Distinguished Winners (3) 

Distelhorst, G., Hainmueller, J., & Locke, R. M. (2016). Does lean improve labor standards? Management and social performance in the Nike supply chain. Management Science, 63(3), 707-728.

Abstract

This study tests the hypothesis that lean manufacturing improves the social performance of manufacturers in emerging markets. We analyze an intervention by Nike, Inc., to promote the adoption of lean manufacturing in its apparel supply chain across 11 developing countries. Using difference-in-differences estimates from a panel of more than 300 factories, we find that lean adoption was associated with a 15 percentage point reduction in noncompliance with labor standards that primarily reflect factory wage and work hour practices. However, we find a null effect on factory health and safety standards. This pattern is consistent with a causal mechanism that links lean to improved social performance through changes in labor relations, rather than improved management systems. These findings offer evidence that capability-building interventions may reduce social harm in global supply chains.

Hideg, I., Krstic, A., Trau, R. N., & Zarina, T. (2018). The unintended consequences of maternity leaves: How agency interventions mitigate the negative effects of longer legislated maternity leaves. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(10), 1155-1164.

Abstract

To support women in the workplace, longer legislated maternity leaves have been encouraged in Scandinavian countries and recently in Canada. Yet, past research shows that longer legislated maternity leaves (i.e., 1 year and longer) may unintentionally harm women’s career progress. To address this issue, we first sought to identify one potential mechanism underlying negative effects of longer legislated maternity leaves: others’ lower perceptions of women’s agency. Second, we utilize this knowledge to test interventions that boost others’ perceptions of women’s agency and thus mitigate negative effects of longer legislated maternity leaves. We test our hypotheses in three studies in the context of Canadian maternity leave policies. Specifically, in Study 1, we found that others’ lower perceptions of women’s agency mediated the negative effects of a longer legislated maternity leave, that is, 1 year (vs. shorter, i.e., 1 month maternity leave) on job commitment. In Study 2, we found that providing information about a woman’s agency mitigates the unintended negative effects of a longer legislated maternity leave on job commitment and hireability. In Study 3, we showed that use of a corporate program that enables women to stay in touch with the workplace while on maternity leave (compared to conditions in which no such program was offered; a program was offered but not used by the applicant; and the program was offered, but there was no information about its usage by the applicant) enhances agency perceptions and perceptions of job commitment and hireability. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Puffer, S. M., McCarthy, D. J., & Satinsky, D. M. (2018). Hammer and silicon: The Soviet diaspora in the US innovation economy-immigration, innovation, institutions, imprinting, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract

This deeply personal book tells the untold story of the significant contributions of technical professionals from the former Soviet Union to the US innovation economy, particularly in the sectors of software, social media, biotechnology, and medicine. Drawing upon in-depth interviews, it channels the voices and stories of more than 150 professionals who emigrated from 11 of the 15 former Soviet republics between the 1970s and 2015, and who currently work in the innovation hubs of Silicon Valley and Boston/Cambridge. Using the social science theories of institutions, imprinting, and identity, the authors analyze the political, social, economic, and educational forces that have characterized Soviet immigration over the past 40 years, showing how the particularities of the Soviet context may have benefited or challenged interviewees’ work and social lives. The resulting mosaic of perspectives provides valuable insight into the impact of immigration on US economic development, specifically in high technology and innovation.

Winners (12)

Akamah, H., Hope, O. K., & Thomas, W. B. (2018). Tax havens and disclosure aggregation. Journal of International Business Studies, 49(1), 49-69.

Abstract

Multinational firms have been accused by politicians, regulators, and citizen groups of shifting profits to low-tax geographic areas. We present evidence that multinational firms with tax-haven operations tend to aggregate their geographic disclosures to a greater extent. The results are consistent with managers attempting to avoid criticism by reducing the transparency of their tax-avoidance activities. We find these results to be stronger for larger firms with higher political costs and for firms in natural-resources industries, in retail industries, or with low competition. The evidence is relevant to policymakers and others interested in multinational firms’ financial reporting and tax activities.

