Knowledge that Transforms

Leader emotional expressions have profound implications for team members. Research has established that how frequently leaders express positive and negative emotional expressions shapes team member performance through conveying critical social-functional information about team member social worth. Yet, this social-functional approach to emotions has not fully considered how the timing of leader emotional expressions during a team’s lifecycle can also shape the information conveyed to individual team members about their social worth. In this paper, we integrate the social-functional approach to emotions with imprinting theory to propose that the temporal context of leader emotional expressions has performance implications for individual team members through two distinct facets of social worth: respect and status. Specifically, our imprinting framework explains how positive leader emotional expressions during the early team phase have the most beneficial performance implications through imprinting respect in individual team members. We then propose that these positive implications are amplified by more-frequent-than-average negative leader emotional expressions during the midpoint phase. When filtered through earlier positive expressions, negative emotional expressions during the midpoint phase may signal opportunities for respect and status gains rather than respect and status losses. We find general support for our model in a preregistered four-wave longitudinal archival study of 9,968 team members on 234 consulting teams at a leading professional services company and a four-wave longitudinal field study at a NCAA Division 1 sports program including 245 student-athletes and 86 coaches on 20 varsity teams. Our work highlights that the temporal context of leader emotional expressions is an important performance predictor through social worth. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17390 .

When an organization’s environment changes, communication between its members is essential for a timely response. However, past observational studies suggest that communication declines when an organization is exposed to an adverse environmental event. To understand why this might happen, I examine the effects of competition and scarcity—two common features of adverse events—on information sharing and seeking—the microfoundations of organizational communication. In the present study, interactive groups of experimental participants play a novel n-armed bandit game where they work as salespeople for companies that offer a lot of different products (The Sales Game). Some groups experience stable customer demand, while others are exposed to negative or positive demand shifts. Participants earn variable rewards based on their individual performance, and competition is induced in half of the groups through a small bonus based on relative performance. Participants can choose to exchange information with their peers throughout the task. When participants freely exchange information, the increase in individual performance-based rewards is larger than the tiny competitive bonus. But, participants exposed to this competition share information significantly less often than those who are not. This produces a pattern of communication network contraction consistent with prior observational studies of organizations exposed to adverse events. In contrast to prior research, scarcity (negative demand shifts) has no effect on information exchange. These findings advance our understanding of the relationship between competition, scarcity, and interpersonal communication in organizations. They also have important implications for the design of incentive schemes in modern firms. Funding: This research was supported by funds from the Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business and the Division of Social and Economic Sciences [Grant 2018173]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.18288 .

How can a knowledge intermediary support industry development and entrepreneurial entry in countries where it is not present? This study introduces a two-stage model of multi-country entrepreneurial entry via second-order knowledge intermediaries (SOKIs). In Stage 1, SOKIs acquire and develop industry-building knowledge and capabilities from engagement with the activities of carrying, co-creating, capacity building, and convening of a first-order knowledge intermediary (FOKI). In Stage 2, motivated SOKIs implement these activities in secondary countries, supporting local industry development. The model is developed in the context of the clean cookstove industry, which addresses global health and environmental challenges among low-income populations. Qualitative evidence from 25 interviews and archival data were used to describe how SOKIs learned transferable knowledge and capabilities in primary countries. A quantitative analysis of data derived from 1,996 clean cookstove organizations operating across 113 countries (2013–2019) was conducted to assess whether a greater number of SOKIs in secondary countries was associated with increased entrepreneurial entries. Results support the model; more SOKIs were associated with more entrepreneurial entries, and this relationship was weakened when company and nonprofit SOKIs were imbalanced and when more domestic industry actors possessed overlapping knowledge. This study contributes to the literature on industry emergence by introducing a mechanism of non-firm-led, cross-border knowledge diffusion in mission-oriented industries. It also shows how local entrepreneurs in under-resourced contexts can access global knowledge—not through firms or FOKIs but through SOKIs that extend the FOKIs’ work. Funding: This work was supported by funding from the University of Michigan, including the C.K. Prahalad Initiative, the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program [funded by The Dow Company Foundation], the International Institute, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Ross School of Business. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.15661 .

