tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60932735422637748542024-03-13T00:41:56.905-07:00Organizational musingsHenrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comBlogger321125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-67598875381719204482024-02-27T11:58:00.000-08:002024-02-27T21:46:33.321-08:00Hire Those You Trust! But Actually It Is More Complicated<p>What is the
relationship between trust and hiring? We all know the simple answer. Employers
hire those who seem trustworthy, so trust and hiring are pretty much the same
thing. But there is also a more complicated answer, and that one involves
looking at how national cultures differ in the general trust levels. Suppose
that two cultures differ in the level of trust – will employers in the
high-trust culture hire more people than those in the low-trust culture? No, of
course not, employers hire as many people as they need. But social trust levels
still matter.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">How they
matter is the topic of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392241233257">research by Letian Zhang and Shinan Wang published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>. It involves a novel idea and some nifty
analysis, and fortunately it is easy to summarize. Trust does not mean hiring
more people, but it does mean hiring different people. The reason is that low
social trust is associated with hiring for a specific job, with less
expectation that the employee can develop new skills. High social trust means
hiring for the firm, with an expectation that the employee can develop new
skills and fill other jobs. High trust, then, means hiring for foundational
skills rather than advanced skills. It means hiring an analyst for general math
ability more than for skills in Laplace transformations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid62T9cv4uc3AGBHzjUdXfiWrCtguHT0SsOo8SKzy2umu6tPp4rATzdb1z_TwY-gxpfLFb7oQ_VPwe2NagcpUI5_ShzD786fQ4lyWRjlA5gJQtZBS8zRZ5JFql2P5QArhod7ZlKCZMige0PXiEQVeOFkrtIRk5-t3omOvpYFASRrASnFDO80i_9SmvdyCT/s942/TrustSkill.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="942" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid62T9cv4uc3AGBHzjUdXfiWrCtguHT0SsOo8SKzy2umu6tPp4rATzdb1z_TwY-gxpfLFb7oQ_VPwe2NagcpUI5_ShzD786fQ4lyWRjlA5gJQtZBS8zRZ5JFql2P5QArhod7ZlKCZMige0PXiEQVeOFkrtIRk5-t3omOvpYFASRrASnFDO80i_9SmvdyCT/w400-h293/TrustSkill.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This idea
raises two questions. First, is it true? Using data on job postings from the
European Union countries, Zhang and Wang found that it was indeed true.
Employers in nations with high social trust hire based on more foundational
skills than nations with low social trust. Moreover, the same multinational
firm would hire more based on foundational skills in nations with high social
trust than in nations with low social trust, so the same relation holds within
employers as well. Job characteristics such as university education or work
experience requirements reduced this effect but did not make it go away.<br /> <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Second
question, is it consequential? Well, look at the figure above.
Nations in Europe differ quite a bit in social trust levels, as the horizontal
scale shows (the range is from zero to one). The vertical scale is not so easy
to understand, but perhaps it helps to know that a difference of 0.6 is less
than the difference between attentiveness and mathematics (foundational
skills), and electricity principles and Java (advanced skills). The figure
shows that the average hire in each nation differs significantly by the trust
level. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There are
many possible consequences of these differences. We don’t yet know whether they
all happen, but it is valuable to check each one. Hiring in high-trust nations
means hiring for the long term and for multiple roles, giving greater room for
personal growth and firm flexibility. Hiring in high-trust nations means less
emphasis on specific expertise and credentials, so symbolic collection of
certificates to get hired is unnecessary. Hiring in high-trust nations allows
more diversity in teams doing a single task and better communication within
teams, increasing creativity and productivity. Employers in low-trust nations
may have lower access to all these benefits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We do not
know whether all these differences result from different levels of societal
trust. Now that we know how societal trust changes hiring practices, we should
be aware that they might exist, and both employers and employees might think of
employment practices and careers differently. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392241233257">Zhang, Letian and Shinan Wang. 2024. Trusting Talent: Cross-Country Differences inHiring. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-38131656657163250182024-01-31T05:11:00.000-08:002024-01-31T05:11:12.824-08:00Networks and Discrimination: Why Female Artists are Disadvantaged, and What They Can Do About It<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVfeMYwQCLkN56dqyYVM5CNMbqPsk_-t2naGBaxYn0Hj72Ln0HkXo3mFdxDYPMnr6GHKIzPo4j31ZyABpiDVwR4Ql4XCpzP5t1kNYGE4uYhG-dAdKL4Vgyrx11saweL4_lElQ7SzrtxWt8_OvHLy8hv11ciWTFmOmUPZJW5t0LpjJBxQOKtITr_qyf-hXS/s1024/DALL%C2%B7E%202024-01-31%2021.02.09%20-%20In%20a%20lush,%20colorful%20outdoor%20setting,%20a%20man%20and%20a%20woman%20are%20each%20engaged%20in%20painting%20a%20landscape,%20both%20perched%20on%20separate%20ladders.%20The%20man's%20ladder%20is.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVfeMYwQCLkN56dqyYVM5CNMbqPsk_-t2naGBaxYn0Hj72Ln0HkXo3mFdxDYPMnr6GHKIzPo4j31ZyABpiDVwR4Ql4XCpzP5t1kNYGE4uYhG-dAdKL4Vgyrx11saweL4_lElQ7SzrtxWt8_OvHLy8hv11ciWTFmOmUPZJW5t0LpjJBxQOKtITr_qyf-hXS/s320/DALL%C2%B7E%202024-01-31%2021.02.09%20-%20In%20a%20lush,%20colorful%20outdoor%20setting,%20a%20man%20and%20a%20woman%20are%20each%20engaged%20in%20painting%20a%20landscape,%20both%20perched%20on%20separate%20ladders.%20The%20man's%20ladder%20is.png" width="320" /></a></div>It is not
easy being an artist. Recognition of talent and creativity can be slow, sales
only happen in small galleries, and initial sales are domestic and even local. The
last thing artists need is discrimination in addition, but that is exactly what
female artists get: a recent investigation showed that comparable paintings sell
at a 42 percent discount if the artist is female.<br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Is there
anything that can be done about such discrimination? This was the question that
we (JungYun Han, Henrich R. Greve, and Andrew Shipilov)
wanted to address with data on <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41267-023-00680-5">Korean artists and their exhibitions abroad</a>. We
found that female artists were less successful in exhibiting abroad, as expected,
but that difference was not our main interest. Instead, we wanted to know whether
we could identify anything in their careers that reduced or eliminated their
disadvantage. We could.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">An
important step in the careers of many artists is a residency stay in which they
share workspace in studios provided by the residency and also get to meet other
junior and senior artists to gain inspiration and advice. Residency programs
help artists succeed, which is exactly their purpose, but unexpectedly this was
only true for female artists. Education in an elite art school provides top-notch
technical training and artistic appreciation. Elite education helps artists
succeed, which is exactly its purpose, but again there was a surprise: it
benefited female artists more.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What is going
on here? The best explanation for these two effects is not training, but social
networks. Art residency programs and elite schools connect artists with others
who can provide advice on how to approach galleries and even direct contacts to
them. The best explanation for the male and female difference is that female artists
have more to prove, so the benefit from a network tie is greater for them. In network
effects we often see such effects – those who are accepted purely by who they
are gain some benefit from a good social network, but not nearly as much as
those who are discriminated against and need a social network to be introduced
to the right people and become recognized for their achievements.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">These
effects offer clear advice for how to help women succeed in art, and probably
also in other kinds of entrepreneurship and work. They also offer a warning to
society because such differences can only exist because of discrimination. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41267-023-00680-5">Han
J, Greve HR, Shipilov A (2024) The liability of gender? Constraints and
enablers of foreign market entry for female artists. <i>Journal of
International Business Studies</i>.</a></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-47484774215000903582024-01-22T04:17:00.000-08:002024-01-22T04:17:01.887-08:00If Women Can’t Network and Women Can’t Move, Why is it Better for Women to do Both?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVdKudxUcEeLSwK6IARMJXGI9mSJpT4U02VgWnMEFhCizYnQZFFSvRK0zRi_fGcG91XgPJ52C51VN5n_ppI5IQMKHPN55C2jbZY3MifxJeq6-M68Pqo88UjUNWrkcC8Iq8oKBCrD2gRMDcgcdhA5wWq0yDTkrwV4PrhmkVLxnH2eiHN5J69_BCcYYnkmtT/s1024/DALL%C2%B7E%202024-01-10%2018.09.09.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVdKudxUcEeLSwK6IARMJXGI9mSJpT4U02VgWnMEFhCizYnQZFFSvRK0zRi_fGcG91XgPJ52C51VN5n_ppI5IQMKHPN55C2jbZY3MifxJeq6-M68Pqo88UjUNWrkcC8Iq8oKBCrD2gRMDcgcdhA5wWq0yDTkrwV4PrhmkVLxnH2eiHN5J69_BCcYYnkmtT/s320/DALL%C2%B7E%202024-01-10%2018.09.09.png" width="320" /></a></div>Among the
many disadvantages that women have at work, here is one that is often
overlooked: they have fewer opportunities to form beneficial networks, and even
if they succeed, they gain less benefit than men. This matters greatly for
their careers because <a href="https://www.organizationalmusings.com/2021/10/networking-for-success-is-it-only-for.html">network ties to coworkers help employees gain skills,learn about opportunities, and execute plans</a>. A particular disadvantage is
women’s problems in getting brokerage positions in network. A network broker is
connected to people who are not directly connected to each other. Brokers gain
separate pieces of information quickly and can quickly assemble them to form
opportunities.<br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Why is it
hard for women to become brokers? To begin with, it is hard for anyone because
it requires reaching beyond the immediate work group. It is also hard because
people are suspicious of brokers and may be reluctant to share information with
them. In fact,<a href="https://www.organizationalmusings.com/2022/05/are-you-well-connected-hide-it.html"> the most effective brokers are those who are not known to be brokers</a>. For women, these suspicions are especially strong because of the
gendered belief that women maintain closer relations with proximate friends and
coworkers. As a result, they gain less access to brokerage and less benefit
from brokerage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Changing
jobs has many of the same disadvantages, even if the job change is just a
reassignment ordered by the employer. But here is the interesting part: when
women move, the brokerage disadvantages disappear. Both disadvantages. Women
who move gain brokerage positions just as easily as men who move, and women who
move obtain the same performance benefits as men who move. This is a <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6093273542263774854/4748477421500090358">new discovery from a paper by Evelyn Zhang, Brandy Aven, and Adam Kleinbaum published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>. Their idea, which turned out to
be true, is that moving gives “license to broker” because network ties in the
new workplace are necessary, and maintaining contacts with the prior workplace is
expected – especially for women, who are supposed to be more stable network
partners than men (again a gendered belief). So in this case two wrongs make a
right. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Interesting?
Let us not see this as encouraging information though. Even when workers
benefit from gendered beliefs like this, the beliefs still create a warped
workplace where opportunities and rewards are unfairly distributed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6093273542263774854/4748477421500090358">Zhang,Evelyn Y., Brandy L. Aven, and Adam M. Kleinbaum. License to Broker: How Mobility Eliminates Gender Gaps in Network Advantage. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-71527234145579027152023-10-11T19:28:00.003-07:002023-10-11T19:28:44.627-07:00Failing Once, Failing Twice: What Makes Firms Search for Radical Improvements?<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cynics would say
that firms don’t look for opportunities as much as they should. Instead, it is
problems that generate search for improvements. The cynics would be right –
what we call problemistic search, triggered by disappointing profits, is a real
thing and it is more frequent than search for opportunities. That is bad enough,
but actually things are worse.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisETnsLOvp-0lyKkzX0eQWeqIbIwgAskHs_zUeumxKV2dfWD19xVhqF5DwMzCydkKJ4J-W8c6ysRqUl8xFkm-ul1Yjp-huqnYHbWoQQvevgiJr1EE6OCsfuX_gOU85Gc7qxsmbD7udb02vjRG4E-Jq3KIIcfO3E1MXb0nGax4ePZm6Vi_mrEg_-ZItGV4F" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisETnsLOvp-0lyKkzX0eQWeqIbIwgAskHs_zUeumxKV2dfWD19xVhqF5DwMzCydkKJ4J-W8c6ysRqUl8xFkm-ul1Yjp-huqnYHbWoQQvevgiJr1EE6OCsfuX_gOU85Gc7qxsmbD7udb02vjRG4E-Jq3KIIcfO3E1MXb0nGax4ePZm6Vi_mrEg_-ZItGV4F" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Research by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063231185519">Thomas Keil, Evangelos Syrigos, Konstantinos Kostopoulos, Felix Meissner, and PinoAudia published in <i>Journal of Management</i></a> shows that multiple goals complicate
things even further. This is because problemistic search can be replaced by
self-enhancement. Executives and organizations engaged in self-enhancement do not
solve problems, but instead they look for reasons to claim that there is no
problem to solve. Chief among these reasons, I mean excuses, is finding a
secondary goal that shows higher performance.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Does this happen?
