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The authors aim to explore how perspective-taking and attribution of blame lead to side-taking by human resource professionals (HRPs) when making judgements and handling complaints of sexual harassment.

Employing qualitative methodology, the authors used semi-structured in-depth interviews with 35 HRPs from 30 companies in Sri Lanka. Attribution theory and perspective-taking were used as theoretical lenses.

In handling complaints of sexual harassment incidents, HRPs take the perspectives of the alleged perpetrator, complainant, or the company and attribute the blame to the alleged perpetrator or the complainant. Irrespective of the gender of the HRPs and the perspective they take, they would most often blame the female complainants due to sexual harassment myths and misperceptions and traditional sex-role beliefs. Thus, they either take the side of the alleged perpetrator or the company, explicitly/implicitly or intentionally/unintentionally.

The central originality of this research is the finding that HRPs take sides in resolving complaints of sexual harassment and perspective-taking and attribution of blame by HRPs lead to this side-taking in organisational settings.

Perspective-taking is an overlooked relational competence that matters to interaction, problem-solving and cooperation in inter-organizational buyer–seller relationships. This paper aims to distinguish perspective-taking from empathy with which it has often been associated. It uses aptitude theory to propose a conceptualization of perspective-taking consisting of perspective-taking ability and motivation components that are used to explore the scope of perspective-taking in customer–supplier relationships.

An experiment and survey, are conducted among customer managers to apply and test measures to capture the ability and motivation components of the perspective-taking aptitude. The two perspective-taking components are used to propose a 2 × 2 matrix that provides a four-type typology, labelled: “talented”, “ineffectual”, “fervent” and “indifferent”. Data are collected from a sample of senior managers of manufacturing firms responsible for the dyadic relationship with a business support agency.

The data supports the presence and distribution of the four typologies among customers in business relationships and regression analysis confirms the impact of the proposed perspective-taking typology types on customer–supplier cooperation. The different combinations of the perspective-taking dimensions of ability and motivation that make up the perspective-taking aptitude type result in different dispositions to cooperate. “Talented” and “ineffectual” members with high and low perspective-taking ability and motivation scores, respectively, provide the highest and lowest cooperation dispositions. “Fervent” and “indifferent” members occupy an intermediate perspective-taking aptitude on the typology, with the former impacting cooperation moderately and the latter not found to be significant.

Understanding counterparts, inferring their motives and anticipating reactions, is a critical capacity for mutual dyadic adjustments in customer–supplier relationships in business markets. Such an understanding of perspective-taking can prove useful to effective interaction, solution development and relationship building, as interacting managers belonging to different typology types exhibit different levels of cooperation. In addition, an understanding of perspective-taking can prove useful to identify the right talent that can foster effective interaction and solution development in customer–supplier relationships. It also raises the issue as to how best sellers can interact to influence the perspective-taking of buyers in their quest to achieve better solutions and cooperation.

Provides a useful supplement to theory by bringing perspective-taking, grounded in aptitude theory, as an essential relational competence in business marketing that can provide an additional explanation to cooperation and joint problem-solving in inter-organizational business relationships. The paper develops and proposes a typology of perspective-taking that brings together ability and motivation dimensions, operationalizes and assessed their measures and tests the impact of the proposed perspective-taking typology types on cooperation in customer–supplier interaction.

This empirical quantitative research study aimed to test whether historical texts could activate empathic concern and perspective taking in a US History classroom with adolescent students.

Eighth-grade participants (n = 227) were randomly assigned to read either a historical narrative text or a collection of primary documents, then participants self-reported a range of emotions and wrote a paragraph that was assessed for historical perspective taking.

Results indicated that for students randomly assigned to read the narrative text, empathic concern or compassion, was associated with higher historical perspective taking, even after controlling for literacy ability.

All participants attended a single predominantly. White upper middle class middle school, and read either one narrative text or one collection of primary documents. Findings cannot be generalized to all students or all texts. The study design did not assess for a causal relationship of empathic concern and historical perspective taking.

This study demonstrates that empathic concern, when activated through a certain narrative text, can be associated with greater achievement on cognitive academic tasks such as writing a paragraph assessed for historical perspective taking. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that empathic concern should be a target emotion for students rather than a similar emotional experience as the person they are empathizing with.

Adolescents today appear to have lower levels of empathy than in the past. Empathy may be crucial for moral behavior. Research indicates that historical texts could potentially provide effective empathic interventions for adolescents. However, there are no published empirical quantitative research studies related to activating empathy for adolescents through literacy in a history classroom.

The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of proactivity on work–family enrichment through thriving at work and the moderation of such mediation by immediate supervisor perspective-taking.

Research data consisting of two-wave lagged data (N = 470) were collected from 470 employees of 17 domestic Chinese firms to examine the proposed moderated mediation model.

The findings show that proactivity was positively related to work–family enrichment and that thriving at work partially mediated this relationship. Immediate supervisor perspective-taking strengthens the effect of proactivity on thriving at work, and a positive indirect relationship exists between proactivity and work–family enrichment through thriving at work when immediate supervisor perspective-taking is high.

Organizations should formulate policies to motivate employees to engage in proactive behavior and stimulate employees' thriving at work. Organizations should also select leaders who are good at perspective-taking and provide training to leaders to help them take others' perspectives.

These results deepen our theoretical understanding of the consequences of proactivity by demonstrating the positive associations between proactive behavior and work–family enrichment. The current study also contributes to the literature by identifying the mediating mechanism of thriving at work to explain the relationship between proactivity and work–family enrichment. Furthermore, the results show that supervisor perspective-taking moderates the above mediation.