Existing research has shown that greater female membership on the board of directors has the potential to positively impact firm financial performance. However, the specific cognitive means through which these gender effects manifest remains unexplained. Our study sheds light on these cognitive means by examining how female board membership can influence chief executive officers (CEOs)’ attention allocation. We integrate the literatures on upper echelons, strategic attention, and gender-based information processing research and argue that because women tend to exhibit broader and more comprehensive information search and processing than men, female directors, through their interactions with CEOs and service on boards, will bring broader insights and perspectives to the boards than male directors. Further, we propose the relationship between the number of female directors and CEO strategic attention breadth is conditioned by three CEO characteristics that can exert influence on CEO-board information exchange: CEO gender, tenure, and overpayment. Specifically, we propose that boards comprised of more women will exert a greater effect on the strategic attention breadth of male CEOs and CEOs with longer tenure but will have a smaller effect on the strategic attention breadth of CEOs who are overpaid. Finally, we propose that CEO attention breadth mediates the relationship between the number of female directors and firm performance. We test our arguments using a sample of S&P 1500 firms and find broad support for our theorizing. Our study makes several key contributions to upper echelons and corporate governance, gender-based information processing, and executive attention research. Funding: Part of the data collection is funded by Dean’s Summer Small Research Grant at Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh.

Boundary organizations aim to facilitate collective efforts, but their collaborative arrangements often fall short of initial expectations, face member exits, or experience escalating conflicts. How do diverse members of these boundary organizations stay together and pursue collective goals despite tensions with their individual goals? Drawing on the concept of agency, we explore how members respond to these tensions and reshape the boundary organization’s goals to better align with their own, while maintaining collaboration for the pursuit of collective goals. Based on an in-depth longitudinal case study of a boundary organization in the energy sector, we developed a process model that explains how and why agency evolves over time. It outlines different trajectories through which members achieve a balance between collective and member goals, offering insights into how boundary organizations can either sustain themselves or fail. Our findings emphasize that goal pursuit is a dynamic process, where members continuously shift their focus between collective and member goals to maintain a balance over time. The process model explicates the agentic mechanisms behind these shifts in focus, revealing a dynamic interplay between two forms of agency that differ in their temporal orientation and locus of agency. We extend prior research that has focused on the governance structures and organizing practices in boundary organizations, by offering insights into why these boundary organizations may prevail, as they continuously shift their agency to navigate resurfacing tensions. Funding: This work was supported by the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research–Competence Center for Research in Energy, Society and Transition (SCCER CREST) [Grant 1155000154]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16973 .

Boomerangs, that is, rehires, should have advantages over other new hires when integrating into an organization due to their familiarity with the work context and their pre-existing relationships. However, research suggests that the effects of hiring boomerangs may not be straightforwardly positive. To better understand these effects, we investigate how boomerangs’ social integration into a work team differs from that of other new hires due to their pre-existing relationships and how those relationships shape their and incumbents’ competence and motivation to provide assistance for collective performance. We theorize and find that boomerangs, compared with new hires, exhibit more performance assistance toward incumbent former and incumbent new colleagues. In contrast, incumbent former colleagues do not direct their performance assistance toward boomerangs, contrary to our prediction, nor do incumbent new colleagues. This study contributes to the nascent literature on boomerangs and the literature on job mobility by finding evidence that prior relationships condition the behavior of both boomerangs and incumbents. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16685 .

