Search results

Make a contribution on company business models and typical reactions to economic crises.

Media-analysis-based case study.

Crisis is handled through drawing on a strategy deriving from the typical features of the company; through the crisis these features are even intensified.

Multinational companies are complex and only transparent to a small degree; the empirical data therefore rests on a database with articles.

Social implications can be seen at the BMW as a functioning example for social partnership as a form of economic embeddedness at the societal level.

Purpose: Because past research has investigated nonverbal behaviors in clusters, it is unclear what status value is ascribed to individual nonverbal behaviors. I test status cues theory to investigate whether response latency functions as a status cue. I explore whether it affects behavioral influence or if it only signals assertiveness and does not have status value. I also explore how one's interpretation of response latency impacts behavioral influence.

Methodology: In a two-condition laboratory experiment, I isolate response latency and test its strength independently, and then I measure behavioral influence, participants' response latency, and perceptions of assertiveness. I also conduct interviews to investigate how participants interpret their partner's response latency to understand how people ascribe different meanings to the same nonverbal behavior.

Findings: I find that response latency alone does not affect behavioral influence, in part because how people interpret it varies. However, response latency does significantly impact participants' own response latency and their perceptions of their partner's assertiveness.

Practical Implications: This research demonstrates the intricacies of nonverbal behavior and status. More specifically, this work underscores important conceptual differences between assertiveness and status, and demonstrates how the interpretation of nonverbal behavior can impact behavioral influence.

Second-order expectations refer to an actor's beliefs about what a co-actor believes with respect to their relative abilities on a shared task. The authors describe and compare three alternative programs of research that explain the effects of second-order expectations on behavioral inequalities in task groups. The authors’ overall goal is to work toward improving the precision and generality of theories of second-order expectations.

The authors conduct a thorough review of theory and research on each of the three alternative models of second-order expectations. In so doing, they highlight areas of convergence and divergence in terms of theory, method, and empirical support. They also suggest research designs that can help clarify the effects of second-order expectations in task groups and adjudicate among the models.

New empirical studies are needed that attempt to replicate findings across the three approaches to modeling second-order expectations. In addition, the three approaches need to be directly compared at the same time using a shared experimental design and the same participant population.

This is the first effort to systematically and critically compare and contrast three competing models of second-order expectations in structural social psychology. The authors offer a number of original, specific recommendations for future research.

This paper examines the exercise of Black employee voice in South Africa over the past 53 years. Black workers constitute almost 4 out of every 5 workers in the country and experienced racial oppression from the time of colonisation up to the end of apartheid in 1994. They are still congregated around the lower skilled occupations with low incomes and high unemployment levels.

The paper draws on the theory of voice, exit and loyalty of Albert Hirschman, but extends voice to include sabotage as this encapsulates the nature of employee voice from about 2007 onwards. It reflects a culture of insurgence that entered employment relations from about that time onwards, but was lurking below the surface well before then.

The exercise of employee voice has gone through five phases from 1963 to mid-2016 starting with a silent phase for the first ten years when it was hardly heard at all. However, as a Black trade union movement emerged after extensive strikes in Durban in 1973, employee voice grew stronger and stronger until it reached an insurgent phase.

The phases employee voice went through were heavily influenced by the socio-political situation in the country. The reason for the emergence of an insurgent phase was due to the failure of the ruling African National Congress government to deliver services and to alleviate the plight of the poor in South Africa, most of whom are Black. The failure was due to neo-patrimonialism and corruption practised by the ruling elite and politically connected. Protests by local communities escalated and became increasingly violent. This spilled over into the workplace. As a result many strikes turned violent and destructive, demonstrating voice exercised as sabotage and reflecting a culture of insurgence.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive analysis of how sentiments may be a part of, or adjacent to, status generalization. We demonstrate why this problem is so difficult to solve definitively, as many resolutions may exist. Sentiments may present the properties of graded status characteristics but may also be disrupted by processes of the self. Sentiments may have status properties enacted within dyadic interactions. However, sentiments may also be status elements during triadic constellations of actors. Finally, we discuss current research that is underway to provide more empirical evidence to offer confirmation or disconfirmation for some of our proposed models.

We provide a synthesis of literatures, including pieces from group processes, neuroscience, psychology, and network scholarship, to address the relation between sentiment and status processes. Accordingly, this is a conceptual chapter.

We attempt to motivate future research by exploring the many complications of examining these issues.

Understanding how social inequalities may emerge during group interaction allows researchers to address their deleterious effects. Positive sentiments (in other words, “liking”) should bring actors closer together to complete tasks successfully. Ironically, when paired with negative sentiments within task groups, inequalities in group opportunities may result. To address these social inequalities, a thorough understanding of how they develop is necessary, so that efficacious interventions can be adopted.

This deep dive into the relation between sentiment and status processes joins the 25-year quest to understand the issues surrounding this relationship.

Purpose: Status characteristics theory assumes that the effects of status on performance expectations will be the same for both high and low status actors. However, this may not be true in all situations. Prior work suggests that in some situations, high status actors may ignore new information that should lower their position within a group's power and prestige order (Kalkhoff, Younts, & Troyer, 2011), making them resistant to status loss.

Methods: In a laboratory experiment, I introduced new status information to participants that contradicted their prior status position within a sequence of groups working on the same task.

Findings: Results show new status information that contradicts prior status orders is less influential on the expectations of initially high status actors, supporting the result initially reported by Kalkhoff et al. (2011). Additionally, I show this effect exists for two task-oriented behaviors, resistance to influence and response latency.

Contribution: This experiment suggests a “sticky expectations” effect exists when new status information is introduced to groups with established performance expectations. It also extends earlier research by showing the effect exists for multiple task-oriented behaviors and is not limited to situations involving the transfer of second-order expectations.

Research Implications: This research suggests that high status actors are more resistant to status loss than previously believed. I consider two possible mechanisms for this effect: self-enhancement bias as initially proposed by Kalkhoff et al. (2011) and an effect on collective orientation caused by performance expectations.

The authors review experimental procedures employed in studies of status and organization processes in task groups. Early studies employed face-to-face interaction in groups in both naturalistic and laboratory settings. The creation of an abstract interaction experiment that varied initial conditions in place for actors increased validity in theory tests. Recent studies have employed face-to-face groups to increase the range of situations to improve both internal and external validity. The authors include a brief history of how experiments have increased the range of explanatory application. The authors illustrate questions related to external validity with examples from research the authors and others have conducted.

Properties of experimental design are described. The authors employ aspects of the standard experiment in the expectation states research program to highlight designs used in studying task groups. The authors discuss features of face-to-face discussion studies designed to test aspects of expectation states theories. Errors in execution of data collection and principles of good design are explicated.

The authors identify procedures that may affect the quality of data in open interaction situations. Means to reduce errors and improve data quality are identified. The authors list issues that may affect data quality and suggest several ways to improve design and reporting of face-to-face studies.

The authors' effort to create a design road map for face-to-face studies will improve the quality of data collection and analysis. This will broaden the scope of research situations and improve the range of external validity of studies of status and organization of task groups.