Category Archives: *Administrative Science Quarterly
Email Etiquette: The Unwritten Rules We Follow
Topic: Culture, Decision Making
Publication: Administrative Science Quarterly (SEP 2012)
Article: Appeasing Equals: Lateral Deference in Organizational Communication
Authors: Alison R. Fragale, John J. Sumanth, Larissa Z. Tiedens, and Gregory B. Northcraft
Reviewed By: Susan Rosengarten
Lets face it. We’re all addicted to checking our email. How many of us can go more than a day or two without succumbing to the suspicion that we’ve received some highly critical, time-sensitive message in our inbox that requires our immediate attention? Writing emails has become so routine for many of us that sometimes it seems like our fingers automatically start typing before our brain gets a chance to catch up and tell us what to write.
A recent study by Fragale et al. (2012) found that our thought processes in composing and responding to emails are a bit more complicated than meets the eye. One might think it intuitive that employees would use deferential language in their correspondence to those above them in their companies’ organizational hierarchies. We want to appease our superiors and show them that we recognize our place below them within our companies’ social structure. Surprisingly enough though, the authors found that deferential email language is most often used in communication “among equals,” or between peers of equal or similar rank within their organization. They also found that patterns of deferential language were moderated by individuals’ concern for their status positions.
Rank indicators like job titles and physical workspaces serve to clarify organizational roles and elucidate the power relationship between superiors and their subordinates. Deferential communication becomes especially important among peers of the same rank, who are most likely to see each other as a threat to their advancement within the organization and are more sensitive to perceived cues of status competition. Bet you never thought the cognitive processes involved in “shooting” someone an email could be quite so complex, huh?
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
I’ve Got Your Back: Reciprocity Among Corporate Leaders
Topic: Leadership
Publication: Administrative Science Quarterly (JUN 2012)
Article: Helping Other CEOs Avoid Bad Press: Social Exchange and Impression Management Support among CEOs in Communications with Journalists
Authors: James D. Westphal, Sun Hyun Park, Michael L. McDonald, and Mathew L. A. Hayward
Reviewed By: Susan Rosengarten
Have you ever watched those videos where person A opens the door for person B, which spurs person B to help person C? Well, that behavior is something called social exchange theory in a nutshell; one good deed begets another. When someone helps us out, we feel indebted to repay the favor in some way and “even the score,” so to speak.
This theory holds its weight even among the corporate elite. Impression management, or a leader’s effectiveness at controlling and influencing how he or she is perceived, is a critical component of corporate governance. CEOs often find their leadership strategies challenged in the press, especially amidst disclosures of their firm’s poor performance or low corporate earnings. The media might perceive a CEO’s defense of his actions or the ill-fated state of his organization as self-serving in nature. However, reporters understand the situation differently when CEOs of rival firms in the same industry defend their fellow constituents and explain that industry-wide challenges and external factors contributed to the organization’s state of demise.
Why would one CEO defend his fellow CEO to the press, you may ask? Well, Westphal et al. (2012) list a couple of reasons. For one, a CEO who has received support from another CEO feels indebted to defend his corporate colleague should the situation reverse. For another, a CEO who benefited from the support of a fellow CEO in the past will likely help out another of his colleagues being slammed by the press. Finally, a CEO will often feel compelled to support a fellow CEO who has provided similar support to other corporate leaders in the past. So start reading the newspaper with a more critical eye; you might be surprised at how differently the same story can be spun.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Venture Capital…and I/O?
Topic: Change, Organizational Development, Organizational Performance
Publication: Administrative Science Quarterly
Article: Bringing the context back in: Settings and the search for syndicate partners in venture capital investment networks.
Blogger: Rob Stilson
All right, so let me get the “summary” part of this out of the way first. A recent study by Sorenson and Stuart (2008) presented an elaborate and, at times, complicated peek into the mechanisms through which venture capital firms form syndicates with other venture capital firms when investing in start-up companies. Based on some person-level theories of relationship building, the specific aim of the researchers was to describe how characteristics of the investment situation (which included variables such as how “fashionable” the targeted industry was at the time of investment, the maturity of the target company, the size of the investment syndicate, and the density of relationships among members of the syndicate) influenced the likelihood of syndicate formation across “social distance” (defined as the similarity of investment histories between two firms and previous experience with each other, among other things). Breaking down the main findings, it was reported that venture capital firms were more likely to create distant ties with other firms when:
- the popularity of investing in the target company’s industry or geographic region (think Internet boom in Silicon Valley) was high
- the level of risk in investing in the target company was relatively low
- the size of the investment syndicate (i.e., the number of players involved in the venture capital firms) was large
- at least one member of the syndicate had worked with someone in the venture capital firm in a previous investment
But as I slammed my head against this article trying to maintain interest, I did come to a couple of interesting realizations which I think might be useful to those of us who are wholly academic I/O psychologists or still wet-behind-the-ears when it comes to how business operates in the “real world.”
1. Appreciating the context in which our “population” and variables of interest reside is not a trivial task. While some may not want to admit it, I/O psychology is a unique branch in that we bound our study of human behavior to specific environments; thus even a base understanding of that environment may reveal some insights into the nature of a phenomenon you might never have even considered.
2. Theories of the individual often have great use and appeal at describing theories of the organization—if you’re careful. The foundations for Sorenson and Stuart’s article were tied closely to early works on social exchange theory and networking, and the authors were quite explicit in explaining how similar the functional linkages were at both the individual and organizational level.Continuing to apply such thinking has the potential to advance our field, but it requires creative thinking, sound methodology and an understanding of where inferences might be most applicable. Moral of the story: take the time to expand your breadth a bit.
Granted, there’s the real possibility that you’ll be bored to death, but, if you’re lucky, you might just learn a thing or two that could come in handy down the line (especially if you’re ever a multi-millionaire looking to expand into high risk investments).
