Organizational Behaviour Seminars
(Academic Year 2016-2017)
Date | Speaker/Affiliation | Topic |
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1.11.16 | Ayala Cohen Technion Israel Institute of Technology |
Evaluation of Within Group Agreement
Complex, multilevel theories are common in the behavioral sciences research where notions of collective phenomena such as group affect, team efficacy, and organizational climate are studied. A major challenge for researchers working in these areas is that higher level phenomena often cannot be assessed directly, but rather inferences must be made from data collected at lower levels of analysis. In many cases, these phenomena are understood conceptually to arise from lower levels, often from individuals, within these collectives. The methodological implication is that measurement should take place at the lower level, (e.g., the individual level) and then the data should be aggregated to the level of interest, (e.g., the group level or organizational level). It is accepted that within group agreement is a pre-requisite for aggregating individual ratings to the group level. Agreement reflects the degree to which the members of the group share a similar view so that the aggregated value can be used to reflect their view.
When justifying aggregation agreement indices, rWG(J), or AD are used together with the intra-class correlation ICC to demonstrate agreement and consistency among lower-level units . Along with the progress on evaluating agreement based on, rWG(J) , or Ad are still many practical questions how to infer from the calculated agreement indices whether the agreement is large enough to justify aggregation. In the seminar I shall introduce the rWG(J) and AD indices, explain their properties and how they are used ( and misused). I shall describe and discuss the RGR method, (Bliese & Halverson ,1996) which compares the estimated agreement indices and ICC obtained for actual team data to that of ‘‘pseudo teams’’ formed by randomly combining individual responses into ‘‘teams". I shall also point out open questions that still remain concerning how to use the observed values of these indices to infer about agreement and briefly describe recent new developments. |
24.11.16 | Eran Halperin.. IDC |
The Social Psychology of (Wise) Interventions for Peace: From the Lab to the Field and Backwards
Resolving intergroup conflicts is one of humanity’s most important challenges. Social psychologists join this endeavor, not only to understand the psychological foundations of intergroup conflicts but also to suggest interventions that aim to resolve conflicts peacefully. My talk will review recent attempts to use contemporary knowledge in social psychology to promote support for peaceful and conciliatory policies in various intergroup, violent conflicts around the world. I will argue that these interventions can be divided into three broad categories: (a) interventions that provide contradictory information, (b) interventions that provide information through experiences, and (c) interventions that teach new skills. These three groups of interventions will be discussed while using data both from lab and field experiments as well as insights from more applied work.
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6.12.16 | Peter Bamberger
Tel Aviv University Coller School of Management |
Team Reflexivity and Emotional Wellbeing in Manufacturing Teams: The Mediating Effects of Job Demands Control and Support, and the Moderating Effects of Team
While the impact of team reflexivity (a.k.a. after-event-reviews, team debriefs) on team performance has been widely examined, we know little about its implications on other team outcomes such as member well-being. Drawing from prior team reflexivity research and the occupational stress literature, we argue that, by reducing task demands, and enhancing control and support, the processes inherent to team reflexivity, have beneficial implications on three core dimensions of employee burnout, namely exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy (reduced personal accomplishment). Using a sample of 469 unskilled manufacturing workers employed in 73 production teams in a Southern Chinese factory, we implemented a longitudinal field experiment, with half of the teams trained in and executing an end-of-shift team debriefing, and the other half assigned to a control condition and undergoing periodic post-shift team-building exercises. Our findings largely supported our hypotheses, demonstrating that relative to team members assigned to the control condition, those assigned to the reflexivity condition experienced a significant improvement in all three burnout dimensions over time. These effects were mediated by control and support (but not demands) and amplified as a function of team stability.
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22.12.16 | Jason Shaw The Hong Kong Polytechnic University |
Publishing in AMJ and Other Reflections
Jason D. Shaw is Chair Professor of Management and Co-Director of the Centre for Leadership and Innovation in the Faculty of Business at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas in 1997.
