Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the personality trait of desire for control over others (DFCO) matters to team leadership and performance, and how commitment to the leader mediates this relationship. Furthermore, the authors study whether intergroup competition moderates this indirect relationship.

The authors test hypotheses for mediation and moderation using a sample of 78 groups and their leaders. Commitment to the leader and intergroup competition were measured at the team member level, while DFCO and team performance was rated by the team leader. Bootstrapping was used to assess the significance of the (conditional) indirect effects.

The results show that leader’s DFCO does not relate to team performance through commitment to the leader. Leader’s DFCO only relates negatively to team performance through commitment to the leader when the team operates in a context with little or moderate intergroup competition. In a highly competitive environment, however, leader’s DFCO does little damage to team performance.

This research is the first study to focus on DFCO as a personality trait of a group leader. In doing so, it adds to the continuing debate about leader personality and context, as well as the ongoing study on how subordinates respond to different levels of control over decisions in groups.

This study examines the relationship between in-group identification, intergroup schadenfreude, and the tendency to aggress against out-group members. More specifically, it assesses whether intergroup schadenfreude mediates the identification–aggression link.

This study is a cross-sectional study with the variables studied being in-group identification, intergroup schadenfreude, and tendency to aggress toward out-group members. A total of 123 participants were recruited for this study and questionnaires measuring each variable was administered to participants.

The results from a cross-sectional survey indicate a positive correlation between in-group identification and intergroup schadenfreude and between intergroup schadenfreude and tendency to aggress against out-group members. The results from this study also show that intergroup schadenfreude mediates the relationship between in-group identification and the tendency to aggress against out-group members.

Given the nature of cross-sectional study, claims regarding causal nature of the variables studied could not be made. Further, this study was also contextualized within the political context making expression of schadenfreude more “acceptable” and more easily expressed among participants. Suggestions for further research suggestions are discussed is light of these limitations.

Findings of this study highlight the importance of understanding intergroup schadenfreude in group contexts, and how such emotions can be employed by leaders to instigate, rather than diminish aggressive tendencies against out-group members.

This is one of the few studies to demonstrate that rather than diminishing tendencies to engage in aggressive behaviors, schadenfreude, when experienced within group settings, can instead elicit intentions to aggress against rival or opposing group members.

Purpose – We consider the question of when teams are an asset at the negotiating table and when they are a liability.

Methodology – We center our review on three key “empirical truths” about teams. First, teams are better than individuals at solving problems. Second, teams are more self-interested than individuals. Third, teams are trusted less and are less trusting than individuals.

Findings – Teams have an advantage over solo negotiators when there is unshared information and multiple issues on the table. Teams have an advantage in these contexts because of their superior problem-solving abilities. However, teams are more likely than solos to suffer from costly and uncertain legal action due to failures in dispute resolution and earn lower profits than solos in negotiations with a prisoner's dilemma structure. Thus, because teams are more self-interested and less trusted than individuals, they can be a liability in negotiations in which the parties' interests are opposed.

Implications – To the leverage the positive effects of teams in negotiation, it is critical that negotiators determine whether the context is one that allows for coordination and integrative tradeoffs, such as multi-issue deal-making negotiations, versus one that is characterized by noncorrespondent outcomes and incompatible interests, such as disputes and prisoner's dilemma interactions.

Value of the paper – The term “negotiation” has been applied rather broadly to a complex assortment of mixed-motive tasks. Our review indicates that distinguishing among these tasks is paramount to meaningfully address questions of individual versus group performance in negotiation.

As other researchers have done previously, we conceptualize innovation not as a linear process but as a cyclical one (e.g., Van de Ven, Polley, Garud, & Venkataraman, 1999), which consist periods of innovation initiation, implementation, adaptation, and stabilization (West, 1990). Within this cycle it is possible to distinguish two major components: the beginning of the cycle, which is dominated by the generation of ideas that is generally also designated as creativity; whereas the dominant activity at the end of the cycle which is the implementation of ideas (hereafter referred to as the implementation of innovation). Creativity is then likely to be most evident in the early stages of the innovation process, when those in teams are required to develop or offer ideas in response to a perceived need for innovation. Creative thinking is also likely when teams proactively initiate proposals for change and consider their initial implementation. As the innovation is adapted to organizational circumstances, there is less need for creativity. At the outset of the process, creativity dominates, to be superseded later by innovation implementation processes. Of course, it can be argued that creativity is important throughout the innovation process, but in general, the requirements for creative ideas will be greater at the earlier stages of the innovation process than the later stages.

With age diversity in the workplace becoming increasingly prevalent, the conflict between younger and older workers can be pervasive because of their increased interpersonal tensions from heterogeneous interactions. Adopting an identity-based approach, this study aims to examine the causes, underlying mechanisms and specific strategies used to manage such conflict. It was hypothesized that there is an interaction effect between age-group identification and organizational identification on conflict strategies and that this relationship can be explained by the mediating role of motivational goal orientation.

