Browsing by Subject "Organizational behavior"

Although subgroups are a central component of work teams, they have remained largely unexamined by organizational scholars. In three chapters, a theory and measure of subgroups are developed and then tested. The theory introduces a typology of subgroups and a depiction of the antecedents and consequences of subgroups. The measure, called the subgroup algorithm, determines the most dominant configurations of subgroups in real work teams--those that are most likely to influence team processes and outcomes. It contrasts the characteristics within a subgroup or set of subgroups versus the characteristics between subgroups or a set of subgroups for every potential configuration of subgroups on every work team in a given sample. The algorithm is tested with a simulation, with results suggesting that it adds value to the methodological literature on subgroups. The empirical test uses the subgroup algorithm to test key propositions put forth in the theory of subgroups. First, it is predicted that teams will perform better when identity-based subgroups are unequal in size and knowledge-based subgroups are equal in size. Second, it is predicted that, although teams will perform better with an increasing number of both identity-based and knowledge-based subgroups, there will be a discontinuity in this linear function for identity-based subgroups: teams with two identity-based subgroups will perform more poorly than teams with any other number of identity-based subgroups. The subgroup algorithm is used to test these predictions in a sample of 326 work teams. Results generally support the predictions.

This study investigates how actor status, moral foundations theory and Schwartz values influence the moral judgments of guilt and punishment. I argue that to understand individual values consequences for actions, they must be considered within organizational values and larger institutional logics frameworks. Building off Zerubavel’s conception of a three level cognition (Zerubavel 1999), I argue for a tri level conception of values and morality in order to more fully understand how moral judgements work as well as the social context in which they are shaped. Using original research, I offer evidence of three levels of morality. First, I evaluate actor status on judgments of guilt and punishment. I then evaluate individual moral culture using Schwartz Values (Schwartz 2012; Vaisey and Miles 2014). I evaluate the impact of the organization on moral culture measure through the use of status hierarchies (Sauder, Lynn, and Podolny 2012). Finally, I evaluate broader cultural morality using Moral Foundations Theory (Graham et al. 2016; Kesebir and Haidt 2010). Taken together, these three levels of morality present a more ecologically valid understanding of the ways in which moral culture works from the individual, through the meso-social level and to the broader culture. I demonstrate the complex ways in which moral judgments are influenced by universal concerns, organizational influences and individual characteristics. I find that moral foundations theory conceptions of harm does not predict judgments of guilt and punishment but that Schwartz Values do influence these moral judgments. I also find that it is the actor status that most strongly predicts the outcomes of guilt and punishment. The research provides a foundation for future research of how actor status influences moral judgments of guilt and punishment beyond the limited moral community of the current study.

I investigate people's degree of preference for "blinding" in decision-making: purposefully restricting the information one sees in order to try to form a more accurate evaluation. For example, when grading her students’ papers, a professor might choose to "blind" herself to students’ names by anonymizing them, and thus evaluate the papers on content alone. I propose a theoretical framework of individual-level blinding preferences, outlining various factors that may drive evaluators’ choices to see or blind themselves to potentially biasing information in an impending evaluation. Next, I discuss 8 studies (N = 5,350) and associated replications (N = 3,720) that (a) explore individuals’ preferences for blinding and outline consequences for bias, (b) test the mechanisms driving blinding decisions proposed in my theoretical framework, and (c) explore the efficacy of multiple interventions to encourage a choice to blind one’s judgment. I find that people often choose to see potentially biasing information rather than be blind to it, even though they acknowledge they should be blind and that seeing such information will likely bias their evaluations. I also find that interventions that facilitate deliberative reflection before a blinding choice is made can encourage a choice to be blind. I discuss contributions of these studies to research on mental contamination, inequality reduction in organizations, and social perception, as well as implications of these studies for groups concerned with members’ decision bias.