There is ample experimental evidence that individuals self-enhance when given
the opportunity. This research is novel in showing that organizations can
self-enhance in response to very important goals, and self-enhancement has
important consequences. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Pharmaceutical
companies rely on drug approvals for their profits, so having drugs pass the
late stages of the approval process is a primary goal. They also need a good
research pipeline, so drugs moving through early-stage approval is a secondary
goal. How to get many drugs and novel drugs? A key decision is whether to
search in the proximity of their current expertise, or whether to move into new
disease areas and acquiring candidate drugs from other firms. Proximate search
is safe but is a questionable strategy for a firm with low performance. Distant
search is riskier but is the way to renew a firm with low performance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What the firms
should do in response to low performance is trivially simple. If the internal research
is good, stay with it and do a proximate search. Otherwise do distant search. The
good news from the research by Keil and coauthors is that the pharma firms
behave exactly like that. They turn to distant search when the performance from
the current search is low. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There is also bad
news. They do this <i>only</i> when seeing disappointing performance on both
the primary goal and secondary goal. Disappointing performance on the primary
goal – the most essential one – is not enough to trigger distant search. Even
worse, doing poorly on the primary goal and well on the secondary goal produces
less distant search than doing well on both goals. For the sake of firm profitability,
and for society getting </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">necessary </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">medicines, this is very problematic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Self-enhancement
is something we can understand and accept when we see it in individuals. It is a
slightly childish thing to do, but people want to preserve
their self esteem and want to look good in their own view, and that of
others. Better than they deserve, even. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It is much harder
to understand and accept self-enhancement by firms. Firms exist for practical
reasons. They produce products and services, they develop improvements in products
and services, and being good in actuality is much more important than being
adept at self-enhancement. Unfortunately, this research is a reminder that
there is self-enhancement in firms too. No doubt this is because the managers
and executives of firms are people too, and the firms are lacking processes
that control their individual self-enhancement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01492063231185519">Keil, T., E. Syrigos, K.C. Kostopoulos, F. D. Meissner,
P. G. Audia. 2023. (In)Consistent Performance Feedback and the Locus of Search.
<i>Journal of Management</i> <b>forthcoming</b>.</a></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-92169977120322039552023-08-30T18:50:00.000-07:002023-08-30T18:50:01.626-07:00Talk is Expensive: When a Competitor Has Financial Ties to Media<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1iEtc0ZvmLUN4hVk2Q_tc7QsfhK0PwvE6KlhzEHFIX5YBwvJ3Y4F54U_sRw8fIxGKUZU7lk1ASnOclnAlRsJOoplYBZ6OZCQE1jbFSJM4iWLaO3UUuGuw37aOk7HVOvQdnv2bc1IxAh1DWKGXNipa6PTzMRxZ3UAH2uPRj-R_gbXpRsMfUm1PrF9dw9D1/s683/MediaCorp.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="243" data-original-width="683" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1iEtc0ZvmLUN4hVk2Q_tc7QsfhK0PwvE6KlhzEHFIX5YBwvJ3Y4F54U_sRw8fIxGKUZU7lk1ASnOclnAlRsJOoplYBZ6OZCQE1jbFSJM4iWLaO3UUuGuw37aOk7HVOvQdnv2bc1IxAh1DWKGXNipa6PTzMRxZ3UAH2uPRj-R_gbXpRsMfUm1PrF9dw9D1/w400-h143/MediaCorp.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>We
understand that media ownership can be translated into power, especially when a
media outlet has a dominant owner and the context is politics. Rupert Murdoch,
Fox, and Donald J. Trump are keywords that come to mind. That’s just a rich guy
playing around with the governance of a nation, with no connection to the world
of business competition, right? Wrong. Media ownership also affects competition
among firms, and the effects are seen also when the ownership structure is more
dispersed.<br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This is the
main discovery made in a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231192863">paper published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i> byMark R. DesJardine, Wei Shi, and, Xin Cheng</a>. Their starting point is the
remarkable concentration in firm ownership that has happened following the
growth in institutional investments in the form of fund management firms. These
investors want to (in fact, are obliged to) maximize the returns of their
holdings, so they will do whatever it takes to increase the value of the firms
they own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What does
“whatever it takes” mean? This is where media ownership comes into play. An
interesting feature of owning media firms is that media firms are involved in
news gathering and reporting, which can influence the competitive balance of an
industry. Hurt one firm, and the other gains. Report selectively, and the value
of firms owned by the fund that also owns media outlets will increase. As a
result, media talk is expensive for the competitors of firms that have a media
connection in their ownership.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Such media
effects are a very big deal because they show an illicit use of media ownership
that tilts valuations of firms, and corresponding access to resources and
success in markets, away from the products and services they provide. They can
only happen as a result of unethical actions by media executives and editors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The
research they present has plenty of evidence. Media coverage turns negative
when a competitor firm has financial links with the media. This effect is
stronger for competitors with more similar product lines, so relevance
increases negativity. The effect is stronger for competitors nearby, so proximity
increases negativity. And, most perniciously, if the media company CEO has
equity-based compensation, so the CEO gets paid more when the media company
value increases, the effect is also stronger. In sum, negative media coverage
is a result of financial links, and it is particularly negative when the
competitive relations between firms are close and when the media company CEO is
for sale.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Should we
worry about this? People arguing that “talk is cheap” would not be too
concerned about these findings. But media coverage has significant consequences
for firms, especially for their access to financial resources, so seeing it can
be tilted so easily means that there is one more area of competition that
requires regulatory attention. We cannot have an economy and society in which
consequential, expensive talk is for sale.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231192863">DesJardine, Mark R. , Wei Shi, and, Xin Cheng. 2023. The New Invisible Hand: How Common Owners Use the Media as a Strategic Tool. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-36562101715421075322023-08-28T20:20:00.005-07:002023-09-05T17:22:17.898-07:00When Your Calling Goes Silent: Journalists React to the Decline of Journalism<p>Occupations differ in so many ways, and often we don’t recognize these
differences. I recently discussed the emphasis on precision and process in the
Singapore educational system and made the point that the job market for nuclear
plant operators is limited. Nuclear plant operation is an occupation that
demands precision because mistakes are exceedingly costly, but there is no
benefit in that occupation from other kinds of excellence. Other occupations
require attention and stamina – think of truck drivers. Yet other occupations
require investments in energy and devotion that go far beyond what most people
will provide – think of orchestra musicians, and of journalists. People in such
occupations often refer to their work as a calling.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ttG5ZH4zETLsQo2ktzMRw1M5b0Uy9DFidscdizKiDF5xgKxr3-1f_CAmveLwBLMo7bv9nqbkVWxIgurwcZ6BNafomDsaJ1DJFuqRSKZsMptf0wDZMUU2_y6Uf4R5fJbvNuneHdJeStvIznJcB8dyhK-bzKTxNgQd4tmzpvyOb4CbrFdYeMHmhTH2YkZ2/s359/AllPresidents1.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="354" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ttG5ZH4zETLsQo2ktzMRw1M5b0Uy9DFidscdizKiDF5xgKxr3-1f_CAmveLwBLMo7bv9nqbkVWxIgurwcZ6BNafomDsaJ1DJFuqRSKZsMptf0wDZMUU2_y6Uf4R5fJbvNuneHdJeStvIznJcB8dyhK-bzKTxNgQd4tmzpvyOb4CbrFdYeMHmhTH2YkZ2/w317-h320/AllPresidents1.PNG" width="317" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When an occupation that requires a calling goes into dramatic change and
even decline, what happens to the people in it? Journalism is currently in such
a period, and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231196062">research by Winnie Yun Jiang and Amy Wrzesniewski published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a> has documented the effects on individual
journalists. It is sad reading but provides important understanding.<br /> <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Journalism is threatened from all sides by digitalization. A good
journalist is now someone who generates a lot of clicks on their online
article. A good journalist is someone who can compete effectively with the
social media types, who specialize in attracting clicks to media with very
little content. A good journalist is someone who can accept low pay. After all,
why should newspapers pay well when their business is to generate clicks to content
pages that drop preference cookies and show advertising content?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Journalists confront these changes at every turn. Many lose their jobs,
and some quit. Some try to find work that matches their skills, and others try
to find work that matches their values (not necessarily the same thing). The
problem is that when an occupation is a calling, it can be difficult to
reinterpret work. When someone is forced to leave such an occupation, it can be
painful – perhaps impossible – to reorient oneself as a worker. Some people
find ways to move forward by specializing in some of the skills they have
developed in that occupation. Others find that being asked to give up their
focus on other skills, and to abandon the values that propelled them to seek
that career, is simply too difficult, both in the thinking and the emotion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Facing such threats, journalists are divided: some reinvent their
careers by searching for meaning in new occupations, and others cannot find
that meaning outside of journalism and thus face a truly unsolvable dilemma. What
unites them is the sadness of realizing that their future will be different
from their past and, in important ways, will be worse. For all of us who love
meaningful careers in general, and journalism specifically, this is a painful
story of coping and adaptation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231196062"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Jiang, </span>Winnie Yun and Amy Wrzesniewski. 2023. Perceiving Fixed or Flexible Meaning: Toward a Model of Meaning Fixedness and Navigating Occupational Destabilization. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-87554417957318298542023-08-15T20:47:00.002-07:002023-08-15T20:47:36.369-07:00Language in Organizations: When and Why are Men Given Higher Performance Evaluations than Women?<p>Researchers
are familiar with the gender gaps in performance evaluations of employees, and
the promotion gaps that follow. Firms are aware of this too, and many of them take
serious steps to become fair in their evaluations. Imagine looking inside one
such firm - a Fortune 500 technology company committed to fairness - and seeing
that they also differ in how men and women’s work is evaluated. How could that
happen?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWSyKWcoXDL7fNvqcxX6e9WTnuiKwxsqy6ClYkdGKZVo2O9jwdAfBAyRB0tiWoNLFcYpB8oYe1ujY0iJmvSrpG5qD5M4JpGKf8WNhG4O6rN5Uz4fUkMN3rB3182Y3N8DyLLeKG-gvOEjo21oNY6pfxpRsOk9K2br5p-LhPLR2MXHePA2ZdTgUimEVx6-G1/s849/MenWomen2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="849" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWSyKWcoXDL7fNvqcxX6e9WTnuiKwxsqy6ClYkdGKZVo2O9jwdAfBAyRB0tiWoNLFcYpB8oYe1ujY0iJmvSrpG5qD5M4JpGKf8WNhG4O6rN5Uz4fUkMN3rB3182Y3N8DyLLeKG-gvOEjo21oNY6pfxpRsOk9K2br5p-LhPLR2MXHePA2ZdTgUimEVx6-G1/s320/MenWomen2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122420962080">Research by Shelley J. Correll, Katherine R. Weisshaar, Alison Wynn, and JoAnne DelfinoWehner published in <i>American Sociological Review</i></a> shed light on how unfair evaluations
happen. They looked at the scores given to men and women, and also examined the
text of the performance assessments. They asked two questions: (1) Were workplace
behaviors viewed similarly when done by women and men? (2) Were workplace
behaviors valued similarly when done by women and men? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What is
viewed and how it is valued are central components of performance assessment. And,
in this firm, the answer to the two questions were “yes” to both questions for
most of the nearly 90 workplace behaviors they studied. The interesting part is