The purpose of this research is to explore dyad‐specific perspective taking as a potential antecedent of transformational leadership behavior.

The study's hypothesis was explored through a sample of 106 supervisor/subordinate dyads working in a hospital. Supervisors self‐reported their dyad‐specific perspective taking, while subordinates evaluated the transformational leadership behaviors of their supervisors.

Results indicate that dyad‐specific perspective taking is related to transformational leadership behavior and not related to transactional leadership behavior.

Results suggest that managers wishing to improve their skills as leaders may want to increase the frequency with which they attempt to look at issues from the perspective of their subordinates.

This research contributes to the literature by suggesting that dyad‐specific perspective taking is related to transformational leadership behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that explains how proactive cognitive processes, such as perspective-taking, relates to expatriates’ effectiveness.

This conceptual paper presents the model that is based on the perspective-taking models developed by Parker et al. (2008) and applies them to the expatriate context.

The authors present a framework that delineates how the perspective-taking process leads to an expatriate’s effectiveness. The authors provide propositions about which factors motivate expatriates to engage in perspective-taking and which factors influence higher accuracy of understanding of the host country nationals’ (HCN) perspective.

Guidance is provided for the training of expatriate to develop perspective-taking.

The paper expands the expatriate research by incorporating the perspective-taking model to identify which factors may motivate expatriates to see the HCN view point. Also, the paper contributes to the literature by identifying how resources such as expatriates’ psychological capital may promote the degree of accuracy or comprehension with respect to the HCN thoughts and feelings.

This paper aims to investigate the combined effect of two interventions, perspective taking and incentives, on auditors’ professional skepticism (hereafter skepticism) when auditing complex estimates. Specifically, this paper examines the different ways that perspective taking (management versus inspector) and incentives (absent versus reward versus penalty) combine to impact skepticism.

This paper uses an experiment with 177 experienced Big 4 auditors. The experiment used a 2 (management vs inspector perspective) × 3 (absent vs reward vs penalty incentives) between-subjects design.

In the absence of incentives, adopting a management perspective raises situational skepticism when measuring skepticism as appropriateness of management’s fair value estimate while adopting an inspector perspective raises situational skepticism when measuring skepticism as need for more evidence. The authors find some evidence that incentives complement perspective-taking by enhancing those aspects of skepticism for which perspective-taking performs poorly. When assessing management assumptions, auditors adopting an inspector perspective enhance their skepticism more substantially than those adopting a management perspective, and this enhancement is greater with rewards than with penalties. However, this study does not detect an interaction between incentive type and perspective-taking on auditor skepticism in relation to gathering additional evidence.

This paper extends the literature by shifting the focus from a single perspective to a comparison of two perspective-taking approaches and discusses how each of these approaches enhances different aspects of skepticism. This paper also illustrates the importance of the interplay between perspective-taking and incentives in enhancing auditor skepticism.

This paper aims to draw upon motivated information processing theory to examine the sequential mediating roles of perspective taking and boundary spanning between transformational leadership and the creative performance of knowledge workers.

The study was carried out on a sample, including a dyad of 398 knowledge workers and their immediate supervisors in four research institutes in southwest China. The authors tested the theoretical model using structural equation modeling (SEM) and Mplus 7.0 software.

The results support the mediation model in which perspective taking was found to significantly and positively mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and boundary spanning. Boundary spanning was found to significantly and positively mediate the relationship between perspective taking and creative performance. Moreover, both perspective taking and boundary spanning were found to mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and creative performance.

The study findings imply that the transformational leadership behaviors of managers or supervisors nurture knowledge workers' perspective taking and their boundary spanning activities leading to creative performance.

The findings contribute new knowledge to the relationship between transformational leadership and creative performance by uncovering the causal chain of a cognitive mechanism (perspective taking) with a behavioral mechanism (boundary spanning).

Based on social information processing theory, this paper aims to explore how and when leader self-deprecating humor may spark subordinate learning from failure. The authors cast perspective taking as a novel explanatory mechanism for this indirect effect, and further consider leader–member exchange as a boundary condition of the relationship.

The authors tested the hypotheses by conducting a multiwave and multisource survey of 604 members from 152 teams in a Chinese high-technology company.

Results of multilevel path analyses demonstrate that leader self-deprecating humor positively influences subordinate learning from failure via perspective taking. Further, this mediation effect is stronger at higher levels of leader–member exchange.

This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the relationship between leader self-deprecating humor and subordinate learning from failure. However, the research design was not longitudinal or experimental, and thus the authors were unable to make strong inferences about absolute causality.

The work yields useful insights for practitioners aiming to encourage subordinates to learn from failure.

This study provides evidence that leader self-deprecating humor can stimulate subordinate learning from failure via perspective taking, and the indirect effect is further strengthened by leader–member exchange. The findings offer new directions for research on leader self-deprecating humor and learning from failure.

The purpose of this paper is to test how team regulatory focus may relate to individual creativity and team innovation; and address the fit/misfit issue of team regulatory focus and team bureaucracy.

The authors collected data from 377 members and their leaders within 56 R&D teams in two Taiwanese companies.

A team promotion focus was positively related, whereas a team prevention focus was negatively related, to both team innovation and member creativity through team perspective taking and employee information elaboration, respectively. Furthermore, team bureaucracy played a moderating role that suppressed the indirect relationship between team regulatory focus and creativity.

This is one of first studies to explore an underlying mechanism linking team regulatory focus and both team innovation and member creativity. The authors provide a more complete view of the creative and innovation implications of team-level self-regulation.