An abstract of a dissertation that examines the motivational foundations of social networks. Five studies using diverse methods examine goal pursuit as an antecedent to social network structure, finding that self-oriented and affiliation-oriented goal pursuit evoke unique patterns of interpersonal perception and motivation which lead to the development of sparser and denser social networks, respectively. Study 1 serves as an empirical summary of our theorizing: individuals primed with dense networks feel more efficacious pursuing affiliation-oriented goals versus self-oriented goals, and individuals primed with sparse networks feel more efficacious pursuing self-oriented goals than individuals primed with dense networks. Study 2finds a correlation between personal goals and network structure. Studies 3 and 4 experimentally demonstrate that reminders of self versus affiliation-oriented goals lead to different cognitively-activated network structures. Study 5 finds that individuals entering a new social network with strong career goals (self-oriented goals) develop significantly sparser local networks and attain more central network positions; the opposite pattern emerges for individuals pursuing strong social goals (affiliation-oriented goals). Individuals strongly motivated to pursue both goals lose the network structure benefits of having a strong career goal. Findings support the hypothesis linking personal goal pursuit to network structure, a novel approach to integrating psychology and networks research.

Background: Hospital adoption of health information technology (HIT) systems is promoted as essential to decreasing medical error and their associated 44,000 annual deaths and $17 billion in healthcare costs (Institute of Medicine, 2001; Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 1999). Leading national healthcare groups, such as the Institute of Medicine, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the Leap Frog Group continue to advocate for increased use of HIT (AHRQ, 2010; Beidler, 2010; Institute of Medicine, 2001; Page, 2003; The Leapfrog Group, 2009), such as provider order entry and electronic health record systems, as a way to improve healthcare quality in hospitals. Even under intense pressure to adopt HIT, however, a mere 2% of US hospitals report having a comprehensive electronic health record system. Further, more than 50% of US hospitals have only rudimentary HIT systems (Jha et al., 2009). With the ARRA HITECH Act of 2009, the pressure on hospitals to quickly adopt HIT and achieve meaningful use is mounting.

While a large body of literature exists about HIT implementation, the majority is anecdotal case reports. The remaining studies investigated attitudes about HIT or the impact of HIT on patient care processes and outcomes. Thus, best strategies for implementing HIT in hospitals remain unknown. Study design choices, such as the use of self report data, retrospective data collection methods, subjects from single care units or single healthcare professions further limit our understanding HIT implementation in complex hospital care settings.

Methods: This prospective, longitutdinal case study used a novel approach, sensemaking, to understanding how project teams may work to implement HIT in an academic medical center. Sensemaking, defined as the social process of establishing the meaning of events and experiences (Weick, 1995), is associated with learning and problemsolving in research studies of healthcare and nonhealthcare settings. Through direct observation and document review I observed project team social interaction and activities over the course of the 18 month preimplementation phase of an HIT implementation project in a single tertiary care hopsital.

Conclusions: In this study, I described team actions and activities that enhanced clinician team member sensemaking including: frequent, collective interaction with HIT and focusing team members' attention on specific aspects of HIT function. Further, study findings demonstrated that team members' perceptions of HIT and care processes varied across healthcare professions, management levels, and departments. Supportive social interaction from team leaders and members encouraged team member participation and resulted in members' voicing observations, perceptions and attitudes about the HIT and hospital care processes. Sensemaking of HIT teams not only resulted in identification of needed HIT design changes, but also revealed assumptions and information which may prove critical to successful HIT implementation in hospital care environments. Based on study findings, I suggested strategies for selecting and preparing HIT team members as well as for HIT team activities. This study advanced our understanding of how project teams function and bring about change in complex hospital care environments by not only identifying HIT implementation issues within but also describing the link between team member social interaction and implementation actions.

People give each other advice on a variety of topics throughout their lifetimes. In this dissertation, I ask: Do advisors accurately perceive the impact of their advice? Or, do they possess blind spots that prevent them from doing so? I focus on whether advisors recognize the information they need in order to form judgments of the impact of their advice, which I call "impact judgments". Four studies demonstrate that advisors have blind spots in their perceptions of their influence and that these blind spots have consequences for advisors' accuracy and subsequent behavioral intentions. First, a free-recall task (Study 1) and a manipulated scenario task (Study 2) showed that advisors failed to recognize when they were missing information needed to form accurate impact judgments, namely, information on the advisee's initial, pre-advice opinion, unless they were prompted to think about why they need that information. Second, an experiment where participants were assigned the role of advisor or advisee (Study 3) demonstrated that advisors' impact judgments were less accurate when advisors did not know the advisee's initial, pre-advice opinion. Third, participants' recollections of a time they gave advice (Study 4) showed that advisors relied on their impact judgments for forming downstream behavioral intentions such as willingness to give advice again, even when they recognized that they were lacking needed information. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for advice giving by individuals and members of organizations, a general framework for impact judgments, and areas for future research.