Ballesteros, L., Useem, M., & Wry, T. (2017). Masters of disasters? An empirical analysis of how societies benefit from corporate disaster aid. Academy of Management Journal, 60(5), 1682-1708.

Abstract

Corporations are increasingly influential within societies worldwide, while the relative capacity of national governments to meet large social needs has waned. Consequentially, firms face social pressures to adopt responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to governments, aid agencies, and other types of organizations. There are questions, though, about whether this is beneficial for society. We study this in the context of disaster relief and recovery, in which companies account for a growing share of aid, as compared to traditional providers. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities literature, we argue that firms are more able than other types of organizations to sense areas of need following a disaster, seize response opportunities, and reconfigure resources for fast, effective relief efforts. As such, we predict that, while traditional aid providers remain important for disaster recovery, relief will arrive faster and nations will recover more fully when locally active firms account for a larger share of disaster aid. We test our predictions with a proprietary data set comprising information on every natural disaster and reported aid donation worldwide from 2003 to 2013. Using a novel, quasi-experimental technique known as the “synthetic control method,” our analysis shows that nations benefit greatly from corporate involvement when disaster strikes.

DiBenigno, J. (2018). Anchored personalization in managing goal conflict between professional groups: The case of US Army mental health care. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(3), 526-569. 

Abstract

Organizational life is rife with conflict between groups that pursue different goals, particularly when groups have strong commitments to professional identities developed outside the organization. I use data from a 30-month comparative ethnographic field study of four U.S. Army combat brigades to examine conflict between commanders who had a goal of fielding a mission-ready force and mental health providers who had a goal of providing rehabilitative mental health care to soldiers. All commanders and providers faced goal and identity conflict and had access to similar integrative mechanisms. Yet only those associated with two brigades addressed these conflicts in ways that accomplished the army’s superordinate goal of having both mission-ready and mentally healthy soldiers. Both successful brigades used what I call “anchored personalization” practices, which included developing personalized relations across groups, anchoring members in their home group identity, and co-constructing integrative solutions to conflict. These practices were supported by an organizational structure in which professionals were assigned to work with specific members of the other group, while remaining embedded within their home group. In contrast, an organizational structure promoting only anchoring in one’s home group identity led to failure when each group pursued its own goals at the expense of the other group’s goals. A structure promoting only personalization across groups without anchoring in one’s home group identity led to failure from cooptation by the dominant group. This study contributes to our understanding of how groups with strong professional identities can work together in service of their organization’s superordinate goals when traditional mechanisms fail.

Hoffman, A. J. (2015). How culture shapes the climate change debate. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Abstract

Though the scientific community largely agrees that climate change is underway, debates about this issue remain fiercely polarized. These conversations have become a rhetorical contest, one where opposing sides try to achieve victory through playing on fear, distrust, and intolerance. At its heart, this split no longer concerns carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, or climate modeling; rather, it is the product of contrasting, deeply entrenched worldviews. This brief examines what causes people to reject or accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Synthesizing evidence from sociology, psychology, and political science, Andrew J. Hoffman lays bare the opposing cultural lenses through which science is interpreted. He then extracts lessons from major cultural shifts in the past to engender a better understanding of the problem and motivate the public to take action. How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debatemakes a powerful case for a more scientifically literate public, a more socially engaged scientific community, and a more thoughtful mode of public discourse.

Lee, M., & Huang, L. (2018). Gender bias, social impact framing, and evaluation of entrepreneurial ventures. Organization Science, 29(1), 1-16.