His research has been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Personnel Psychology, and Journal of Management, among other scientific outlets. He is the current Editor of the Academy of Management Journal and has previously served as an Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal (2010-2013), and in elected positions on the Executive Committee of the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management and on the Board of Governors for the Southern Management Association. He has also served or is serving on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Psychology Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Human Resource Management Review, Africa Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Journal, and Journal of Managerial Issues. |
27.12.16 | Einav Hart University of Pennsylvania |
Getting less than what you pay for: Negotiations decrease employee motivation
Most social settings, from work environments to family life, involve negotiating. A vast literature examines negotiation strategies and outcomes, yet the criteria for the quality and outcome of negotiations have remained essentially unchanged in several decades. Research focuses on value creation and value claiming. The literature has been surprisingly silent on what happens after negotiations conclude. Here we examine how negotiations affect the parties' relationship, and their motivation to work with and for one another after negotiating.
Across several studies, we find that negotiating wage decreased employees' productivity. Subjects exerted less effort, and were less accurate, in real-effort tasks after negotiating their wage than after being told of a non-negotiable wage. We find evidence that perceived conflict underlies this effect. Negotiations turned the relationship more contentious, thus diminishing employees' desire to work harder. Lay-people did not anticipate the detrimental effect of negotiations on motivation and productivity. Results imply that negotiations have harmful long-term consequences, and should be entered with caution. We challenge current prescriptions regarding when, and how, people should negotiate. |
3.1.17 | Lilach Sagiv Hebrew University in Jerusalem |
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10.1.17 | Simone Moran Ben-Gurion University |
Having the others in heart and in mind: Determinants, evaluations, and consequences of interpersonal decision
In this talk, I will present three independent research projects. The projects explore determinants, judgments and consequences of different types of pro-social decisions and behaviors across a variety of contexts.
The first project (with Ronit Montal) examines effects of envy on helping in teams, differentiating between autonomous versus dependent help. In line with a cost-benefit model, we find that people are less likely to provide help, particularly autonomous help, to their envied (vs. non-envied) teammates, and that this reluctance to help envied others is less apparent when task interdependence is high (vs. low). The second project (with Hadar Shany & Tehila Kogut) focuses on the context of negotiations and explores how different types of pre-negotiation gestures – namely, monetary versus non-monetary, impact the target negotiators’ subsequent negotiation motivations, perceptions, and behaviors (i.e., offers). Across several studies, we find that when facing a single-issue distributive negotiation, people are reluctant to negotiate with non-monetary benefactors, yet happy to negotiate with monetary ones. Moreover, when negotiating with non-monetary (vs. monetary) benefactors, negotiators are more driven by pro-social motivations, and propose less self-serving negotiation offers. The third project (with Margarita Leib & Shaul Shalvi) examines peoples’ willingness to sacrifice their ethical values in order to help or hurt others. Specifically we assess the extent to which people are willing to bluntly lie and/or implicitly “bend the rules” to reciprocate others’ (un)generosity, as well as out of mere spite or altruism. Results of this project indicate that unethical helping is more common than unethical hurting. The former occurs even in the absence of self-gains, and without a reciprocal motivation. |
31.1.17 | Amos Schurr Ben-Gurion University |
Determinants of (im)moral judgments and decisions
Norms shape our judgment and choice. In this talk, I will review two independent findings pertaining to the relationship between norms, ethical judgments and decisions about harming and saving others.