A total of 380 clerical workers in Hong Kong, aged 19–65, responded to two hypothetical scenarios about conflict with a younger and an older worker using a structured questionnaire on social identity, motivational goal orientation and conflict strategies. Moderated mediation analyzes were performed to test the hypothesized conditional indirect effects.

Results showed that workers who identified with the organization emphasized less on independent goals (with a younger opposing party) and more on cooperative goals (with an older opposing party) when they did not perceive an age-group differentiation, and thus, they were more likely to respond in a way that de-escalates the conflict, including the use of integrating, obliging and compromising strategies.

Extending age-related conflict research beyond identifying generational differences, this study highlights the role of social identity and suggests that employers and managers should strengthen employees’ organizational identification and build a fair work environment that facilitates positive interaction between younger and older workers.

To introduce the concept of cultural equity and provide a theoretical framework for managing cultural equity in multi-cultural markets.

Recent research on the social psychology of globalization, cross-cultural consumer behavior, consumer culture, and global branding is reviewed to develop a theoretical framework for building, leveraging, and protecting cultural equity.

Provides an actionable definition for a brand’s cultural equity, discusses consumer responses to brands that relate to cultural equity, identifies the building blocks of cultural equity, and develops a framework for managing cultural equity.

Research conducted mainly in large cities in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. Generalizations to less developed parts of the world might be limited.

A very useful theoretical framework for managers interested in building cultural equity into their brands and for leveraging this equity via new products and the development of new markets.

The paper integrates past findings across a variety of domains to develop a parsimonious framework for managing cultural equity in globalized markets.

This paper examines the effect of intergroup competition on intragroup cooperation. Three experiments are reviewed. The first experiment establishes that intergroup competition can effectively increase intragroup cooperation in a laboratory setting where symmetric players make binary decisions in one‐shot dilemma games. The second experiment shows that this constructive effect of intergroup competition is generalizable to a real‐life setting in which asymmetric players make continuous decisions in an ongoing interaction. The third experiment demonstrates that the increase in intragroup cooperation can be accounted for at least in part by motivational, rather than structural, effects of the intergroup competition. Theoretical and practical issues concerning the applications of these findings are discussed.

Purpose – We review how team members’ identities and interests affect team functioning, paying special attention to subgroup dynamics triggered by faultlines and coalitions. This review sets the stage for describing novel pathways through which identities and interests, when considered together, can affect team processes and outcomes.

Design/approach – We use an extended example of a hypothetical team's decision-making process to illustrate how team members’ identities and interests intertwine to affect the distribution and flow of information, subgroup dynamics, and team decisions.

Findings – We develop three specific ideas to demonstrate the utility of this integrative approach. First, we show how the formation of identity-based subgroups can shape information sharing to create a hidden profile where there was none initially. Second, we describe how individual defection can weaken subgroup competition and, paradoxically, increase the chance that a team will optimize its collective welfare. Third, we analyze how shared identities can shape team members’ side conversations in ways that create shared interests and information among those with similar identities, even before the team begins its formal meetings.

Originality/value – By identifying new routes through which identities and interests can affect team functioning, we provide a foundation for scholars in this domain to theoretically develop and empirically test these and related ideas. More generally, we encourage scholars to study the interplay among identities, interests, and information in their own research to paint a more complete picture of how individuals, subgroups, and teams perform.

Purpose – This chapter contributes to comparative biopolitics and reviews primatological literature, especially about our nearest relatives, the Great Apes.

Design/methodology/approach – Biopolitics in this chapter means evolutionarily informed political science, with emphasis on power relations. I review the literature on intrasexual and intersexual dominance interactions among individuals and competitive and/or agonistic interactions among groups in the Great Apes (Hominidae, formerly Pongidae): orangutan (Pongo with two species and three subspecies), gorilla (Gorilla with four subspecies), bonobo (Pan paniscus), and common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes with four subspecies). In the final section I present some (speculative) thoughts on Pan prior or the modern human ancestor.

Findings – Not only Man is a political animal.

Originality/value – Impartial, objective, and as complete as possible review of the literature for the students of (comparative) politics, ethology, and psychology.

In this chapter, I use the term “biopolitics” to mean evolutionarily informed political science. Politics has been characterized as “Who gets what, when, and how” (Lasswell, 1936), but rather than about material possessions, politics is understood to be about power, more specifically about collective power, especially differential group power competition, hierarchy and stratification in power distribution, and the universal struggle to enhance power, and to maintain or challenge/destroy this status quo. Politics “should be found in any system of nature in which conflicts of interest exist among cooperating organic units” (Johnson, 1995, p. 279). My main focus will be competitive intergroup relations in monkeys and apes, or as I (van der Dennen, 1995) called it “intergroup agonistic behavior” (IAB). I also briefly treat interindividual and intercoalitionary agonistic behavior when relevant.