in the exceptions to this rule, because that is where gender bias is found. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Let’s start
with what behaviors were viewed more often in men and women evaluations. For
men, managing people was mentioned much more often, and nearly always
positively. For women, communication style was mentioned much more often, and
nearly always negatively. In fact, the (common) negative views of women’s
communication style were the exact opposite of the (rare) negative views of men’s
communication style. Women were too aggressive and outspoken, said the performance
valuations, and men were too modest. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Does that
match our everyday experience of how women and men communicate? Perhaps not, and
maybe it suggests that they were held to different standards. Women are
supposed to be modest and soft spoken; men are supposed to be assertive. This
is so conventional that it is remarkable to find such a double standard in a
firm committed to fair evaluation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Now let’s
see what behaviors were valued differently in men and women evaluations. This
is also very conventional. Being a helpful person was viewed similarly often in
men and women and typically produced the second-highest rating. A four out of
five, so promotion possible but not a sure thing. Being a person who takes
charge was much viewed more often in men and was strongly linked to a top
rating in men but to a second-highest rating in women. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Again, we
see the same convention play itself out. Men should communicate assertively,
they should take charge, and they should be promoted for this. Women being helpful
and taking charge is OK, but not great. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Language matters
because it shapes thinking, which in turn affects how people are evaluated by others
and given responsibilities at work. It is doubtful that a technology firm benefits
from having evaluation and promotion practices that correspond to old-fashioned
gender roles, and it is certain that such practices are not fair. To change
them, it is necessary to change how managers view, value, and talk about
behaviors at work.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0003122420962080">Correll, S.J., K.R. Weisshaar, A.T. Wynn, J.D. Wehner. 2020. Inside the
Black Box of Organizational Life: The Gendered Language of Performance
Assessment. <i>American Sociological Review</i> <b>85</b>(6) 1022-1050.</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-57881187097752871672023-07-27T22:15:00.001-07:002023-07-27T22:15:59.288-07:00Conceal or Reveal? How Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse Went Unreported<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDioD7VYYg5WYiq-KV2vbW7EvfwsnOGrqF7TgEEmpW8IBQoHlVcPccSgFyes7GeiUEx7VIH4Iv-q1S6JwX96RXMjfX9CWV5wiiq0V7OiZbfT3h_bST0vilFwYN2xcHcrcdTeRrQ7wwb_IfaMxZA4BKXulw3FHnzmtM03kUlX7OcWzVO_eVvFBvJg4uT_LO/s3738/ClergyDarkened2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2364" data-original-width="3738" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDioD7VYYg5WYiq-KV2vbW7EvfwsnOGrqF7TgEEmpW8IBQoHlVcPccSgFyes7GeiUEx7VIH4Iv-q1S6JwX96RXMjfX9CWV5wiiq0V7OiZbfT3h_bST0vilFwYN2xcHcrcdTeRrQ7wwb_IfaMxZA4BKXulw3FHnzmtM03kUlX7OcWzVO_eVvFBvJg4uT_LO/s320/ClergyDarkened2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let us talk about
sexual abuse of minors for a moment. It is an uncomfortable topic, made even
more uncomfortable by the fact that the sex abuse scandal in the U.S. Catholic
church broke after two decades of sex abuse being known in communities and by
the church. What happened? Knowing the answer is useful for protecting the
vulnerable in society and for understanding how societies and communities
interact.<br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2021.1337">Recent research published by Alessandro Piazza and Julien Jourdan in <i>Academy of Management Journal</i></a> provides important answers. Their approach was intuitive and important.
If members of the same large organization (the Church) are responsible for the
same kind of abuse in many communities, but this is kept quiet in some
communities but not in others, maybe it is valuable to find out what kind of communities
protects the organization and lets its employees victimize its vulnerable members?
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What they found is
depressingly familiar to anyone who studies organizations and communities. Communities
who identify with the organization protect it – so although a majority Catholic
community would have many more potential victims and families reporting abuse, a
greater proportion of Catholics in the community actually protected the church
against having misconduct made public.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Well-organized
communities also protected the Church. Many voluntary associations and informal
meeting places indicate a community capable of much joint social action and
self-improvement. In the case of abuse by local clergy, this positive community
characteristic instead turned negative. Rather than acting to reveal the abuse,
the communities showed inaction. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Finally, community
homogeneity also predicted communities that protected the abusers and the Church.
Specifically, ethnic homogeneity (for example, nearly all White) was an
indicator of communities that would be unlikely to making public cases of sex
abuse. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Why did this
happen? Homogeneity, organization, and identification are characteristics of
communities that are capable of a great deal of organized action, but in the
abuse case, they instead seemed to display organized inaction. But let us not
make a theory of grand conspiracies of communities against vulnerable members:
a simpler explanation is probably correct. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Speaking out is
costly. It is especially costly when the complaints are sensitive, as in sex
abuse. It is even more costly when the accusation is directed at a highly respected
pillar of the community, as when the abuser is clergy. The costs increase when community
homogeneity and organization create the suspicion (and often, reality) that others
will organize against the whistle-blower, and when community identification
with the organization makes such counter-organization a near certainty. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So, parents would
be quiet, journalists would not write stories, editors would not allocate space
in newspapers, and the Church would quietly reassign and sometimes defrock the
perpetrators. For decades. We need to understand this because the processes are
general, and they can happen for similar or different kinds of abuse, and for similar
or different organizations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2021.1337">Piazza, A., J. Jourdan. 2023. The Publicization of Organizational
Misconduct: A Social Structural Approach. <i>Academy of Management Journal</i> <b>forthcoming</b>.</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-44362438305981116222023-07-13T08:07:00.000-07:002023-07-13T08:07:07.536-07:00The Old Invading the New: Competition Across Generations<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8xHQO8aXHZznMl5xI1Xey2elNDqPJ-Y8JSMxkhX04CDkOrszkf_1prbs-ckMDcvt32IDIG_PRB4kFxtltxEFK-Yh7DD_GBN8xSjvOugKlcfLx8uCcxEHlAko0ZVnSWm8wa0Ekv-iyWKb1Ce31VVXM66brJ-vGGHJrCNVo24wTKRyoGx60TLS2_9ACgQ/s694/BoulangPortrait.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="694" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8xHQO8aXHZznMl5xI1Xey2elNDqPJ-Y8JSMxkhX04CDkOrszkf_1prbs-ckMDcvt32IDIG_PRB4kFxtltxEFK-Yh7DD_GBN8xSjvOugKlcfLx8uCcxEHlAko0ZVnSWm8wa0Ekv-iyWKb1Ce31VVXM66brJ-vGGHJrCNVo24wTKRyoGx60TLS2_9ACgQ/s320/BoulangPortrait.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>If you have
visited France and are like me, you have been completely impressed by the
amazing French bakeries. Truly artisanal artistry with a great lineup of baked
goods. You likely have also failed to notice that there are two kinds of them.
One is the original kind where the baker handles every step of the process. The
other is a modern kind using pre-mixed flours and fixed recipes from one of a
few major brands—in other words, French artisanal franchise breads and
pastries.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What makes
this a case of competition across generations? That’s the topic of research by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231179631">Laura Dupin and Filippo Carlo Wezel published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>.
The idea is that both kinds of bakeries make the same kinds of goods, but the
modern kind is standardized across locations rather than unique. Why should
customers – and bakers – care about the difference? Well, the customers may be
better at tasting the difference than I am. And the bakers may care more,
because the modern kind know that they are giving up uniqueness and
“personality” for an easier way of doing business.<br /> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What does
that mean for competition? Bakeries are the kinds of businesses that care
deeply about location, because the business (at least in France) involves the
baker getting up crazy early to make breakfast-style goods, which nearby
customers buy and carry home or to work. I have certainly walked past bakeries
in France to get to a better one farther away, but there are limits to how far
I will walk, and there are also limits to how far a local customer will walk.
So, bakers want to be near to customers, and they may also want to be away from
each other. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Bakers also
think of how distinctive they are, and that’s where things get interesting. The
modern style think they are less distinctive because, well, they are less
distinctive. The traditional ones think they are more distinctive. That
introduces an interesting dynamic. The modern kind wants to be located away
from all others and, if possible, in the same place as an earlier (failed)
modern kind. The traditional baker is more likely to be fine with locating near
a modern one because they know they are distinctive and think that gives them
an advantage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Does this
matter for other kinds of businesses? It should. Customization gives distinctiveness,
and so do brand names. As goods move around more and more easily, industries
become “nearer” all the time. In the modern age of easy comparison of products
on platforms and in online reviews, the branded good may become more powerful
than ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231179631">Dupin, Laura and Filippo Carlo Wezel. 2023. Artisanal or Half-Baked? Competing Collective Identities and Location Choice among French Bakeries. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-46878784693901610632023-05-31T08:01:00.005-07:002023-05-31T08:01:55.654-07:00Why Women Managers Have Difficulties Fixing Gender Inequality <p>Consider this combination of factors: a woman
employee works in an organization with a gender equality initiative, and she
even has a woman manager. Is this the best possible situation? No, it is not.
And the explanation has nothing to do with queen bees. Instead, the problem is
that women managers are, well, women, and their experience with discrimination
has left a trace in how they work and interact with others.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-top: 6pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLsqMt6Hh1R5sAJbE8F0vMP3oOYBT2izzKGaWSSk2PYi-rzRbt0BAXkrkM7WhVjJmGyujRmCReU2iuxvjffuE3nyH9su_Sxvv5TLv8rBtyoK3gJ_3J4D6xpPFwZcCIy26xICEaVuFYy-UbxjxRAC8LO14nCgHbIKK4e-fS9JtTyk4QvaLTHTzYi2wsg/s796/WomanManagerVertic.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLsqMt6Hh1R5sAJbE8F0vMP3oOYBT2izzKGaWSSk2PYi-rzRbt0BAXkrkM7WhVjJmGyujRmCReU2iuxvjffuE3nyH9su_Sxvv5TLv8rBtyoK3gJ_3J4D6xpPFwZcCIy26xICEaVuFYy-UbxjxRAC8LO14nCgHbIKK4e-fS9JtTyk4QvaLTHTzYi2wsg/s320/WomanManagerVertic.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">This is, in brief, the finding of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392231174235">research by Vanessa M. Conzon recently published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>. She
studied an organization with a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) business and staffing, which is one more reason why a gender equality
initiative should go well, given the high education and liberal values of many
employees in STEM organizations. Yet, this organization displayed a paradoxical
divide: women managers spoke more clearly in support of a flexible work policy
that made space for maternity leave and onsite childcare, but it was the men
managers who more often let the women employees use this policy. Why?<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-top: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Conzon discovered that the underlying reason
was that men and women managers differed in the work they had been allowed and
expected to do, and the resulting work habits. For men, there were two paths:
dive into technological expertise, or dive into client relations. The two could
be sequenced, with technology first, or they could be combined. Promotions
followed their success in handling these assignments. For women, the most open
path was one of handling administration and coordination, often done despite
their technical skills and overlooking their potential client-handling skills.