Background: Youth living with HIV (YLWH) face mental health challenges that negatively influence their adherence to antiretroviral medication and HIV outcomes. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of YLWH reside, there are few mental health professionals. Task-shifting interventions to lay peer leaders may be an effective strategy for addressing mental health challenges. This study aims to understand and evaluate peer group leaders’ experiences delivering a peer-led, group-based mental health intervention called The Voice of Youth (Sauti ya Vijana (SYV) in Swahili) to YLWH in Tanzania. Methods: Peer group leaders (PGLs) aged 23 to 29 years and living with HIV were trained to deliver SYV. The study took place at four different sites in Tanzania. In-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with PGLs after delivering the SYV pilot study. IDIs were audio-recorded in Swahili and translated to English. English transcripts were analyzed using NVivo, and Excel was used to summarize data further and identify themes. Results: PGLs expressed a multitude of motivators and perceived benefits in their roles, including a desire to help youth, increased confidence, and a newfound hope for the future. Challenges included concerns about compensation and navigating exposure to difficult life events from the youth that triggers past trauma experience by PGLs. PGLs also shared recommendations for the intervention in terms of expansion and sustainability. Conclusions: Insights from the PGLs can help enhance the SYV PGL experience and position SYV for sustainability as Tanzania navigates scaling mental health care YLWH.

In recent years, leadership research has focused on the concept of “authentic leaders” who act consistently with their values, make balanced decisions, are self-aware, and are transparent in their relationships (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing and Peterson, 2008). Authentic leaders have the dual tasks of remaining true to their own values and beliefs (in order to be perceived as authentic) and simultaneously projecting an expressive persona (in order to be perceived as a leader). In this research, personality (extraversion and conscientiousness) and impression management (self-monitoring) constructs are used to capture the aspects of authentic leadership that reflect authenticity (expressiveness and other-directedness) and are shown to predict authentic leadership using ratings of followers. The analysis also includes the different dimensions of the self-monitoring scale, using mini-scales that reflect expressiveness (public-performing) and consistency (other-directedness or self-directedness), and show that they predict authenticity in leaders using self-ratings of leaders. The studies help to explain which leaders meet the challenge of being themselves and projecting their persona. Finally, there is evidence that authentic leadership is a mediator of the relationship between previously studied personality variables (extraversion and conscientiousness) and job satisfaction.

Contradictory findings about whether agentic women are advantaged or disadvantaged persist in gender and leadership research. I suggest that these tensions may stem from ambiguities regarding the definition, content, and structure of agency. Across nine studies, I propose a motivation-influence-ability (MIA) multifactor model of agency perceptions that seeks to reconcile ambiguities surrounding the agency construct. The MIA model of agency reflects the distinct ways in which agency perceptions have been measured in gender and leadership research over 44 years. Exploratory factor analysis (pilot study) and confirmatory factor analyses across diverse independent samples support a multifactor structure of agency with six factors: ambitious agency, dominant agency, competent agency, self-assured agency, hardworking agency, and independent agency (Studies 1 to 4, Studies S1 to S3). Discriminant and convergent validity with gender stereotype (Study 2) and leadership (Study 3) measures were established. Additional psychometric analyses revealed measurement invariance across participant’s gender, supervisor’s leader, online vs. non-online samples, and time (Study S1). Further, I found that the six-factor model predicted more variance in perceived promotability relative to the existing one-factor model (Studies S2 and S3). In addition to demonstrating that the model has desirable psychometric properties, I also show that conceptualizing agency in a more nuanced way reconciles existing tensions within the gender and leadership literature and also leads to a different understanding of past conclusions. Women are advantaged when they are perceived as self-assured, independent, competent, and hardworking but penalized when they are perceived as dominant (Study 4). Finally, an experiment revealed that agentic advantage was driven by a positive expectancy violation effect (Study S4), such that only people who believed that women who are less competent than men (i.e., those who subscribed to descriptive gender stereotypes) evaluated the highly competent female leader as more effective than the highly competent male leader.

