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Successful teams tend to be highly cohesive and team cohesion to be particularly helpful in allowing teams and their members to sustain their success even in the most challenging times. One disillusioning consequence of this reciprocity between cohesion and performance would suggest that failures made by teams and/or their members likely jeopardize their success by preventing them from capitalizing on such virtuous circles associated with team cohesion. Yet, many teams uphold their performance despite the failures they have to cope with, suggesting that the potential vicious circles can be overcome. This chapter aims at illuminating the vicious and virtuous circles associated with team cohesion that are induced by either collective failures of teams or individual failures of their members. It therefore offers a multilevel perspective not only on the emergence and diffusion of failures at the individual and team levels, but also on the critical role that team cohesion plays for a team’s (dys)functional coping across these levels. It is theorized that collective failures triggered exogenously can help build team cohesion, and that whether endogenously-triggered collective failures bring about the vicious or the virtuous circles of team cohesion depends on whether the individual failures developing into collective failures are triggered endogenously or exogenously. The implications of this conceptual work are discussed in light of the literatures on error/failure management and group cohesiveness.

In their chapter, Rupp, Bashshur, and Liao (this volume) have made an impressive contribution to the literature on multi-level justice. These authors have provided both a precise conceptual definition of justice climate and a measurement strategy (referent shift) that will greatly smooth the progress of future empirical inquiry. The goal of this commentary is to expand these important ideas by moving in two directions. First, we discuss what it means to be an individual when justice is experienced as a member of a team. Toward this end, we describe research on social identity theory and social categorization theory, emphasizing how these paradigms could further increase our knowledge. Second, we discuss two new manifestations of multi-level justice that have hitherto been neglected: intraunit justice (group perceptions regarding how team members generally treat one another) and interunit justice (perceptions regarding the way one group treats another). All of these multi-level justice concepts are organized into a new taxonomy.

This chapter seeks to investigate the ways individualistic versus collectivistic values moderate neural responses to social exclusion among African American and White respondents. The author hypothesized that the vmPFC – a key brain region for emotion regulation – would correspond to collectivistic value moderation and the dlPFC – the cognitive control center of the brain – would be associated with individualistic value moderation.

This study used a virtual ball tossing game (Cyberball), where 17 African American and 11 White participants were excluded or included with ball tosses, while inside an fMRI scanner. Before the start of each round the participants were primed with individualism, collectivism or a comparison condition.

Results showed that (1) African Americans showed stronger neural responses to exclusion and (2) offered support for the hypothesis that the dlPFC showed greater activation in African Americans (compared to Whites) when they were primed with individualism values during exclusion. There was no support for the collectivism hypothesis.

Research limitations included a relatively small sample size (N = 28), a comparison of only two racial groups and that the partners in the game were virtual (pre-programmed by the experimenter).

This research offers an empirical framework for sociologists seeking to apply social theories into neurological studies.

Identifying effective coping strategies for historically oppressed racial groups.

The chapter is original for demonstrating the moderating effects of values on neural responses to exclusion for the first time and by offering a novel neurosociological framework.

This chapter helps to establish a characterization system for industrial and consumer companies. Marketing science shows that industrial brands and consumer brands have to be managed in significant different ways. The reason is the variety of distinctions. Marketing literature often fall back to the same definition for companies. Usually, companies are defined business-to-business (B2B) when they deal with other companies and business-to-consumer (B2C) when they make their revenues with private consumers. However, both definitions do not represent the knowledge from marketing literature about the specifications in both market categories. The characterization system here separates companies by the demand drivers (derivate and origin) of their costumers, by their communication strategy, by the roles individuals play in the buying process, and recommend the appropriate branding strategy. The results of a survey about B2B knowledge show how important such a characterizing system for the discussion is. Often managers have no clear picture of a company in terms of B2B and B2C marketing. The system helps them to find a common basis for understanding the crucial issues, based on an empirical analysis.

Purpose – This chapter proposes a theoretical framework – the Conflict Templates Model – that depicts how people conceptualize their outcome interdependence in conflict and negotiation situations. We focus on perceptions of outcome interdependence in dyadic conflicts, with a particular emphasis on intergroup interactions.

Approach – Integrating ideas and concepts from game theory with social psychological principles, we propose that: (a) people's mental representations of interdependence are predictably constrained to a small set of mixed-motive games; (b) different motivational goals often lead group members to endorse different games to describe the same intergroup conflict; and (c) these interdependence perceptions influence parties' strategic behavior, and ultimately, their outcomes.

Findings – We review empirical evidence that provides initial support for each of these propositions and discuss future directions for research on the mental representation of conflict and negotiation.

Originality/value – We generate a number of novel predictions concerning the mental representation of conflict. We also discuss how identifying disputants' mental representations can help conflict managers devise effective strategies for managing and resolving conflicts.