Promotions followed their success in supporting coworkers and subordinates. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-top: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">These gendered career paths shaped how they
interacted with subordinates and what they allowed subordinates to do. Men
thrived in their technical and client-facing roles regardless of the work
schedules of their employees, and they coordinated their employees from afar
with email as the main tool. Women required employees’ presence to coordinate
and support them, and to some degree even to make sure employees did what they
were told to do. Although a manager was still a manager, man or woman, an
undercurrent in the firm was that subordinates followed men managers’
instructions more faithfully than women managers’ instructions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-top: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The result was a flexible work policy that had
very different consequences for men and women managers. For the men managers, the
policy mattered little because employees would still do as they were told
roughly when they were supposed to, and it mattered little how they scheduled
their work hours or whether they worked at home or in the office. For women
managers, employees’ use of the flexible work policy meant that the valuable
face time would be reduced and become unpredictable, making the managers’ job
harder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-top: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">So yes, support for such a policy is good – but
to see who will actually make it happen, we should also consider who benefits
from the policy, and who is damaged by it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-top: 6pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392231174235">Conzon, Vanessa M. 2023. The Equality Policy Paradox: Gender Differences in How Managers Implement Gender Equality-Related Policies. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming. </a></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-65410313620111063022023-04-10T05:47:00.001-07:002023-04-10T05:47:26.140-07:00Are We in a Groove? Music Theory and Innovative Team Learning<p>Do you know music theory? Most people
studying organizations or managing organizations do not, but maybe that should
change. Organizations improve by learning, and a large part of this learning is
done by teams. For example, teams are used to drive innovation efforts or more
incremental problem-solving or improvement efforts.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHMn5l0Yepw-GNQRVzE6S41GxAKZGhjxqAdnVEljOkOY7UuY1MQGy9aq-1Ebo7EZavyCOHWIHlL0OVMABoqbmOynib67WTMVzm2SxqgSFkWAcP83tEuVjeMHlN3o_oeTP63icHBqKExoXwG512UvhYfuK2BEabmIEkTv3kLLIpXsVgdHDGY2SFIXfxw/s335/Violin.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="283" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlHMn5l0Yepw-GNQRVzE6S41GxAKZGhjxqAdnVEljOkOY7UuY1MQGy9aq-1Ebo7EZavyCOHWIHlL0OVMABoqbmOynib67WTMVzm2SxqgSFkWAcP83tEuVjeMHlN3o_oeTP63icHBqKExoXwG512UvhYfuK2BEabmIEkTv3kLLIpXsVgdHDGY2SFIXfxw/s320/Violin.JPG" width="270" /></a></div>That is why <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231166635">Administrative Science Quarterly has published an article by Jean-François Harvey, Johnathan Cromwell, Kevin Johnson, and Amy Edmondson using music theory to understand the innovativeness of teams</a>. They followed central principles of music theory,
connecting the various ways teams can learn with the principles of tonality,
harmony, and rhythm. If this sounds unusual, maybe a look at the details helps?<br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tonality is the overall arrangement of a
musical piece, and the main component is the tonal note, which repeats and
supports the rest. For team learning to have tonality, it needs to use a
repeatable form of learning with predictable results. Among the different
learning approaches, learning from own experience provides tonality, which
makes it necessary, but it needs to be combined with other approaches to produce
innovation.</p><p class="MsoNormal">That is where harmony comes into play. Some learning approaches may have
harmony with learning from own experience and can be done simultaneously with
it. Specifically, learning from the experience of others is harmonious because
it has a similar goal of relatively incremental innovations; it just has
different and less predictable results because it is harder to tell what
information others can provide.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But what happens when teams employ other
types of learning that may not be in harmony with learning from one’s own
experience? This is when rhythm is crucial. In music, tension can be built by
changing between harmony and disharmony over time. The crucial phrase here is
“over time.” When teams move from sequences of harmonious learning to disharmonious
learning events – such as explorations through making experiments or seeking
information from the context – doing so can be very productive if these
experiences are spread across teamwork episodes. A team cannot innovate if
there is too much harmony all the time, but it also struggles if there is too
much conflict or dissonance within the same teamwork episode. Finding a
learning rhythm by creating harmony and disharmony across teamwork episodes is
key to improving performance.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Does this sound overly elaborate and
potentially speculative? Well, here is the really good news. All the theory described
above was shown to hold both for innovative teams in a field study of an
organization and during an experiment involving innovative teams.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We all enjoy music, and most of us enjoy it
without knowing much music theory. We also benefit from innovations, and some
of us try to lead innovative teams. This new research may give all of us good
reason to learn some music theory, to explore harmony and rhythm in teamwork,
and to see how these lessons can improve organizational life.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231166635"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-ligatures: none;">Harvey, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">Jean-François, </span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231166635">Johnathan Cromwell, Kevin Johnson, and Amy Edmondson. 2023. The Dynamics of Team Learning: Harmony and Rhythm in Teamwork Arrangements for Innovation. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a> </span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-43069938253254889842023-03-31T15:26:00.000-07:002023-03-31T15:26:09.154-07:00The Artistry Gives Meaning: How Occupations Can Reclaim Old Technologies<p>We are in the middle of a major
technological revolution, with large-scale language models such as GPT (and its
app ChatGPT) making collecting information and reporting in the form of text
immensely easier than it has ever been. If the early problems (like imprecision
and untruths) can be worked out quickly, which seems likely, is that what the
future will look like? Maybe so, but there are reasons to suggest that the
needle can turn back to older technologies, such as persons typing on their
computers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeOhhNhD1JwthlhEIEiOHc38D1qU2c6LlktPSkmsVuDL6KADK3rasREOHZFeuoKpglR8XzKJyA8w-lNEIYAu56xykIgDUFs8hlInZifXDNZa8oqiJQtNnxiTbB9R6dDBiA93G915eQpv8jV_Fv98sg-HX-yf3n8JF2GvbonnFldUU6zLyK39eN24KXDQ/s2384/Minimoog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1376" data-original-width="2384" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeOhhNhD1JwthlhEIEiOHc38D1qU2c6LlktPSkmsVuDL6KADK3rasREOHZFeuoKpglR8XzKJyA8w-lNEIYAu56xykIgDUFs8hlInZifXDNZa8oqiJQtNnxiTbB9R6dDBiA93G915eQpv8jV_Fv98sg-HX-yf3n8JF2GvbonnFldUU6zLyK39eN24KXDQ/s320/Minimoog.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Let us not try to speculate about ChatGPT
now, because it is in the future, but instead look at a lesson from a
technological revolution in the past. Conveniently, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392231163178">Andrew Nelson, CallenAnthony, and Mary Tripsas just published research on a modern technologybecoming replaced by an older one in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>. This is
a technology that you are familiar with because you have heard it and possibly
owned it too – the digital music synthesizer. It was the replacement of another
technology that you have heard, but probably not owned because it was so hard
to use – the analog music synthesizer.<br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What is the difference? Technically the
progress made by the digital synthesizer was that music is produced by
translating a digital stream into sound (which is always analog), which in turn
requires a digital processing device and allows the same processing device to
use pre-programmed and stored sounds. Push a button to get a piano, or another
analog instrument, or a sound not produced by any instrument. Analog
synthesizers are analog all the way, which requires turning various knobs to
produce the desired sound. The digital option is much, much easier to use and
produces a great variety of sounds.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Digital synthesizers still dominate the
living rooms (or whatever other rooms) in people’s houses where children learn
to play keyboards and aspire to become pianists. They are so flexible in use
that they dominated the stages of bands too. But then, something happened. The
great ease of using them meant that they leveled the field too much, made
keyboardists sound too similar to each other, and made it harder to produce
unique and personal sounds.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This might not have been a problem for a
digital technology doing surgery – we want reliable and reproducible surgery,
not personally expressive surgery. But musicians are artists looking for unique
expressions, stirring a demand for a return of the older, harder to use, but
more expressive technology. What next? Digital technology is very advanced – it
can skillfully pretend to be analog technology, and indeed digital synthesizers
emulating analog ones soon appeared in the market and became popular.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But in a world inhabited by members of a
powerful occupation who require a technology to display their personal ability
and expression, that could never be enough. So, the technology moved again to
meet their requirements, concluding a cycle that ended up where it started. Or
more accurately, these technologies coexist now, and what each musician chooses
says a lot about who they are and what they are trying to accomplish. For the
very elite, personal expression through adjusting all the knobs to produce just
the right sound is the way to go. For the other layers, all the way down to the
4-year-olds discovering that they can play music, the ease of the digital
synthesizer is still the convenient option.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So if you are telling people that ChatGPT
can never become a writer, keep in mind that there are many different kinds of
writers with different needs. Maybe you will also become fascinated, find
ChatGPT convenient for a while, and then go back. That just means that you are
similar to the most ambitious musicians. Many others will be fine using the
digital writing synthesizer.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00018392231163178">Nelson, Andrew, Callen Anthony, and MaryTripsas. 2023. “If I Could Turn Back Time”: Occupational Dynamics,Technological Trajectories, and the Reemergence of the Analog Music Synthesizer. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-83515230269488674062023-02-21T22:26:00.004-08:002023-02-21T22:26:57.893-08:00Can Creativity Be Stored? Yes, and It Should Be<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5r14z7cWu9JbvrhRnBt2UgGqLvYhem0wS7_N9gjTusRRdDtragQVSs9ktFLoEkYuEirnsys1kb3JdIRqnqOpXnaH3Oc6Uq31xVS8yAm8QRN2e_8GATs8E9oJbj6kj_rPVnfCuSOrsKkXAKIG9mJZKtKPAtiunsW5L9f9dsmnLRqe4LP5sVFGTp_UQsQ/s615/CreativeOffice2.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="615" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5r14z7cWu9JbvrhRnBt2UgGqLvYhem0wS7_N9gjTusRRdDtragQVSs9ktFLoEkYuEirnsys1kb3JdIRqnqOpXnaH3Oc6Uq31xVS8yAm8QRN2e_8GATs8E9oJbj6kj_rPVnfCuSOrsKkXAKIG9mJZKtKPAtiunsW5L9f9dsmnLRqe4LP5sVFGTp_UQsQ/s320/CreativeOffice2.png" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">For those of us who are not creative, it is difficult
to imagine how creative people work. Perhaps we get some ideas from learning
techniques such as brainstorming, when a team gets together and talk about
ideas, with a ban on critique and an emphasis on letting each idea feed
subsequent ideas. That’s a nice image, but it is not at all how creative
industries and individuals work. Have you ever thought how unfair it is that
the person with the messiest office is often the most creative at your
workplace? Actually it is not unfair, and it is not just your workplace.<br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The explanation for the messy creative person and the
uncreative brainstorming session can be found in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231154909">research by Poornika Ananth and Sarah Harvey published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>. They had a big
study of creative individuals in theatre and architecture, and among their many
findings two stood out. Creativity can be drawn from storage. Creativity can be
stored. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">A key insight is that people who have creativity as
their main work do not work on a single project, but many, both in sequence and
concurrently. They get ideas and inspiration, which fuel creative outputs, but
often these do not fit their current project well enough. What to do with ideas
and inspiration that do not fit? Think about them creatively, create symbols
that make them concrete and memorable, and store them for later. Try to make
the storage systematic enough that they are easy to retrieve later.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">What to do with creative projects when no ideas and
inspiration are coming? Go to the creativity storage and see what fits.
Probably nothing fits exactly, but there will be pieces there that look almost
right and can be cobbled together. Creative people, especially when working in
creative industries, are good at their work exactly because they have a
portfolio of stored creative inputs that they can use in their portfolio of
creative projects. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">It is interesting how this description of creativity
fits a theory of culture known as “culture as a toolkit.” When people have and
use culture as a toolkit, culture is partly in their memory and partly picked
up from others. They can have many cultural elements, which are not necessarily
consistent with each other, and they will draw from those cultural elements to
solve problems they encounter. The individual with a large and diverse cultural
toolkit is a lot like the creative individual – a large storage of ideas and
inspiration, and great ability to solve problems. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Perhaps we should not be surprised? A lot of
creativity is culturally judged, and some of it even creates culture. We learn
from theatrical plays and from watching buildings, if they are creative. The
creative individual who stores and retrieves ideas and inspiration also creates
ideas and inspiration for us, and is doing society a great service.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">As I finish writing this, I am looking at my office,
which is disturbingly tidy for a professor. I still like to think of myself as
creative, and maybe it helps that my brain is messier than my office. I do have
good memory, though, and I maintain a portfolio of projects that I work for.