This dissertation examines how people’s loyalty to their groups influences their perception of harm. Specifically, people who are loyal (vs. not loyal) to their ingroup perceive negative actions by an outgroup against their group as more harmful. Three studies provided support for this hypothesis. Students loyal to their university’s basketball team perceived greater harm from its rival basketball team than those who were not (Studies 1 and 2). The effect held controlling for related group constructs, such as group identification (Studies 1 and 2), and related moral constructs, such as belief in a just world (Study 1). The association between loyalty and harm perception generalized to a country context by showing that Americans more loyal to the United States were more likely to perceive foreign tariffs as harmful (Study 3). Rather than differences in memory recall or general negative perceptions of the outgroup, this effect appeared to be due to loyalists exaggerating the perceived harm inflicted (Studies 2 and 3). Furthermore, as perceptions of harm increased, desire for punitive actions also increased (Study 3).

Surveys taken within the last two years have indicated that the majority of Americans believe that race relations are getting worse. This is in stark contrast to what the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States seemed to signify. Numerous people, pundits, and papers hailed this political victory as evidence that the United States was now entering a post-racial period. Eight years later, however, after several racially charged tragedies, many Americans are now wondering if the country can ever heal from the wounds of its racial past. During the summer of 2016, churches and faith leaders across America struggled to respond to video footage of a series of police shootings of black men. Alton Sterling died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after an altercation with police officers. Within twenty-four hours, a Facebook live video showed Philando Castile (with his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter in the car) dying from gun wounds once he alerted a police officer that he was legally carrying a gun. The next day, five police officers were gunned down at a peaceful protest in downtown Dallas. The trio of events led to socio-political uproar. The American Evangelical Church is unprepared for the current socio-political climate that is producing severe racial strife and tension in American society. Highly publicized killings of unarmed black people are an intense political issue for individuals and communities. These shootings cause considerable psychological distress in individuals and racial tension in communities and cities. The Evangelical Church is unprepared and thus vulnerable to division and strife within its own walls, is hindered in achieving and sustaining ethnic diversity, and typically does not provide a robust prophetic message of hope in the midst of socio-political despair. This thesis will employ qualitative research in the form of literature reviews. First, drawing from current sociological, psychological, and political research I will make the case that the church must take proactive measures to prepare for—using my own coined term—racialized storms. The church must prepare for these storms to reduce the severity and impact of these racially-charged events in their respective communities and cities. I intend to research and recommend strategies drawn from the academic and professional fields of climate change adaptation and natural hazard mitigation. These insights will be analyzed and synthesized with biblical data to create a framework that gives churches practical steps to prepare for and respond to racially charged events that cause upheaval and division in the socio-political landscape of our communities and cities.

U.S. faith-based organizations (FBOs) founded by Christians have gained wide recognition and influence both nationally and internationally and have become, to a large extent, the de facto bearers of contemporary Christian mission in an increasingly post-denominational landscape. Yet the focus of this thesis is how FBOs suffer from a separation between missiology, ecclesiology, and theological reflection in ways that inhibit their participation in the mission of God, or missio Dei.

The thesis draws on history, sociology, and missiology to provide a critical framework for an inter-disciplinary analysis of FBOs that illuminates the problems they face and describes what is required for a recovery of faithful witness. The thesis begins with the emergence of FBOs as a uniquely Protestant story, locating their origins within the history of Protestant missions, the emergence of the voluntary society, and their evolution into humanitarianism and the problems which emerge out of that history. A move to sociological analysis situates contemporary FBOs within a wider social ecology of powerful forces that cause non-profits to behave like for-profit corporations, often giving themselves over to bureaucratic models shaped by a technological understanding of practice. The final move to missiology and ecclesiology makes the claim that the critical reference point for evaluation of the FBO is the flourishing of the practice of Christian missions.

This constructive missiology provides the basis for proposing marks of a faithful mission-type organization in the contemporary context which can sustain the practice of missions not primarily as humanitarian activism, but as participation in the missio Dei. The thesis re-narrates FBOs and the marks we should look for in FBOs by proposing several organizational disciplines that provide a response to the challenges facing the contemporary FBO. These marks are displayed through brief case studies from three FBOs: L'Arche International, the U.S. national organization InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and New Song Urban Ministries in Baltimore.

