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Recently, there has been an increase in the number and type of studies in the organizational sciences that examine curvilinear relationships. These studies are important because some relationships have context-specific inflection points that alter their magnitude and/or direction. Although some scholars have utilized basic techniques to make meta-analytic inferences about curvilinear effects with the limited information available about them, there is still a tremendous opportunity to advance our knowledge by utilizing rigorous techniques to meta-analytically examine curvilinear effects. In a recent study, we used a novel meta-analytic approach in an effort to comprehensively examine curvilinear relationships between destructive leadership and followers' workplace outcomes. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an actionable guide for conducting curvilinear meta-analyses by describing the meta-analytic techniques we used in our recent study. Our contributions include a detailed guide for conducting curvilinear meta-analyses, the useful context we provide to facilitate its implementation, and our identification of opportunities for scholars to leverage our technique in future studies to generate nuanced knowledge that can advance their fields.

Several comprehensive reviews are united in drawing the conclusion that the cumulative research evidence on work team diversity is equivocal. Rather than review the extant state of diversity research, in this paper we redirect attention to the context of workplace diversity as a possible explanation for these mixed findings. We discuss how diversity context may be conceptualized, specify various aspects of this context at multiple levels of analysis, and consider how contextual variables can shape the outcomes of work team diversity. We present findings from a literature review (1999–2006) to identify key trends and patterns of results reported in recent research as well as contextual factors that have received attention to date. This paper also considers how the non-significant, positive, negative, and curvilinear effects of diversity reported in studies can be explained by the contextual factors outlined. Implications for future research are also discussed.

This study focuses on how the creation of a new market identity, defined here by the social categories that specify what to expect of products and organizations, helps legitimize normatively illegitimate products and thereby facilitate the formation of markets for these products. A product is given a legitimate market identity by recombining existing product and status categories in a way that is both isomorphic with and differentiated from these preexisting categories. I argue that the creation of a new market identity helped create a market for feature films that combined legitimate comedy and illegitimate pornography following the legalization of pornography in Denmark in 1969. Topological analyses of the cultural content of all the film posters used to promote Danish films between 1970 and 1978, and regression analyses of the status of the actors appearing in these films document the importance of market identity in legitimizing illegitimacy.

This chapter demonstrates (1) divergence between spending based upon a budget ratcheting model and a benchmark spending model, (2) that this divergence affects organizational performance, and (3) that internal benchmarking enables unit-to-unit performance comparisons, despite claims of organizational or unit uniqueness. We contrast two spending models to examine whether the divergence, or cost estimation gap, affects operating performance across inpatient (n=4,536) and outpatient departments (n=8,438) in 23 U.S. Army hospitals. Using a fixed-effects panel data methodology for fiscal years 2004–2006, we find that unit managers’ spending in this setting is more closely approximated by budget ratcheting. Using multiple performance metrics measured via a DuPont-like decomposition, we find that, within a specified range, operating performance generally improves as resources become constrained. Outside that range, however, we find nonlinear performance effects that approximate a quadratic loss function. Our benchmark model enables clinical department comparisons while controlling for facility, clinical specialty, and case mix severity. The resulting departmental comparability facilitates identification and communication of best practices across the entire Army hospital system. These results should be of interest to corporate executives, government officials, and agency managers who have responsibility for establishing funding mechanisms that include performance-based components.

We examined the effects of group structure and electronic communication patterns on the performance of 18 multinational teams over an 8-month period. The teams were composed of a mix of Western and non-Western executives located throughout the world. In these highly diverse teams, team performance did not vary as a function of demographic heterogeneity; however, demographic homogeneity within the teams’ subgroups negatively affected team performance. The following communication patterns were associated with better team performance: a hierarchical communication structure, expressions of trust in the team's competence, references to the self, and information-providing statements.

Corporate diversification is a strategy that enables corporations to expand their core business into other businesses. In Malaysia, corporate diversification continues to represent a fundamental organizational structure. Some two-thirds of Malaysian firms are diversified. However, when compared to developed countries such as the US and the UK, we find that firms are moving toward non-diversification. The study is based on the population framework consisting of all of the public limited companies (PLCs) listed on the Bursa Malaysia stock exchange from 2007 to 2012. A dynamic panel model system generalized method of moments (GMM) was used to analyze the diversification and firm’s performance theories.

The empirical findings demonstrated that diversification is better than non-diversification firms for the curvilinear relationship between diversification and firm’s performance (ROA and Tobin-Q) when using the entropy index and relatedness is taken into consideration. The research further concluded that related and unrelated diversification also has a positive relationship with performance, but diversification must be the dominant (focused) and cannot be too broad in nature. Diversification that is too broad may cause a positive relationship to turn in to a negative relationship toward performance in both related and unrelated instances of diversification.

Purpose – This chapter explores the effects of persistent identity nonverification on the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses used to “reclaim” an identity within the perceptual control model of identity theory.

Methodology/Approach – We conducted a within-subjects experiment invoking the “student” identity to examine the relationship between the persistence of nonverification and emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions.

Findings – Contrary to identity theory, we find the effect of persistent nonverification on negative emotion and behavior change is curvilinear (rather than linear). Low persistence produced the least negative emotion, but medium and high persistence produced comparably higher levels of negative emotion. For behavior change, the relationship is curvilinear and opposite what identity theory would expect: low persistence produced the greatest (rather than least) behavior change. For cognitive reactions, we find support for identity theory: persistent nonverification has a negative (linear) effect on the perceived accuracy of feedback. We conclude that while individuals accurately perceive the degree to which identity-relevant feedback is discrepant, “too much” nonverification produces excessive negative emotion and dismissal of social feedback with little behavioral modification.

Practical Implications – Program interventions based on identity theory may focus on maximizing identity verification as a means of shaping positive identities and behaviors. Our research suggests that there may be a “goldilocks zone” where small amounts of nonverification lead to more positive outcomes.

Originality/Value of the Chapter – This chapter examines persistence of identity nonverification in connection with more or less immediate cognitive and behavioral (not just affective) responses, which has not yet been done in identity theory research.

Strategy scholars have long argued that breakthrough innovation is generated by recombining knowledge from distant domains. Even if firms have the ability to access and absorb knowledge from distant domains, however, they may fail to pay attention to such knowledge because it is seemingly irrelevant to their tasks. We draw attention to this problem of knowledge relevance and develop a theoretical model to illuminate how ideas from seemingly irrelevant (i.e., peripheral) domains can generate breakthrough innovation through the cognitive process of analogical reasoning, as well as the conditions under which this is more likely to occur. We situate our theoretical model in the context of teams in order to develop insight into the microfoundations of knowledge recombination within firms. Our model reveals paradoxical requirements for teams that help to explain why breakthrough innovation is so difficult.