There is hope for everyone once we understand the processes that lead to
creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392231154909">Ananth, Poornika and Sarah Harvey. 2023. Ideas in the
Space Between: Stockpiling and Processes for Managing Ideas in Developing a
Creative Portfolio. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-53314749560973232742023-01-16T23:44:00.002-08:002023-01-17T00:17:04.262-08:00Wait, Our Employees Can Also Use Us Politically? Political Activism in Firms<p>We already know about CEOs making political
statements using their firm as a tool – such as leaving California while
protesting taxes and regulation, or publicly announcing that they will cover
travel expenses for abortions for their employees in abortion-banning states.
There is debate over how much CEOs should engage in political debates and use
their firms to make statements. But what about employees? Of course, anyone is
free to act politically outside work, but it is also possible to use the firm
as a tool for public protest.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3uMNVhpDZLiedOVAKQjMD8DsZF1-iYRj0ftGobD-eCXeMyBfaRmMC7NwZ8ddpay29W54z2zKcxp8EOH26H68NO3aL48_R5kiZiuT1x34dQjHzBYCcMirgvKb66wZwCEQmhhdw5iwAY6gIJCgjKaIeUasSCah7irVDY8aBNdGmYGtt0Q1WzZ0SJmGiKw/s600/TakingAKnee.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3uMNVhpDZLiedOVAKQjMD8DsZF1-iYRj0ftGobD-eCXeMyBfaRmMC7NwZ8ddpay29W54z2zKcxp8EOH26H68NO3aL48_R5kiZiuT1x34dQjHzBYCcMirgvKb66wZwCEQmhhdw5iwAY6gIJCgjKaIeUasSCah7irVDY8aBNdGmYGtt0Q1WzZ0SJmGiKw/s320/TakingAKnee.webp" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221148725">Research by Alexandra Rheinhardt, Forrest Briscoe, and Aparna Joshi published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a> asks
when employees are more likely to use their organization as a tool for making
political statements. It focuses on a public protest – the “Take a Knee”
movement of players in the NFL (National Football League) kneeling or showing
other kinds of protest during the pre-game play of the national anthem. It is a
remarkably visible protest because of the TV broadcast of the event, the
symbolism of the national anthem, and the clearly visible team uniforms.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Some politicians, some team owners, and
some audience members were aghast when this movement began – and many others
were delighted. As any real form of protest should be, it was controversial,
and it was also a powerful ingredient of the Black Lives Matter movement to
protest racism and police violence. But what made some players in some teams
join the movement, while others did not? The research found two factors that
made the players more likely to use their team as a tool for public protest. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The first was fairness – teams treating
their players equally, as expressed through similar pay levels, were more
likely to see players emboldened and making protests. Keep in mind that these
were protests not against the team, but using the team colors, and they were
protests for fairness in society. This makes sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The second was openness – teams that were
open to the message of the movement, as expressed through having a greater
proportion of black players, were more likely to see their players protest.
Again, this action is part of the Black Lives Matter movement, so it matters
that a team does not specifically favor white players through its recruitment.
This makes sense too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Both fairness and openness made individual
players more likely to protest before a game, and it added up to making at
least one player in the team, usually multiple, more likely to protest too.
This brings us back to what happens when employees use the firm as a tool for
public protest. Of course, it is a worthy effort for the employees, who feel
strongly about the issue and want to express their views as publicly as
possible. But should managers and owners be worried?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">That brings us to the last part of the
story. Another item predicting protests was that the teams were in more liberal
communities – communities that generally agreed with the Black Lives Movement and
would likely react positively to players protesting on its behalf. At least in
this context, one could argue that the player, by taking an overall
controversial stance, brought the team closer to its community. For a move that
received so much public attention – even with the president at the time (who
has no particular authority on football team hiring decisions) telling teams to
fire the protesters – this is an unusually happy ending. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221148725">Rheinhardt, A., F. Briscoe, and A. Joshi. 2023 "Organization-as-Platform Activism: Theory and Evidence from the National Football League “Take a Knee” Movement." <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a></p><div><br /></div>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-85666619514316252092022-12-09T01:57:00.000-08:002022-12-09T01:57:00.237-08:00Feeding Addiction: Why Do Doctors Over-prescribe Dangerous Drugs?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEno5hJRwwWjieIA1VqgoNFOdmeA4eP04kE-tBXa3he_zh6C6pBIDaiiO3ORMNAo8Xk_PRQhjm0fwaSnKp0bB0zCcnIzYoVvnTPa6Ys6fmbF5PrFEp8zgv61A2io9LXyRF3FLgEmCGN8OBSMH9q_U-mSDUaR9Gl3zOjbHE1LgecipR8GkyqLm9QqswOA/s735/benzodiazepine-port.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="735" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEno5hJRwwWjieIA1VqgoNFOdmeA4eP04kE-tBXa3he_zh6C6pBIDaiiO3ORMNAo8Xk_PRQhjm0fwaSnKp0bB0zCcnIzYoVvnTPa6Ys6fmbF5PrFEp8zgv61A2io9LXyRF3FLgEmCGN8OBSMH9q_U-mSDUaR9Gl3zOjbHE1LgecipR8GkyqLm9QqswOA/s320/benzodiazepine-port.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Here is a disturbing fact: The USA has had a little more
than a million deaths from COVID-19, many of them unnecessary because of weak
countermeasures – but since 1999, it has also had a million deaths from drug
overdoses. Many of these are also unnecessary, because they involve drugs
treating insomnia, anxiety, and in some cases pain. The drugs (benzodiazepines
and opioids) can create dependence and are dangerous in high doses, so it is
the doctor’s (physician’s) responsibility to check need and dosage. They often
fail to do so, with deadly consequences for the patient.<br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finding out why this happens was the task of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221137681">Victoria (Shu)Zhang, Aharon Cohen Mohliver, and Marissa King in research published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>. To get to the core of the problem, the
researchers made two important innovations. The first innovation was to look
carefully at how doctors are connected to each other through their patient
sharing. Patient sharing means that the same patients see more than one doctor
and implies that the doctors can communicate and learn from each other. Through
their network of patient-sharing peer doctors, they can learn how to follow
good practice, or they can learn how to deviate from it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The second innovation was to distinguish deviant (illegal)
over-prescription from marginal over-prescription. Marginal over-prescription
is when the doctor prescribes too much according to good practice, but not so
much that it clearly violates legal limits. This is a liminal (borderline)
practice, and accounts for more over-prescription than deviant
over-prescription. Much more: 56 percent is liminal, as opposed to 9 percent
deviant. The rest is by doctors who cannot be easily classified as either
deviant or liminal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So how do doctors learn from their network? The answers are
disturbing. Any kind of over-prescribing in the network (liminal or deviant)
encourages any kind of over-prescribing by the doctor (liminal or deviant).
Network misconduct promotes physician misconduct. So what distinguishes between
doctors engaging in one or the other of these types of over-prescribing? It
turns out that doctors with a central position (many connected peers) or a
cohesive position (connected peers are connected to each other) were more
likely to engage in deviant, criminal over-prescription. Looser connected
network positions encouraged liminal over-prescription.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What about doctors being more or less honest? We often think
of people as being different in integrity and willingness to violate norms and
break laws. We may even imagine that people differ in their tendencies to build
networks depending on who they are. Part of the strength of this research is
how carefully the researchers examined this explanation, finding that the
network had strong effects even when accounting for many alternative
explanations.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Which is not to say that doctor differences don’t exist. In
fact, high workloads led to much more liminal over-prescription but only a minor
increase in deviant over-prescription. Illegal prescription was mostly related
to age – young doctors or doctors near retirement age were more likely to do
it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These are disturbing answers because they show that laws and
norms are not enough. Laws regulate deviant/illegal over-prescription, but that
accounts for a minority of the dangerous prescription. Norms are learnt, but
findings on network effects show that the physicians learn liminal
over-prescription just as well as normative best practice. And here is the most
worrying part of the research, which I did not write until now. The
patient-sharing networks the researchers measured were not captured through
shared prescription of benzodiazepines or any other mental health drug—only
regular drugs. This research shows that networks not organized around
misconduct can produce misconduct learning. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221137681">Zhang, Victoria (Shu), Aharon Cohen Mohliver, and MarissaKing. 2022. Where Is All the Deviance? Liminal Prescribing and the SocialNetworks Underlying the Prescription Drug Crisis. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a><o:p></o:p></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-59602099952975426522022-11-29T18:14:00.000-08:002022-11-29T18:14:35.391-08:00Why Heroes Lose: Changing a Piece When the System is Broken<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBMNNoAtDzI27PCVX1uQYqMqeXigIBaFZdRUx9b9LNg6s7ki9DQcLnsC-0DOXNBTbhTJmIoiYOOY9rFACoiY7YvH4UWZt5HV9HQyARrfXgrcG9ANCJvGhfXovROrtYRj8ShMCVbFXD6o0H-S_l86di52xQh5mgxqb2g90-pkLYj35GMgx4C2FApJk1SQ/s442/PhantomAssassinUP.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="362" data-original-width="442" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBMNNoAtDzI27PCVX1uQYqMqeXigIBaFZdRUx9b9LNg6s7ki9DQcLnsC-0DOXNBTbhTJmIoiYOOY9rFACoiY7YvH4UWZt5HV9HQyARrfXgrcG9ANCJvGhfXovROrtYRj8ShMCVbFXD6o0H-S_l86di52xQh5mgxqb2g90-pkLYj35GMgx4C2FApJk1SQ/s320/PhantomAssassinUP.png" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US">Did you know that companies are full of
would-be heroes? They are the managers of subunits, units, functions, and any
other subdivisions of the company. They are doing their jobs, keeping their
units efficient and fulfilling their goals, but what they really want is a
crisis of some sort—a crisis that brings out their true potential as heroes who
can make the necessary changes, right the course of the units they are
managing, and prove that they should be promoted to greater responsibility.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">We like heroes. Companies promote heroes.
But few ask the question of whether there are situations in which a hero creates
loss for their company, even as they are trying to win by overcoming a crisis.
<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221136267">Recent research by Julien Clement published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i> looks at this question and finds some worrying answers.</a> The context for drawing
these insights is interesting, by the way, and explains the choice of hero in
the illustration. He studies teams in the online game DOTA 2, which experienced
multiple challenges due to rule changes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The start of the insights drawn from the
research is that organizations are coordinated systems, so any attempt to
change one unit can have consequences for other units. Change in one place
usually makes the entire system a little worse, until corresponding changes are
made elsewhere. When heroes do their work, they also put other heroes to work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">That is only the start of the insights,
though, and the continuation is worse. It is important to also ask why a crisis
happens. Maybe it is because the hero’s particular unit experiences a local
problem, for example related to the technology it operates, the inputs it gets,
or the market for its outputs. But it could also be because of a system-wide
problem that affects the entire company. If that happens, problems will occur
in multiple units at once, and the changes to each unit will affect other
units, creating a very confusing environment where it is hard to tell the
difference between the original crisis and the new problems created by other
units’ changes. When heroes go to work on the same problem and don’t coordinate,
the problem can grow bigger. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If heroes might lose, then what is the
alternative? Simple. Any organization has a center, and when the entire
organization is hit by a system-wide problem, the center needs to take charge.
This is the time for a CEO and top management team to diagnose the system-wide
problem and search for a solution. The system needs to change. Of course, the
heroes can still be given work, but the task of each one should be defined and
distributed centrally. (Notice how this explains why the Marvel heroes always
struggle unreasonably much given their abilities – they are not centrally
coordinated, but their adversary is.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The lesson for an organization is clear.
The idea of operating it as an independent adaptive system is wonderful for the
sequence of small and local challenges that constitute its daily life. At the
same time, it is exactly the wrong approach for dealing with larger,
system-wide problems that occasionally happen and sometimes spell the
difference between success and failure.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221136267">Clement, Julien. 2022. Missing the Forest for the Trees: Modular Search and Systemic Inertia as a Response to Environmental Change. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming. </a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-38394444440547607732022-11-23T21:51:00.000-08:002022-11-23T21:51:08.224-08:00Black or Blue? How Color Gives Position<p><span lang="EN-US">Should we care about how firms use colors?