In this dissertation, I develop and test a theory linking the legacy motive to entrepreneurship. After examining evidence in support of the desire to make a lasting impact as a source of motivation for the founders of new organizations, I propose that the importance of this motive has been overlooked, due to a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the legacy construct. I argue that examining the relationship between entrepreneurship and the legacy motive contributes greatly to understanding of both phenomena. I develop a theory of entrepreneurial legacies, in which I explain how understanding the connection between the legacy motive and entrepreneurship requires recognizing the variety of lasting impacts different people can choose to pursue. I then examine the implications of the different desired legacies for the entrepreneurs and their organizations, particularly for critical funding decisions at the beginning of the new venture, and for decisions related to succession, when the organization needs to replace the founder. Next, I conducted two studies to examine the effects of the legacy motive on entrepreneurial decision making. In the first study, I tested the relative strength of the legacy motive among firm founders and those who work for others. I developed new measures of the intended benefits and beneficiaries of a legacy, to examine their relationship to each other and related variables using an online sample of engineers. I found that engineers high on the legacy motive are more likely to indicate founding the firm they currently work for, own more of their current employer, and have filed more patents. In the second study, I conducted a qualitative examination of medical startups, examining the processes that led executives in these firms to the current stage of their careers, and the elements of their work lives that they experience as meaningful. Finally, I discuss the implications of the link between the entrepreneurship and the legacy motive, and the different ways in which people define what makes these two constructs meaningful.

Rarely does the path to goal accomplishment look perfect. Making progress on everyday goals is often unsteady, in that each unit of effort or time spent generates unequal results. In this research, we examine how progress steadiness affects motivation. Although unsteady goal progress is common, we suggest that goal pursuers find it discouraging. We hypothesize that even when goal progress is equal in amount and speed, unsteady (vs. steady) progress decreases people’s sense of accomplishment and motivation to continue, and increases quitting. Across a variety of goal domains, findings from vignette experiments (Studies 1a, 1b, and 5), a recall study (Study 2), and real-time experiments (Studies 3 and 4) support these hypotheses. We also explore the mediating role of self-efficacy (Study 3), and identify how manipulations targeting expectations about progress steadiness can reduce the negative effects of unsteady progress (Study 5). These results are the first to consider how progress steadiness can affect motivation.

What is self-awareness? Is self-awareness always helpful? Studies of self-awareness have implications for a wide variety of topics in organizational behavior. Yet, this research has been scattered, resulting in gaps, siloed insights, a lack of clear and consistent conceptualization, and the confounding of causes and effects with self-awareness itself. In this dissertation, I present a collection of papers that have been assembled to increase our understanding of not only the nature of the construct of self-awareness itself, but of also its consequences. I first review and synthesize a set of discrepant findings across organizational behavior and psychological literatures to distinguish, summarize, and assess research on self-awareness as process and content (Chapter 1). I then propose that the content of self-awareness manifests through three distinct focal targets of awareness: internal, external, and social (Chapter 2) and develop a measure of self-awareness grounded in this distinction (Chapter 3). I use this theoretical framework to investigate the downsides of self-awareness by proposing that overly high levels of self-awareness may have detrimental interpersonal consequences for leaders (Chapter 4). I close my dissertation with an evaluation of implications of my findings for future research (Chapter 5).

How do churches change? In the life of congregations, collective identity informs congregational practice which, in turn, informs collective identity, forming a reinforcing loop that artificially prevents congregations from making significant changes to their congregational practice. To change the practices would be to change the identity, and to change the identity would be to change the practices.This thesis explores the interaction of collective identity, congregational practice, and change. After a review of pertinent scholarship concerning organizational and congregational change, this study provides an in-depth analysis of three churches that have made significant changes to their congregational practice in the last decade. Employing a multiple case study methodology, the actions of these congregations are compared to one another and to existing change literature. In the end, these three congregations demonstrate how the effective use of engaging with their histories to re-story their present collective identities allowed them to meet these new changes in a way that fits with their identities. Rather than preventing them from making significant changes, the reinforcing loop of collective identity and congregational practice propelled them.