The role of (in)action norms while driving regular and autonomous vehicles (With Simone Moran and Clil Uliel) The technology for self-driving cars is here and soon self-driving cars will replace regular cars reducing casualties and improving our lives. Still, not all accidents will be avoided and situations of unavoidable harm will still exist. Here we suggest that in a case of unavoidable harm a driver in a self-driving car who swerves the car in order to obtain the more utilitarian outcome will be judged more favorably than a driver in a regular car obtaining the same outcome. The reason is that we have different (in)action norms. We expect the driver in the regular car to act and choose the utilitarian outcome but we do not expect the driver in the self-driving car to override the car’s default. This difference in expectation leads in turn to a more favorable judgment of the latter. Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior (with Ilana Ritov) Competition is prevalent. People often resort to unethical means to win (e.g., the recent Volkswagen scandal). Not surprisingly, competition is central to the study of economics, psychology, sociology, political science, and more. Although we know much about contestants’ behavior before and during competitions, we know little about contestants’ behavior after the competition has ended. Connecting post competition behaviors with preceding competition experience, we find that after a competition is over winners behave more dishonestly than losers in an unrelated subsequent task. Furthermore, the subsequent unethical behavior effect seems to depend on winning, rather than on mere success. Providing insight into the issue is important in gaining understanding of how unethical behavior may cascade from exposure to competitive settings. |
14.3.17 | Xavier Castaner Université de Lausanne |
The Determinants of the Number, Novelty, and Usefulness of Ideas in Innovation Teams with Disciplinary Diversity
Prior research on the determinants of the number, novelty and value of ideas offered in teams has proceeded much in a specific theory silo, piecemeal fashion. In this project, assuming disciplinary diversity in innovation-driven teams, I propose a theoretical framework which starting from intent (try to achieve a certain goal/challenge) proceeds to the outcomes mentioned through the intermediate roles of incentives, methods/tools taught or at hand and, in particular, the degree and type of interaction. I will present also the research design including the questionnaire developed.
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21.3.17 | Daniele Nosenzo The University of Nottingham |
Preferences for Truth-Telling
Private information is at the heart of many economic activities. For decades, economists have assumed that individuals are willing to misreport private information if this maximizes their material payoff. We combine data from 72 experimental studies in economics, psychology and sociology, and show that, in fact, people lie surprisingly little. We then formalize a wide range of potential explanations for the observed behavior, identify testable predictions that can distinguish between the models and conduct new experiments to do so. None of the most popular explanations suggested in the literature can explain the data. We show that only combining a preference for being honest with a preference for being seen as honest can organize the empirical evidence.
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28.3.17 | Ann Peng University of Western Ontario |
Leader Punishment as a Necessary Evil?
In this presentation, I will present two of my on-going research projects. The first examines within-person change in abusive supervision. Drawing from theories and research on the role of stimuli change in individuals’ psychological responses, this study examines dynamic relationships between change in abusive supervision and change in subordinate outcomes. The results suggest that there are short-term positive effects of increases in abusive supervision that may potentially reinforce such behavior, even while across time it adversely affects employees’ performance and other behaviors. The second project concerns leader disciplinary behavior, which is defined as actions taken by a leader in responding to followers’ undesirable behavior with the intent of deterring future occurrence of such behavior or changing it to conform to the standards of the organization. This study develops and validates a measure of leader disciplinary behavior that distinguishes punitive discipline (i.e., focusing on punishing the perpetrator) from corrective discipline (i.e., emphasizing changing the behavior). It further examines how the two forms of leader disciplinary behavior may affect employee perceptions and behavior. Results show that corrective (but not punitive) discipline has a positive influence on employee learning.
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28.3.17 | John Schaubroeck Michigan State University |
Roles of leadership and experienced work Dirtiness in shifting occupational Disidentification and work disengagement
Since the 1950s, sociologists and anthropologists have studied workers in occupations imputed to be ‘dirty,’ meaning they are stigmatized by society due to salient moral, social, or physical taints that are attributed either to the work itself or its context. ‘Dirty work’ scholars propose various psychological effects of engaging in such work, with a particular emphasis on how it encourages employees to disengage psychologically from the work context. To date, no research has examined individual variation in perceptions of work dirtiness in occupationally heterogeneous samples, much less how perceived dirtiness may be related to changes in employee outcomes over time. I will overview findings from a three-week, six-wave longitudinal study that tests a moderated mediation model. In this model, employees’ perceptions of their leaders’ emphasis on team member collaboration and team goals shapes responses (changes in job change intentions, depersonalization, and withdrawal behaviors) to experiencing aspects of dirtiness at work through the mediating role of changes in occupational disidentification.
