in, and interrelation between, alliance strategies with different partner types (customers, suppliers, competitors). In a panel data set of innovation-active firms in the Netherlands from 1996 to 2004, the authors find persistence in alliance strategies with all three types of partners, but customer alliance strategies are more persistent than supplier alliance strategies and competitor alliance strategies. A positive interrelation between customer and supplier alliance strategies and a high persistence of joint supplier and customer alliance strategies are consistent with the advantages of value chain integration in innovation efforts. Prior engagement in horizontal (competitor) alliances increases the propensity to engage in vertical alliance strategies, but this effect occurs only with a longer lag. Overall, the authors’ findings suggest that alliance strategies with different partner types are both heterogeneous in persistence and (temporally) interrelated. This suggests that intertemporal relationships between different types of alliances may be as important as their simultaneous relationship in alliance portfolios.

Despite a business environment that highlights the importance of executives’ ethical leadership, the individual antecedents of ethical leadership remain largely unknown. In this study, the authors propose that follower perceptions of ethical leadership depend on the executive leader’s cognitive moral development (CMD) and, more importantly, on the relationship between executive leader and follower CMD. In a sample of 143 leader–follower dyads, the authors find a direct positive relationship between leader CMD and perceptions of ethical leadership. Using polynomial regression, they find that ethical leadership is maximized when the leader’s CMD diverges from and is greater than the follower’s CMD. The authors explain these findings using a social learning theory framework. Leaders who are more advanced ethical reasoners relative to their followers are likely to stand out as salient ethical role models whose ethics-related communication and behavior attract followers’ attention. The authors discuss the research and practical implications of these findings.

A significant question in management research is, “What criteria should be used to evaluate the effects of leadership?” In this review, the authors systematically summarize various ways the field of leadership has (and has not) sought to answer questions about whether, when, and how leadership affects outcomes. A total of 1,161 empirical studies over 25 years, spanning micro- and macro-oriented perspectives, were content coded to answer six basic questions that set the scope of leadership science. The authors first descriptively summarize these criterion issues in the empirical literature and draw comparisons across areas (e.g., To what extent have leader-member exchange, transformational, and strategic leadership research differentially examined various outcomes?). Second, the authors explore the implications of criterion selection issues for the further advancement of leadership theory and offer concrete recommendations for future leadership research.

Signaling theory is useful for describing behavior when two parties (individuals or organizations) have access to different information. Typically, one party, the sender, must choose whether and how to communicate (or signal) that information, and the other party, the receiver, must choose how to interpret the signal. Accordingly, signaling theory holds a prominent position in a variety of management literatures, including strategic management, entrepreneurship, and human resource management. While the use of signaling theory has gained momentum in recent years, its central tenets have become blurred as it has been applied to organizational concerns. The authors, therefore, provide a concise synthesis of the theory and its key concepts, review its use in the management literature, and put forward directions for future research that will encourage scholars to use signaling theory in new ways and to develop more complex formulations and nuanced variations of the theory.

The authors revisit Hart’s natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm and summarize progress that has been made in testing elements of that theory and reevaluate the NRBV in light of a number of important developments that have emerged in recent years in both the resource-based view literature and in research on sustainable enterprise. First, the authors consider how the NRBV can both benefit from recent work in dynamic capabilities and can itself inform such work. Second, they review recent research in the areas of clean technology and business at the base of the pyramid and suggest how the NRBV can help inform research on the resources and capabilities needed to enter and succeed in these domains.

This study tells the story of two acquisitions made by a company the authors call Multifirm. Multifirm acquired two targets, Datagon and Teknico. The Datagon employees immediately identified with Multifirm, and the integration process was characterized by few conflicts and satisfied employees. The Teknico employees, on the other hand, failed to identify with Multifirm, and the integration process was fraught with disruptions and conflicts. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of identity threats, Multifirm reported that more value was created from the acquisition of Teknico than from Datagon. In this article, we try to understand why this was the case.