That sounds like an unusual question, and I will soon give an even more unusual
reason we now know something about the topic. Let me first suggest a reason to
care, though: firms appear to be pretty conscious of color choices in logos. We
may suspect that they rely on outside consultants and imitation quite a bit in
selecting colors, of course. Notice how many web platforms and other IT firms
seem to have a liking for various shades of blue (Microsoft <a>Edge</a></span><span lang="EN-US">, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) or have remarkably similar “rainbow”
logos (Microsoft, Google, old Apple). So, they seem to care, but it is not
clear that they think very independently about their color choices.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB9-m_OeqIeQJF59AMctXqp8RyLYebg5ruDa_lxyoIXgOqC-Plddpx01rfHo7Bgv-I1v8pjY0z74ryqCufQo6J66vFdywmVnztJXje1Z9zfTUZbA07zCZ8qoaWkA8A7cAkdeY0OKUaGnN2HuBg5585fkwsDdG8cyaDSuf-ny2gK5_TCQYsIqphHDQvYQ/s267/BlackMetal.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="265" data-original-width="267" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB9-m_OeqIeQJF59AMctXqp8RyLYebg5ruDa_lxyoIXgOqC-Plddpx01rfHo7Bgv-I1v8pjY0z74ryqCufQo6J66vFdywmVnztJXje1Z9zfTUZbA07zCZ8qoaWkA8A7cAkdeY0OKUaGnN2HuBg5585fkwsDdG8cyaDSuf-ny2gK5_TCQYsIqphHDQvYQ/s1600/BlackMetal.JPG" width="267" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US">How does that observation match our
knowledge of color choices? Truth is, we know very little, but <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221137289">recent research by Stoyan V. Sgourev, Erik Aadland, and Giovanni Formilan published in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a> gives an interesting start. This research was
not about Facebook, though, or any kind of firm: it was about the album covers
of Norwegian black metal bands. This sounds somewhat unrelated to how firms
choose colors, but if you stay with me a bit, we may be able to make a
connection.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The researchers showed that indeed color
matters a lot for positioning, and in two ways. The first is that color is
chosen with respect to peers. To position themselves initially, the black metal
bands’ album covers primarily featured black (obviously) and other very dark or
muted colors, and these color choices were influenced by peers’ choices. The
second is that color is chosen with respect to the environment. Black metal
bands were for a while under attack societally because of non-music activities
such as church arson. Interestingly, their album cover design choices became
less black during this time period, which made sense given a wish to dissociate
themselves from news stories about crime and associated stigmatization. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Although most firms are very different from
black metal bands, we can suggest some connections. Colors do seem to indicate
similarity with peers or competitors, so early choices of color by a group of
similar firms or an industry probably matter a great deal. Color is also seen
as symbolic, at least implicitly, and firms will pay attention to this
symbolism. Exactly what symbolism is influencing the choice of blues by web
platforms and other IT firms is not entirely clear to me, but blue does give an
impression of cleanliness. (So does white, but white is not a practical color
to use as a firm symbol on a computer screen.) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">We should also keep in mind that firms can
be more strategic in color choices than the copying of color that we see so
often. I mentioned that Apple, in its early years, had a rainbow logo similar
to the logos currently used by Microsoft and Google. Its current color choice
is different: Apple has been black, and it is currently grey. What does that
mean? Interestingly, grey is also a color that gives a clean image, though it
is arguably cooler than blue. It is also distinctive from the logos used by
other firms with similar products and services. For Apple, that could be
exactly the point: they have found one more feature shared by firms in the
industry that Apple can use to show how unique they are.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">We still know little about colors. What we
do know suggests that firms care about colors, but they tend to mimic each
other. Mimicry does not indicate the most conscious of choices, but as Apple
shows, it is possible to make independent choices that can be distinctive and
smart. That is worth thinking about. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221137289"><span lang="NO-BOK">Sgourev,
Stoyan V. , Erik Aadland, and Giovanni Formilan. </span>2022. Relations in Aesthetic Space: How Color Enables
Market Positioning. Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-5393471041656040062022-11-17T23:09:00.004-08:002022-11-17T23:09:38.848-08:00The Market Turn: Are Workers Exposed to the Market Different in Body and Mind?<p>Our economy and society are currently
seeing a big change. Many firms are replacing the traditional management
practices of supervision, goals, and managed rewards with a market turn that
exposes workers to the risks and rewards of competitive markets. This is seen
in many places, from the “contractors” delivering meals or transportation
services under app platforms all the way up to investment bankers taking a cut
from each deal. Do we know what this does to people?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigjKeXhvM_FfbtSvq6SpfcTSATO5hS0p-NWw7JjKyb3lPaUfhnKgshhXswLtv05AvoqnssDtNw9_GDJnr3GtDzZAiKwQtZ0qEFOosyCC_m8ilnIpPCSCASfRAHW0WIokpIE-9PbmYFNPY31p2yf8MAoQ1vHXdgZU7ioyUKkuiVnmqywthlj23-UAfeOg/s2048/MarginCall.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigjKeXhvM_FfbtSvq6SpfcTSATO5hS0p-NWw7JjKyb3lPaUfhnKgshhXswLtv05AvoqnssDtNw9_GDJnr3GtDzZAiKwQtZ0qEFOosyCC_m8ilnIpPCSCASfRAHW0WIokpIE-9PbmYFNPY31p2yf8MAoQ1vHXdgZU7ioyUKkuiVnmqywthlj23-UAfeOg/s320/MarginCall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US">We do not, which is why <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221135606">research like Alexandra Michel’s recent publication in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a> is important.
She looked at bankers’ transition into market-exposed roles, which usually
happens after 9 years of employment. What she found was remarkable, because it
demonstrated that moving from managed rewards to market rewards is a radical
change that alters the mind and body of the worker.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Why is that? Think about what life is like
for most workers in regular organizations. Their role is defined, their goals
are defined, and the work is structured by supervisors or pre-defined
organizational processes. It is a predictable life. If they have contingent
rewards or incentives, the goals to fulfill have been specified in advance and
the resources to reach the goals are in place. At most, things could be
unpredictable because managers rank workers, so the rewards to one depend on
the others. Still, this is a pretty predictable life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Market-exposed work is different. The role
is to meet demand in whatever form the demand takes. The Uber driver (for
example) needs to be in the right place at the right time. The investment
banker needs to bring the parties of a potential deal together, so they agree
on the terms. This is an unpredictable life. Effort and rewards are no longer
connected as well because the market is unpredictable, and there is little
reward outside that given by meeting demand. And strangely enough, although
highly contingent rewards in conventional organizations make people work hard,
the market turn makes people work harder simply because there is always one
more potential, but uncertain, reward that seems to be within reach.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The result is overwork. And more
importantly, unlike the managed employees, the market-exposed employees mostly
blame themselves. After all, they are entrepreneur-like in job description and
should be designing work so that they actually meet market demand. Business
failure is personal failure, both in their mind and in those of their
colleagues, who subscribe to the same belief system. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The solution is obvious. They need to
manage their body and their mind in order to be strong enough for the overwork
and stress of their role. And this is where it gets scary. The bankers Michel
studied read about medical drugs of various kinds and made liberal use of doctors
who would give them the medications they asked for. Some of them even found
foreign mail-order suppliers of drugs that would enhance the performance of the
mind, or conceal fatigue, or handle various medical breakdowns. Because body
failure meant business failure, they manipulated their bodies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Incentives are supposed to be good for
organizations, and market incentives especially so because they allow worker
and organization to completely agree on what should be done. Only now are we
beginning to understand that they can also be exceptionally harmful for the
worker.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221135606">Michel, Alexandra. 2022. Embodying the Market: The Emergence of the Body Entrepreneur. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-58018747770685332922022-11-02T00:56:00.000-07:002022-11-02T00:56:13.525-07:00Do Firms Learn from Failure? Yes, But Not Always Productively<p>We all try to learn from our failures, and
we believe that we usually do so successfully. Similarly, we often think that
firms can learn from failures, and this belief is shared by people who observe (and
work in) firms and those who study organizational learning. It may be shocking to
realize that some of the details on whether and how firms learn are not well documented.
For example, we know that firms will change <i>something</i> after experiencing
failure, but we are rarely able to measure whether they change the right thing
and whether the change is an improvement.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This is why <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2020.0295">research by Cheon Mok (John)Kim, Colleen M Cunningham, and John Joseph published in <i>Academy of Management Journal</i></a> is interesting. They checked whether medical device firms could distinguish between failures caused by product features or market conditions and found
that they could. So far so good. They also checked whether failures due to product features led
to re-entry with a new product, and this is where things got more complicated –
and interesting. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7j44H9guBkoH_SgJpMqgo6gjPGQdzURBFEgyG39FVASDKcXoDA-UE2ilfFvkqWI-lNjy2l5U4Q2SP9WvYnZpP2C2FdLJMLJXo5iKU3MyZQzjDhxlX72BjxDsDfpgNLyUUXfXNArf1VM3iQBCKA1XrEG-ae6_Poe1ZfeqRPhx6xAkmylayDzFNee4kw/s815/Reentry.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="815" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia7j44H9guBkoH_SgJpMqgo6gjPGQdzURBFEgyG39FVASDKcXoDA-UE2ilfFvkqWI-lNjy2l5U4Q2SP9WvYnZpP2C2FdLJMLJXo5iKU3MyZQzjDhxlX72BjxDsDfpgNLyUUXfXNArf1VM3iQBCKA1XrEG-ae6_Poe1ZfeqRPhx6xAkmylayDzFNee4kw/s320/Reentry.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US">The answer is yes, but not always. More importantly,
the researchers could distinguish the conditions that made such learning more likely. If
the business unit that withdrew a failed product was close to the corporate
headquarters – geographically, in the organizational hierarchy, or in product lineup
– then it was more likely to re-enter with a new product. What is so distinctive
about being close to the corporate center? One feature is attention and surveillance;
another is support and resources. These seem like heads and tails of a coin, and
clearly either one could have this effect, and most likely they act in concert.<br />
<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In fact, the findings were even stronger
for the more repairable types of failures. If the failure was distinctly from
the product design, not the user, then corporate proximity had greater effect. If
the product failure was severe, then corporate proximity had greater effect. In
both cases, the fault is more obvious and more easily traced to the firm, and
accordingly it should be easier to learn from failure. And learn they did. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This is important knowledge for two
reasons. First, although we often assume that learning from failure happens, it
is often the case that the very things we assume to be true are faulty in some way,
and need to be checked carefully. That is also true about learning from failure,
because the conditions that make it happen are not always present. The firm
with highly decentralized management that is also geographically dispersed and
diversified has three strikes against learning from failure. There are many
such firms.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This brings us to the second point. From
what we know about learning, we should also be able to design organizations that
learn well. Given how learning is related to connections within the firm, and
the attention (and surveillance, support, and resources) that follows, designing
firms with structures that fail to learn is a completely unnecessary error, especially given
the costs of simply giving up when re-entry with an improved product would have
been possible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If we know how firms learn, we can design
them to learn well. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2020.0295">Kim, Cheon Mok (John), Colleen M Cunningham,and John Joseph. 2022. Corporate Proximity and Product Market Reentry: The Role of Corporate Headquarters in Business Unit Response to Product Failure. <i>Academyof Management Journal</i>, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-48999723683760172112022-10-26T02:03:00.002-07:002022-10-26T02:03:55.473-07:00Killed by Conspiracy Theory? The Social Spreading of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories <p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I am sure you have read
the news about how a variety of COVID-19 conspiracy theories have persuaded
many people that the pandemic is a fake and manipulative scam, possibly
involving a disease no more harmless than flu. Or the ones saying it is a deadly attack weapon designed
by some secretive perpetrator. Maybe you have also thought about how this is a
modern phenomenon, driven by domestic and foreign manipulators exploiting the
easy access to social media. And surely you have felt sorry for the people who
believed that Covid was harmless and ended up sick because they failed to
protect themselves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">But this story is only
half true. The pandemic is new and the specific conspiracy theories are new,
but conspiracy theories of various kinds are a permanent feature of our society.