Abstract

Recent studies find that female-led ventures are penalized relative to male-led ventures as a result of role incongruity or a perceived “lack of fit” between female stereotypes and expected personal qualities of business entrepreneurs. We examine whether social impact framing that emphasizes a venture’s social–environmental welfare benefits, which research has shown to elicit stereotypically feminine attributions of warmth, diminishes these penalties. We initially investigate this proposition in a field study of evaluations of early-stage ventures and find evidence of lessened gender penalties for female-led ventures that are presented using a social impact frame. In a second study, we experimentally validate this effect and show that it is mediated by the effect of social impact framing on perceptions of the entrepreneur’s warmth. The effect of social impact frames on venture evaluations did not apply to men, was not a result of perceptions of increased competence, and was not conditional on the gender of evaluators. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that social impact framing increases attributions of warmth for all entrepreneurs but with positive consequences on business evaluation only for female-led ventures, for which increased perceptions of warmth attenuate female entrepreneurs’ gender role incongruity.

Li, X. H., & Liang, X. (2015). A Confucian social model of political appointments among Chinese private-firm entrepreneurs. Academy of Management Journal, 58(2), 592-617.

Abstract

In political councils such as the People’s Congress (PC) or People’s Political Consultative Conference (PPCC). By considering Western theories of life career development and Confucian doctrines of personal development, we seek to understand the complex motivations of successful entrepreneurs for joining political councils. We propose a Confucian social model of role transition to explain the pursuit and attainment of political appointment in China. We hypothesize that the “proself” and “prosocial” motives for seeking political connections will, respectively, attenuate or strengthen the relationship between private-firm entrepreneurs’ business success and their intention and attainment in seeking political appointment. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 166 private-firm chief executive officers (CEOs) and chairs, and a longitudinal archival study of 1,323 Chinese publicly listed private firms from 2006 to 2012. The findings support our hypotheses on the moderating effect of the proself and prosocial motives. The study offers insights into how Confucian cultural values may explain the dynamic between business success and political appointments among private-firm entrepreneurs in China.

Meuris, J., & Leana, C. (2018). The price of financial precarity: Organizational costs of employees’ financial concerns. Organization Science, 29(3), 398-417.

Abstract

Personal finances are becoming an increasingly prominent source of distress for a substantial proportion of the population in many developed economies. In this paper, we examine the organizational consequences of this trend by proposing that financial precarity can undermine a person’s ability to perform at work. Across two studies, we demonstrate that people who are worried about their financial situation have less cognitive capacity available to them, which subsequently spills over into their work performance. In Study 1, we demonstrate this relationship in a field study with short-haul truck drivers where we combine survey responses with lagged archival data on preventable accidents. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in financial worry is associated with a 0.4% increase in the probability of a preventable accident because of its detrimental effects on cognitive capacity. In Study 2, we establish the causal ordering among the variables by manipulating financial worry in a laboratory environment using a driving simulation task, confirming the results of Study 1. We discuss the implications of the research findings for organizational theory and workplace practice, arguing that it may be in employers’ self-interest to undertake initiatives that reduce employees’ financial precarity.

Naveh, E., & Katz-Navon, T. (2015). A longitudinal study of an intervention to improve road safety climate: Climate as an organizational boundary spanner. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(1), 216-226.

Abstract

This study presents and tests an intervention to enhance organizational climate and expands existing conceptualization of organizational climate to include its influence on employee behaviors outside the organization’s physical boundaries. In addition, by integrating the literatures of climate and work–family interface, the study explored climate spillover and crossover from work to the home domain. Focusing on an applied practical problem within organizations, we investigated the example of road safety climate and employees’ and their families’ driving, using a longitudinal study design of road safety intervention versus control groups. Results demonstrated that the intervention increased road safety climate and decreased the number of traffic violation tickets and that road safety climate mediated the relationship between the intervention and the number of traffic violation tickets. Road safety climate spilled over to the family domain but did not cross over to influence family members’ driving. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Ng, T. W., Yam, K. C., & Aguinis, H. (2019). Employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility: Effects on pride, embeddedness, and turnover. Personnel Psychology, 72(1), 107-137.