Workplace relationships are a necessary and critical component of being able to perform one’s job and advance in one’s career. The personal and professional resources required for navigating relationships with dissimilar work colleagues can be particularly costly for those in minority groups who are most often different from their relational partners. Drawing from interviews conducted with Black women executives, we examined how these women experience relational triggers that emphasize their differences from others because of their limited numbers at their level. Our findings indicate that Black women executives respond to these relational triggers by engaging in perspective-taking and status reflexivity to understand others’, and their own, perspectives on the identity and status differentials present in the interaction. Through an introspective process, these women assess and address gaps in how they believe their partners see them and how they see themselves, which prompts them to either reduce or maintain perceived gaps depending on the importance of the interaction partner. We also explore how reducing or maintaining the perceived gap ultimately influences how Black women think, feel, or behave toward their relational partner (i.e., relational valence) in ways that may shape how they interpret future interactions. This study advances workplace relationships research by integrating intersectionality literature and by considering how minority perspective-taking and status reflexivity can be useful in navigating relationships across difference.

This study examines the relationship between the adoption of algorithmic recommendation tools and experiential learning. We argue that the adoption of an algorithmic recommendation tool will harm experiential learning in organizations by limiting knowledge retention and retrieval. We further argue that the adverse relationship between algorithmic tool adoption and experiential learning will be stronger in organizations operating in low-task-difficulty environments than those in high-task-difficulty ones because organizational members in such organizations are likely to rely more on algorithmic recommendations, experiencing higher skill erosion. In addition, the relationship will be stronger in organizations facing low task variety than in those with high task variety, as these organizations are likely to have more rigid routines and in turn experience higher routine disruption after adopting an algorithmic tool. We utilize data on the adoption of an algorithmic tool called a clinical decision support system (CDSS) in a sample of emergency departments in California and utilize a fixed-effects panel regression with control function to test our arguments. We find that the relationship between cumulative experience and mortality becomes significantly weaker after CDSS adoption, suggesting flatter learning curves. We also find evidence that the effect is moderated by task difficulty and task variety. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16738 .

Extant abusive supervision research has predominantly studied its prevalence and destructive effects through the lens of victims, potential victims, or third-party observers who witness such mistreatments. In the present research, we examine a neglected group of individuals—employees who are able to develop high-quality relationships and are closely associated with their abusive supervisors. Drawing insights from the stigma-by-association literature, we conceptualize abusive supervision as a unique form of moral stigma that might result in unintended spillover effects. Specifically, we found that observers tend to perceive employees who are closely associated with an abusive supervisor to be less moral and trustworthy for seemingly sharing a similar set of unethical values and beliefs, even though this might not necessarily be true in reality. As a downstream consequence, these employees are subject to unintended interpersonal backlashes (i.e., withdrawal from helping behaviors) imposed by their fellow coworkers. Furthermore, we investigate the moderating role of voluntary motive attribution, revealing that those who were attributed to voluntarily associate themselves with abusive supervisors received the highest levels of interpersonal backlashes. Results from one pilot study, one multiwave survey study (Study 2), and three preregistered experiments (Studies 1, 3, 4) supported our full theoretical model. Our research adds new insights to the abusive supervision literature by introducing a new unintended consequence on a previously overlooked group of employees who are presumed to be shielded from the negative impact of abusive supervision. Funding: This work was supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education [Grant R-317-000-164-115]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1678 .

How does the exchange of employees between regulatory agencies and regulated firms (i.e., the firm-government revolving door) affect firm regulatory outcomes? Existing work has mostly found a positive impact of revolving door hiring on firm outcomes, but it has overlooked potential limitations of this corporate political activity (CPA) tactic. We argue that the advantages firms can gain from hiring former regulators are bound by the timing of revolving door employment relative to the regulatory process. Within the context of agribiotechnology and its main regulator, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we study regulators who move to in-house and contract lobbying positions (i.e., exit revolving door). We find that firms receive better regulatory outcomes (i.e., faster regulatory approval for new crops) only prior to the regulators’ move to in-house lobbying, consistent with the regulatory capture perspective. Moreover, this revolving door was only valuable in the time period immediately before the mobility event. Additionally, contrary to the belief that former regulators provide firms with expertise and social capital as lobbyists, we find that firms did not gain any advantage after regulators became lobbyists. Taken together, our results suggest that revolving doors can be an effective business political mobilization strategy, albeit one that has limited success in shaping firm government outcomes, much like other types of CPA. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1669 .