People share variations of them in face-to-face conversations, in writing, and
now <i>also</i> on social media. Who are these people spreading conspiracy
theories? Why do they do it? <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224221125937">In research published in <i>American Sociological Review</i>, these issues are explored by Hayagreeva Rao, Paul Vicinanza, Echo Zhou,and me.</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgAenUm_YA3xasHY4Mgh4n7vXm50O6nC5JTuQZv9BLngRiojU2R612eOMdysM5xMLP7xAnE2EogNQMZaCcR3FgPnioGqWdRwlxjflfpdZLVnMWTsh89eV_477guU0-dVJ6fwfx3uDXWeqy8szgZNR4c0IRjqW00SuCnQG5Rr1aVn8K6O2BGXOkHkcXzQ/s876/ConspiracyTheory.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="876" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgAenUm_YA3xasHY4Mgh4n7vXm50O6nC5JTuQZv9BLngRiojU2R612eOMdysM5xMLP7xAnE2EogNQMZaCcR3FgPnioGqWdRwlxjflfpdZLVnMWTsh89eV_477guU0-dVJ6fwfx3uDXWeqy8szgZNR4c0IRjqW00SuCnQG5Rr1aVn8K6O2BGXOkHkcXzQ/s320/ConspiracyTheory.PNG" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Conspiracy theories make
threats more understandable, and thereby give a feeling of mastery and control.
This may seem ironic because conspiracy theories always involve some hidden
plot by secretive perpetrators. That’s exactly the point though. The conspiracy
theorist is the one who can see through the concealment and understand the
plot. And sometimes the plot means that the apparent danger is not real (the
scam disease). Even when the danger is real (the disease as weapon), some
people will find the thought of a human attacker more comfortable than that of a
mindless virus feeding on people to reproduce itself.<br /> <o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">How do we know that
conspiracy theories help people cope with the pandemic threat? Simple. One of
the drivers of social media Covid conspiracy talk was the infection rate. More
infection, more conspiracy theory talk. Conspiracy theories counter threat and reduce fear.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Conspiracy theories have
moderate and extreme versions. This is easy to tell by looking at their
content. The “film your hospital” conspiracy theory was about hospitals
pretending to be filled with patients (for money, or for political reasons).
This is moderate. An example extreme version is Bill Gates orchestrating the
pandemic for various evil purposes. Another is Covid
being a way of controlling people while constructing malicious 5G towers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Why does it matter that
the conspiracy theories differ in how extreme they are? Simple, again. One of
the drivers of social media Covid conspiracy talk is that the moderate versions
are gateways that get people into conspiracy talk. Later many of them graduate
to extreme versions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Conspiracy theorists can
spread different conspiracy theories, often at the same time. And remarkably,
often conspiracy theories that contradict each other. Logically, Covid can’t
both be a harmless scam and a deadly weapon, but the same people would spread
both within the span of a week (and yes, these were people, not bots – we can
identify bots). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">How to make sense of
this? Maybe the best way to sum it up is that conspiracy theories are a form of
reality denial. When the reality is threatening and difficult to explain and
rationalize, as it is during a pandemic, a conspiracy theory offers an escape.
But the escape is not perfect, because our society is full of people who don’t
believe in conspiracy theories and will challenge the believers. That’s why some poeple have multiple conspiracy theories. Whenever one of them is
challenged, the conspiracy theorist can fall back on another. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">What to do about such
reality denial? The starting point must be that it is not simple ignorance.
Reality denial is motivated reasoning, and facts alone will not help. Explain how one conspiracy theorist is false, and the conspiracy theorist will fall back on another. Because
it is motivated by a wish to reduce and control threat, the solution always
involves explanation of how the threat can be reduced through human action. It
is a difficult conversation because masks, isolation, and vaccinations all have
this effect, but conspiracy talk does not go away unless we explain how the threat can be reduced through joint action such as vaccinations and personal caution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224221125937">Greve, H. R., Rao, H., Vicinanza, P., & Zhou, E. Y. (2022). Online Conspiracy Groups: Micro-Bloggers, Bots, and Coronavirus Conspiracy Talk on Twitter. <i>American Sociological Review</i>, forthcoming.</a> https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224221125937 </o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-76921427055826358652022-10-12T15:18:00.000-07:002022-10-12T15:18:45.539-07:00Oops, I Did Not Mean to Be So Nice! Impression Management by Firms<p>In the ideal
world, we would like firms to make a profit and also to help the environment
and society. Indeed, the turn toward ESG (environment, social, and governance)
evaluation of firms is evidence that this is important to many, including a
growing niche of investors who favor firms that are responsible as well as
profitable. Are we living in this ideal world already? Or if not, are we moving
toward it? The answers are not clear.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBB-NSnfZWLHeGSdkpAVd6wRnwWkQYDbo1cEGr2wLzIR0aJgjgGPA9bgRY9NbjxgngSAVL_KFbKczh8fzXfwU_Rz__3Pw7cTKIdMQRE5E91d3RxXMc2iTRUlZ3I_pp0ZRSF2rPovNbcgwke4phkhBkzmW9ZNRfeqa-RF3xfsESzpOEmP2bQad_6R15qw/s516/Contribution.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="314" data-original-width="516" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBB-NSnfZWLHeGSdkpAVd6wRnwWkQYDbo1cEGr2wLzIR0aJgjgGPA9bgRY9NbjxgngSAVL_KFbKczh8fzXfwU_Rz__3Pw7cTKIdMQRE5E91d3RxXMc2iTRUlZ3I_pp0ZRSF2rPovNbcgwke4phkhBkzmW9ZNRfeqa-RF3xfsESzpOEmP2bQad_6R15qw/s320/Contribution.PNG" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221124916">In a recent article in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, Ben W. Lewis and W. Chad Carlos</a>
looked at how firms reacted to being rated as charitable. Being rated as
charitable is supposed to be good, both because it means that they contribute
to the social dimension (the S of ESG) and also, indirectly, that they are
profitable enough that they can afford to do so. Many firms cannot. If we lived
in the ideal world combining profits and ESG, or even a more limited world
combining profits and social contribution, managers would savor such a rating
and continue making philanthropic contributions. But in fact, firms rated as
charitable reduced their philanthropic contributions.<br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">How can
this be? To begin with, we can dismiss the idea that firms don’t care about
ratings, because there is<a href="https://www.organizationalmusings.com/2020/07/media-and-management-are-firms-easy-to.html"> much evidence that they care and that they try to get high rating outcomes even it is costly to do so</a>. If high ratings matter and
executives decide to avoid a high rating outcome, something else is at work.
The explanation has two parts: <i>competing logics</i> and <i>reactivity</i>.
Competing logics exist when firms are rated – or more broadly, evaluated – on
multiple criteria, and these are backed by different groups with conflicting
interests. For firms, the main group that executives worry about are
shareholders, of course, and their interest in maintaining steady profits and
investments in gaining future profits. The logic in this is how firms can
accomplish the valuation increases and dividends shareholders crave. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Through
this logic, money given away to philanthropic contributions is just like money
invested to protect the environment that does not also increase productivity.
It not only reduces current valuation increases but may also hold back
investments that would help future valuation increases. From the shareholders’
point of view, this is bad even if the ability to fund charity signals current
profits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">What about
reactivity? This part is easy to explain. Executives have many reasons to make
philanthropic contributions, including the obvious one that they personally
want to make societal contributions using firm resources. But executives also
know that they are monitored by shareholders and financial analysts. If their
contributions are so high that they are labeled as “nice” by a ratings agency,
they may be targeted as acting contrary to shareholder interests. It is much
better to make contributions that are small enough to be below the radar, so they
react by reducing contributions. It may seem like a reverse form of impression
management that executives try to avoid a high rating of the firm, but it
simply reveals that the most important audience for impression management is
shareholders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">How big and
important were these effects? Quite big. The ratings agency studied was KLD,
which is a major rater of firm social contributions. Following a positive
rating, firms reduced their philanthropic contributions by about one-half of a
percent of profits, which is one-third of the average difference between firms
rated positively and firms not given a positive rating by KLD. Simply put, the
firms reduced contributions exactly as much as needed to become rated as less
charitable the next year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">We know
that firm decision makers care about their reputation, engage in impression
management, and pay attention to ratings. To observe reactivity like this is a
clear signal that we do not yet live in an ideal world in which firms can
divide attention between profits and ESG criteria, and we do not even know
whether we are moving in that direction. Time will tell. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221124916">Lewis, Ben W., W. Chad Carlos. Avoiding the Appearance of Virtue: Reactivity to Corporate Social Responsibility Ratings in an Era of Shareholder Primacy. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming</a>.</p><div><br /></div>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-45067416888080264202022-10-10T18:30:00.000-07:002022-10-10T18:30:04.639-07:00Naming Is Not Shaming? Firms Paying Women Less without Reputation Loss<p>Gender pay gap disparity – paying women less than men for
comparable work – is widespread and unfair, and much attention is given to how
to remove it. Perhaps the most prominent option is to require pay gap
disclosure, so that firms paying women less will be revealed and their
reputation harmed. The idea is of course that two things will happen – firms
will act to improve their reputation through paying women more, and female job
applicants are warned and can stay away from these firms until conditions
improve.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVIWMUv8cXil16FOeDaonbkHIX6qkB_WzuFfelxpdgguTDHU_XTb4fg2v-maPuHeGyqC8ucK4RPW7RlJiE18frZcKSYScsxHPVZaYoY6s32UJ7PDytXoG4mL42cGPaS0aqFied-jx5WgFTDu0opnnNtiWTTzXqR_s4rRfIJQyNwWjxmFxE3YvaZBb0eA/s5388/fatigued-marketing-company-employee-with-painful-headache-sitting-tired-office-workspace-exhausted-financial-advisor-with-burnout-syndrome-stressed-because-project-deadline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3592" data-original-width="5388" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVIWMUv8cXil16FOeDaonbkHIX6qkB_WzuFfelxpdgguTDHU_XTb4fg2v-maPuHeGyqC8ucK4RPW7RlJiE18frZcKSYScsxHPVZaYoY6s32UJ7PDytXoG4mL42cGPaS0aqFied-jx5WgFTDu0opnnNtiWTTzXqR_s4rRfIJQyNwWjxmFxE3YvaZBb0eA/s320/fatigued-marketing-company-employee-with-painful-headache-sitting-tired-office-workspace-exhausted-financial-advisor-with-burnout-syndrome-stressed-because-project-deadline.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The US has been reluctant to mandate transparency, but
thanks to pay transparency laws elsewhere, we now know more about its effects.
<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221124614">In a recent publication in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, Amanda Sharkey, Elizabeth Pontikes, and Greta Hsu</a> studied the effects of mandated publication
of the gender pay gap in the United Kingdom. One piece of good news: firms with
pay parity received a temporary improvement in employee evaluations when that
information was made public. One piece of bad news: that was the only good
news. In particular, firms with pay disparity showed no observable short- or
long-term decline in employee evaluations, and hence suffered no reputation
loss either.<br /><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Failing to find an effect was not a result of data problems;
nor was it inconsequential. The authors were analyzing Glassdoor evaluations,
which are reviews of each firm anonymously posted by its employees. Each evaluation
is accurately timed, so it is easy to match the evaluation with the disclosure
of the pay gap. The evaluations are consequential because many potential job
seekers check Glassdoor reviews, both the numeric evaluations and the written
text. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is a puzzle, and Sharkey, Pontikes, and Hsu proceeded
to look for explanations. Interestingly, although some explanations could be
excluded, not a single explanation could account for the failure to shame the
firms with a pay gap. Part of the reason is that there are simply too many possible
explanations, and they probably work together to make this happen. Because they
add up to letting firms get away with unfair payment, it is worthwhile listing three
explanations as warnings.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Pay attention!</b> There is some evidence that employees don’t
fully pay attention to the pay gap when assessing their own workplace.
