Knowledge that Transforms

The Review Issue has been part of the Journal of Management (JOM) for more than a quarter of a century and serves as the only journal outlet in the field of management with yearly issues explicitly dedicated to reviewing the literature on important research areas in the field of management. The tradition became truly institutionalized in 1983, when Editor Jerry Hunt started publishing two Review Issues per year (Van Fleet et al., 2006). Since that time, the Review Issue has been serving to stimulate research, theoretical developments, and practice.

This study addresses two questions: (a) Does General Electric have an exceptional ability to develop non-firm-specific general management talent, and (b) how can GE’s investment into non-firm-specific, nonproprietary managerial capabilities be explained theoretically? The authors’ analysis provides evidence that GE has an extraordinary managerial development capability. Their theory suggests that GE’s managerial development process is valuable, rare, inimitable, and organized to be exploited, and therefore, a source of sustained competitive advantage. This process produces a flow of managers with the potential to be sources of temporary competitive advantage for GE. Outward flow of executive talent is a required byproduct of the process.

The authors highlight the importance of firm structure for the optimal compensation contracts of upper-management positions. Making use of task similarity between CEOs of undiversified firms and division directors within larger corporations, the authors analyze trade-offs between monitoring and incentive pay at below-CEO levels. Because division directors are subject to an additional layer of monitoring by upper management, they should receive less incentive pay and lower compensation than do CEOs of undiversified firms, whereas added complexity because of higher levels of diversification will predictably alter these relationships. Matched pair regressions on a unique data set support the authors' hypotheses.

This article presents a historical review of how inconsistency in assessment center ratings has been regarded among AC researchers and practitioners, then compares these perspectives to views of inconsistency found in personality psychology. Based on this review, the authors argue for a return to the study of consistency as an individual difference, rather than as simple measurement error. They offer four propositions regarding the inconsistency observed in AC performance, arguing that such inconsistency presents a unique opportunity to identify individuals’ patterns of skill proficiency. Finally, they discuss ways in which differences in consistency are likely to relate to organizational interests, including implications for selection and development.

Helping behavior at work has become increasingly important, with organizations making more and more use of cooperative work practices. The difficulty is that employees are facing growing demands beyond the workplace. This study investigates the mechanisms by which family involvement (family structure, family tasks, family support) affects helping behavior in teams. Based on a sample of 495 team members, the results show that having a supportive partner and performing care tasks increase helping behavior via enhanced fulfillment and skills. Having young children is directly and negatively related to helping behavior. The authors also conducted separate analyses for men and women.

Theorizing and research in organizational behavior implicitly or explicitly assumes that behavior is the product of conscious will. However, an extensive body of literature suggests that much of human behavior is automatic and that nonconscious thoughts and feelings are primary drivers of reactions and behavior. Relying on propositions in use in job design theory and research as a critical case in point, the author reviews the literatures on automatic thought and nonconscious emotions and their implications. Based on these literatures, the author develops alternative propositions for job design theory and research that are based on more realistic assumptions about the mind and human functioning. In addition to discussing implications of nonconscious processes for job design, the author draws broader implications for the field of organizational behavior.

Individual benefits to those who have been mentored are well documented. The present study demonstrates that organization-level mentoring relates to overall organizational performance. In a study of 589 employees of 39 substance abuse treatment agencies, the authors found that agencies with a greater proportion of mentored employees also reported greater overall agency performance. Organization-level mentoring also related to organization-level job satisfaction, organization-level organizational citizenship behavior, and organization-level learning. Results provide justification for organizational investment of time and resources into efforts designed to facilitate mentoring, as well as support the notion that mentoring may provide a competitive advantage to organizations.

Combining a behavioral agency perspective with research on multiple-agency conflicts, this article examines factors affecting the implementation of equity-based incentive schemes in initial public offerings (IPOs). With a unique sample of U.K. IPO companies between the years 1998 and 2002, it shows that conditional (performance-related) incentive schemes are negatively associated with share ownership and board power of the IPO’s founding directors. However, the retained ownership of venture capital firms is positively associated with the probability of conditional incentive schemes. Board independence weakly effects on the toughness of executive compensation. The article’s interesting findings suggest a number of avenues for a future analysis of the governance development process in threshold firms.