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4.4.17 | Aya Cohen Technion - Israel Institute of Technology |
Statistical Analysis of Innovation Activity Based on Patents data of 79 Countries during 1966-2011
In this seminar, I shall describe the statistical methodology and the results of a large research project with Dr. Daniel Benoliel from Haifa University. The purpose of this research was to gain understanding of both how and why domestic innovation activity is promoted by patenting activity in developing countries, (with emphasis on emerging economies), in comparison to advanced economies. The data (issued by UNESCO) that were used for the statistical analysis included panel data of several variables such as: several GERD (Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D) indicators; and "propensity to patent", (defined as the number of patents divided by GERD). The yearly data of 1996-2011 were available for 79 countries. The main emphasis in the talk will be on the statistical methods that include: Imputation, Clustering and Mixed models. They will be briefly reviewed as well as why and how they were useful.
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25.4.17 | Nir Halevy Stanford University |
Managing Others’ Interdependence: Power, Dual Concern, and Third-party Intervention in Conflict
TBA
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16.5.17 | Michael Kurschilgen Munich Technical University |
Internal conflict, market uniformity, and transparency in price competition between teams
TBA
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13.6.17 | Einat Yaor Tel Aviv Universuty |
Should you let your mind wander? INTRODUCING A NOVEL FRAMEWORK AND PROPOSING WORK TASK PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES
Mind-wandering, a common state in which one's thoughts drift away from a task toward self-generated thoughts, affects numerous outcomes. Surprisingly, research on mind-wandering in organizational contexts is lacking, and the effects of mind-wandering on work-task performance are currently unknown. To extend mind-wandering theory and research into organization science, an integrative and comprehensive theoretical framework is needed. Thus, we develop the “Mind-Wandering Map”, a typology of mind-wandering comprising three levels of classification: mind-wandering quantity; meta-cognitive aspects of mind-wandering; and mind-wandering contents. We demonstrate one important application of our framework by developing specific propositions regarding the effects of various mind-wandering characteristics on immediate task performance in common work tasks: vigilance tasks, verbal-information-processing tasks, and creative problem-solving tasks. We contribute to mind-wandering and organizational research in numerous ways: By integrating findings from research on mind-wandering and on external related constructs, we embed the concept of mind-wandering in a robust theoretical foundation. We offer a novel overarching framework that provides researchers with a fine-grained approach to studying the prevalence, antecedents and outcomes of mind-wandering.
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13.6.17 | Nili Ben Avi Tel Aviv Universuty |
Should we be stressed about stress? Stress mindset and judgment of others’ strain
We know a lot about stress and its resulting strain (i.e., negative outcomes such as burnout or impaired health), but not about how we perceive others' strain and what are the outcomes of such strain perceptions. We integrated the social projection and stress mindset literatures, to investigate, for the first time, the effect of holding a stress-is-enhancing, versus stress-is-debilitating; mindset on social judgments of a target's strain, and, consequently, on the target's perceived promotability and the intention to voluntarily help the target. We argued that projecting the perceiver’s stress-mindset on a target, may result in an egocentrically biased judgment of the target’s strain. We conducted four experimental and correlational studies, among 976 fully employed Americans and Israelis, using a novel stress mindset manipulation. We both predicted and found evidence that, independent of the effects of mood or optimism, individuals holding a stress-is-enhancing versus stress-is-debilitating mindset were less likely to judge a target experiencing a heavy workload, as suffering from burnout, somatic symptoms, and presenteeism (i.e., reduced productivity at work due to health problems). We also revealed important downstream outcomes: whereas these low strain judgments, in turn, lead to a higher estimate of the target's promotability, they also lead to a lower likelihood of helping him. Taken together, the current findings establish a causal link between stress-mindsets and judgments of others’ strain, thereby extending the novel notion of stress-mindset beyond intra-personal outcomes to inter-personal effects. Results provide a foundation for future work addressing the accuracy of judgment of others’ stress experience.
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20.6.17 | Ella Meron Spector Technion Israel Institute of Technology |
Paradox Mindset and Job Performance: The Problem Is How We Think About The Problem
TBA
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27.6.17 | Amir Goldberg Stanford University |
Enculturation Trajectories: Language, Cultural Adaptation, and Individual Outcomes in Organizations
TBA
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Seminars for Academic year 2014
Aya Cohen Technion - Israel Institute of Technology |