Extending that observation, it is fair to wonder whether potential job
applicants pay enough attention too. Paying attention is the first protection
against walking into a trap.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Interpret information!</b> There is some evidence that employees
react less when the pay gap is obscured by job heterogeneity. That is natural,
but also discouraging, because more deliberate and conscious interpretation
would usually help them understand that they are in a pay disparity trap.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Act on interpretation!</b> There is some evidence of
resignation, with employees not reacting to the pay gap because they have
become used to it. That is exactly how traps work – people do not escape from
them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The reason to list these warnings is that it is hard to
think of any policy to reduce the pay gap disparity that would be more
effective than disclosure. Organizations constantly need to recruit new
employees, and they always worry about their ability to attract the best. Obviously
so, because there is another pay gap that is much more logical and beneficial
for the organization than the gender pay gap. There are few jobs in which the
pay gap between the most and the least productive employee is so great that the
organization does not care about employee quality. The most productive employee
is usually so much better for so little extra pay that having all the potential
stars apply – male and female – is a great benefit for the organization. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If employees and job applicants pay attention, interpret
information, and act on the interpretation, pay disparity would simply be too
costly for the organization. Perhaps they will gradually learn to do so. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221124614">Sharkey, Amanda, Elizabeth Pontikes, and Greta Hsu. 2022. "The Impact of Mandated Pay Gap Transparency on Firms’ Reputations as Employers."<i> Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/fatigued-marketing-company-employee-with-painful-headache-sitting-tired-office-workspace-exhausted-financial-advisor-with-burnout-syndrome-stressed-because-project-deadline_25565884.htm#page=2&query=office%20woman&position=30&from_view=search&track=sph">Image by DCStudio</a> on Freepik">Photo credit.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-84110171673298645872022-08-23T17:08:00.000-07:002022-08-23T17:08:05.383-07:00Go For it! What Fourth-Down Plays Can Tell Us About Organizational Decision Making<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAJv_R7as6SZHjftb-HTc5CYbgNrCIxi8N9ZMaTUQcqtyu4gIUlW2oAH7C0hhQIJd92yBDLBhe2hiMaEsFfuddZ0XYOw_hUjw71YP98fclXoaEdozFfQxwcAIUB8tx0isW47KJj5hubP3P9tzsnc3VjVBlOjOQ3QpARaullYstFUbJgIHE5RwltDkgZg/s1140/photo_los-angeles-rams-run_feature.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="1140" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAJv_R7as6SZHjftb-HTc5CYbgNrCIxi8N9ZMaTUQcqtyu4gIUlW2oAH7C0hhQIJd92yBDLBhe2hiMaEsFfuddZ0XYOw_hUjw71YP98fclXoaEdozFfQxwcAIUB8tx0isW47KJj5hubP3P9tzsnc3VjVBlOjOQ3QpARaullYstFUbJgIHE5RwltDkgZg/s320/photo_los-angeles-rams-run_feature.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Let’s start by acknowledging that
top-division professional sports players and coaches make very intelligent
decisions – probably better than many corporate managers. After all, they drill
and execute similar scenarios over and over again while facing adversaries who
are familiar with their every move. So, let’s drop the “dumb jock” stereotype
and admit that football, <a href="https://www.organizationalmusings.com/2019/10/rational-fouls-yes-professional-soccer.html">like soccer</a>, has the same (or fewer) decision-biases
and misjudgments as those we would see in a non-sport organization. They can
teach us a lot about decision making.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In particular, fourth-down plays are very
instructive because they are when a football team either kicks the ball away or
decides to “go for it” and try to gain enough yards to keep possession of the
ball. It is an excellent context for examining how people handle risks and
rewards, and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221117996">Xavier Sobrepere i Profitos, Thomas Keil, and Pasi Kuusela took advantage of this in a recent article in <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i></a>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Their idea is simple and novel. It is well
known that people consider the risk of gains and losses from their decisions,
and mentally they overweigh losses. It is well known that performance feedback on
goals affects organizational decisions, so changes and risk taking are much
less acceptable when performance is high. Putting these two together, every
decision has content (risks and returns) and context (performance relative to
goals). These two are usually considered separately, but actually they work
together like two blades of a scissors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How does that influence fourth-down
decisions? This is where the sophisticated, but still biased, decision making
comes into play. Potential rewards are important but not always important:
short fourth downs make teams more likely to go for it, but the difference is
much bigger in the second half of the game. Goals are important but not always
important: teams that are behind in the score (especially more than 10 points)
are more likely to go for it, but the difference is much bigger in short fourth
downs. And in fact, all of the effects listed here are bigger when the team has
advanced beyond the middle of the field, so the opposing team’s endzone is
close.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To someone who follows football closely,
this may seem to make a lot of sense, leading to the question of whether there
is any bias here at all – isn’t this completely rational? No, it is not. Even when
making risky decisions that are essentially random, potential gains and losses
should not be seen as less important when performance feedback is positive.
Gain, loss, and risk should not become less diagnostic in such a decision
context, but football plays clearly show that they are. And football is a game
against an adversary, so a tendency to go for it more often in a specific
decision context is an easy “tell” that the opposing team can use to adjust
their defense.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The same is true outside the world of
sports. Perhaps the most important part of performance feedback theory is not
how organizations search for alternatives and make changes when performance is
below aspiration levels. It is the opposite – how they fail to do so when
performance is above aspiration levels. If managers are like these football
teams, even known information about opportunities – similar to a one-yard
fourth down on the opponent’s 20-yard line – may not be seen as diagnostic
enough for their decision. After all, they are meeting their goals.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This selective decision making, with
performance feedback having an important effect in directing attention towards
or away from opportunities, is the true bias revealed by the fourth-down plays.
It is one that managers should pay attention to, and so should all those who
teach management.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221117996">Sobrepere i Profitos, Xavier, Thomas Keil, and Pasi Kuusela. 2022. The Two Blades of the Scissors: Performance Feedback and Intrinsic Attributes in Organizational Risk Taking. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming. </a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-19666421918269961372022-08-13T01:42:00.001-07:002022-08-13T01:42:48.281-07:00Stigmatize to Rehabilitate? Organizational Marking of Transgressors as Social Control<p>Organizations have rules, employees who
break rules, and rules on how to punish employees who break rules. Often these
are thought of in simplified terms as ways of making transgression costly so
that employees will not transgress. The simplification is silly – we know that
transgression occurs anyway, so it is necessary to think more broadly about
punishment rules. If the organization keeps the transgressor in employment, can
it also manage a rehabilitation that ensures good work relations and avoids
repeated rule-breaking? How can this be done?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWKlPYJLajCviNX1FefTSnA5ZN3ArFIWMpbx_OSwf_Gv0S3gEoWqm36nKrTlYUJH5fNGbusocr-9VHfKtJYp7YgjF9PWqlmH-4aQ0m6o-Pdmfo7gx27U0jaQG7CPu7klePglAm1XARiMpYRbplG6QC8AXZDEOujGNHwBf-JrRcaOh97s9ThJV5b-pRgw/s1195/cadets-at-west-point.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1195" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWKlPYJLajCviNX1FefTSnA5ZN3ArFIWMpbx_OSwf_Gv0S3gEoWqm36nKrTlYUJH5fNGbusocr-9VHfKtJYp7YgjF9PWqlmH-4aQ0m6o-Pdmfo7gx27U0jaQG7CPu7klePglAm1XARiMpYRbplG6QC8AXZDEOujGNHwBf-JrRcaOh97s9ThJV5b-pRgw/s320/cadets-at-west-point.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Surprisingly, these questions have not seen
much investigation despite their obvious importance. But thanks to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221115154">Erin Frey, Ethan Bernstein, and Nick Rekenthaler we now have research</a> on
this topic based on a military school (let’s call it the Academy) that has an
honor code, cadets who break it, and a particular rule on how to punish those
it retains because the violation is not too severe. The rule is interesting
because it requires violators to wear a pin on their lapel indicating a rank
one level lower than the lowest regular rank in the Academy for a period of
many months. Given the military obsession with rank and alertness to symbols of
rank, this marks them to everyone as having transgressed the honor code. In
short, they are “screw-ups,” and everyone can see it. <br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To an observer with some interest in
history, this resembles a variety of medieval punishment methods meant to
stigmatize violators and isolate them from their village, town, or city
neighborhood. Stigmatization, whether intended or not, is generally quite
effective in isolating individuals, attracting disdain, and preventing
cooperation with others. So, can such a mark help rehabilitation?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a key difference between a village
and an organization, and maybe especially an educational organization.
Organizations have clearly defined boundaries, so it is obvious to all that the
marked transgressor is still a member. Organizations have interdependent tasks,
so the marked transgressor needs to communicate with others, and vice versa.
This creates opportunities for explaining the transgression, expressing regret,
and showing recovery.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Arguably the marking of a transgressor also
creates a need to explain, express regret, and show recovery. The marked
transgressor will be a stigmatized member rather than a regular one, so there
is a social pressure to show signs of rehabilitation. In the Academy, there was
an expectation that the marked transgressors should advocate and display even
higher standards of behavior than others, and indeed they did so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How general is this effect? Here we need to
speculate a bit, but some boundaries seem obvious. What about marking
transgressors in customer-facing work? I would be uncomfortable seeing a
barista with a mark indicating some sort of transgression. Even more so an
airline pilot. Indeed, the uniforms used in many kinds of customer-facing work
(again, all pilots and many baristas) are supposed to create generalized trust
that does not single out anyone as being better or worse than others.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, even if the effect of marking
violators as a path to rehabilitation is not fully general, it is very
interesting that it is possible. Organizations are hierarchies that can punish
and try to rehabilitate through rules and hierarchical approaches, but they are
also social systems. The marking of violators makes use of this and has an
effect that is surprisingly beneficial.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00018392221115154">Frey, Erin, Ethan Bernstein, and Nick Rekenthaler. 2022. Scarlet Letters: Rehabilitation Trough Transgression Transparency and Personal Narrative Control. <i>Administrative Science Quarterly</i>, forthcoming. </a></o:p></span></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6093273542263774854.post-78566944764977506012022-07-09T23:05:00.006-07:002022-07-09T23:05:58.517-07:00Is there a Strategic Organization in The Behavioral Theory of the Firm?<p>Questions are great. Sometimes I get asked
questions that stimulate ideas that I would not have thought of otherwise, and
that lead to research. When the editors of the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary
special issue of <i>Strategic Organization</i> asked me to write about the
relation between the Behavioral Theory of the Firm and Strategy, it made me
wonder whether there was something special about the match between this theory
and this field of research.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why this question? The behavioral theory of
the firm fuels an active and growing research agenda found mainly in
organization theory, but also with much important work in strategy. So, it is
possible that we can simply stand by and let things develop on their own, and
the synergies between research in these two fields well take care of the rest.
Yet somehow, that did not look like the right answer.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The reason is that the basic interests of
the fields of strategy and organization theory are different. Obviously not,
because that is why they are different fields. To the Behavioral Theory of the Firm,
this may not seem to matter because theory is about the mechanisms that drive
outcomes in the world, not about the outcomes. It matters for research, though,
because different outcomes can be studied depending on the interests of a
field. This is a good reason to think of how the Behavioral Theory of the Firm
and Strategy relate to each other.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The result of our thinking was a series of
questions on how strategy is shaped by the mechanisms in the behavioral theory
of the firm. This is the right approach because the Behavioral Theory of the
Firm is made for explaining what a firm – or any kind of organization – will do.
So, it is the kind of theory that can be used for explaining the origins and
changes of firm strategy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are already partial answers to all of
these questions, but still a lot of room for progress. The very short answer is
that we developed a framework organized around how strategy is shaped by the 1)
organizational structure, 2) organizational decision-makers, 3) organizational
history, and 4) organizational environment. The Behavioral Theory of the Firm
has useful ideas in each of these factors. The (slightly) longer answer? Please
look for it in the short essay coauthored with Cyndi Man Zhang.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14761270221115032">Greve, H.R., C. Zhang Man. 2022. Is there a Strategic Organization in The Behavioral Theory of the Firm? Looking Back and Looking Forward. <i>Strategic Organization</i>, forthcoming.</a></p>Henrich R. Grevehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02522116815412400767noreply@blogger.com