Abstract

We examined socioemotional microfoundations of perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) and posited that employees’ perceived CSR triggers a perception‐emotion‐attitude‐behavior sequence. Drawing from appraisal theory of emotion, we hypothesized that perceived CSR relates to emotions (i.e., organizational pride), which relate to job attitudes (i.e., organizational embeddedness) that in turn relate to job behaviors (i.e., decreased turnover). To test this model, we conducted a multistudy investigation involving different samples, designs, and data‐analytic methods. In Study 1, we conducted an experiment and found that participants who envisioned working in a firm that was active regarding CSR activities reported greater pride and organizational embeddedness. We then conducted two field studies using a nonmanagerial sample (Study 2) and a managerial sample (Study 3) and found that participants’ perceived CSR was positively related to their pride, which in turn was related to stronger organizational embeddedness. Stronger organizational embeddedness was related to lower turnover 6 months later in Study 2 but not in Study 3. In Study 4, we conducted a longitudinal four‐wave 14‐month study to test the proposed relationships from a within‐person conceptualization, and the results were also supportive. Thus, the proposed perception‐emotion‐attitude‐behavior framework received broad support and illustrated that stronger microfoundations of CSR research could be constructed through understanding employees’ emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral reactions to their perceptions of their employers’ CSR.

Pfeffer, J. (2018). Dying for a paycheck: How modern management harms employee health and company performance—and what we can do about it. New York: Harper Collins.

Abstract

In one survey, 61 percent of employees said that workplace stress had made them sick and 7 percent said they had actually been hospitalized. Job stress costs US employers more than $300 billion annually and may cause 120,000 excess deaths each year. In China, 1 million people a year may be dying from overwork.  People are literally dying for a paycheck. And it needs to stop.

Ranganathan, A. (2018). Train them to retain them: Work readiness and the retention of first-time women workers in India. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(4), 879-909. 

Abstract

To explore when and why workplace training facilitates the retention of first-time workers from historically underrepresented groups in formal employment, I combine ethnographic fieldwork at an Indian garment factory employing first-time women workers, personnel data over a two-year period, and survey data from a sample of new hires. I find that training is effective at preventing first-time women workers from dropping out soon after they are hired when it is conducted by trainers with many years of experience. Rather than focusing only on job-specific skills, training conducted by experienced trainers includes the basic work-readiness skills of self-presentation, interpersonal communication, work–life separation, and self-reliance needed to survive at work. I find that first-time women workers quasi-randomly assigned to experienced trainers had about a 20-percent greater probability of being retained after three months, and these workers reported that they felt more ready for work than those assigned to less-experienced trainers. My results imply that for the majority of workers from historically underrepresented groups who are entering the workplace for the first time, training is important to foster their retention, and organizations that focus on both the attributes of the people delivering that training and its content have a greater chance of keeping these workers for the long term.

Rao, H., & Greve, H. R. (2018). Disasters and community resilience: Spanish flu and the formation of retail cooperatives in Norway. Academy of Management Journal, 61(1), 5-25.

Abstract

Why are some communities resilient in the face of disasters, and why are others unable to recover? We suggest that two mechanisms matter: the framing of the cause of the disaster, and the community civic capacity to form diverse non-profits. We propose that disasters that are attributed to other community members weaken cooperation and reduce the formation of new cooperatives that serve the community, unlike disasters attributed to chance or to nature, which strengthen cooperation and increase the creation of cooperatives. We analyze the Spanish Flu, a contagious disease that was attributed to infected individuals, and compare it with spring frost, which damaged crops and was attributed to nature. Our measure of resilience is whether the community members could form retail cooperatives—non-profit community organizations. We find that communities hit by the Spanish Flu during the period 1918–1919 were unable to form new retail cooperatives in the short and long run after the epidemic, but this effect was reduced over time and countered by civic capacity. Implications for research on disasters and institutional legacies are outlined.