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The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.

Negotiation is a ubiquitous part of work-life. As such, negotiations do not occur in a vacuum, which means that we often find ourselves negotiating again and again, in a variety of situations, with varying degrees of success and failure. By taking every opportunity that presents itself, we can learn and develop our negotiation skills further as a result of our cumulative negotiation experiences – especially the more difficult ones. To date, the literature on negotiation and learning from failures has yet to be integrated. In pursuit of this goal, this chapter will firstly, identify the characteristics or specific aspects of a negotiation that could be a setback or failure, and secondly, integrate failures and setbacks into a systematic approach in which we can learn effectively from these setbacks, in which the author applies the literature on learning from failure to specific negotiation setbacks.

The idea of implementing supply chain management (SCM) principles for the construction industry was embraced by construction stakeholders to enhance the sector's performance. The analysis from the literature revealed that the implementation of SCM in the construction industry enhances the industry's value in terms of cost-saving, time savings, material management, risk management and others. The construction supply chain (CSC) can be managed using the pull or push system. This chapter also discusses the origin and proliferation of SCM into the construction industry. The chapter revealed that the concept of SCM has passed through five different eras: the creation era, the use of ERP, globalisation stage, specialisation stage and electronic stage. The findings from the literature revealed that we are presently in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. At this stage, the SCM witnesses the adoption of technologies and principles driven by the 4IR. This chapter also revealed that the practice of SCM in the construction industry is centred around integration, collaboration, communication and the structure of the supply chain (SC). The forms and challenges hindering the adoption of these practices were also discussed extensively in this chapter.

In this chapter, we present a model for the process of value creation in power-differentiated groups and identify affect as a key moderator. We divide the value creation process into two key steps: information sharing and information processing. Further, we propose that high- and low-power group members each play a critical, albeit different, role in these processes. High-power group members are instrumental in establishing an environment that encourages all group members to share their unique information. Once that information is available, low-power group members use it to formulate solutions that create value. Further, we propose that the affective experience of each of these determines the extent to which they fulfill their role. If high-power group members are happy, they are more likely to create an open and sharing environment. If angry, they will likely squelch broad participation in information sharing. While low-power group members are naturally prone to effortful cognition, we propose that the more suspicious they are regarding the motives of those around them, the more carefully they will process available information.

Purpose – To provide a framework for organizing research on group negotiation, including the contributions of the current volume.

Methodology – The organizing framework arranges past research on group negotiation and the contributions offered in this volume according to the core negotiation elements of people, processes, and places, and their impact on the integration of negotiators' preferences.

Findings – There is an extensive literature on negotiation, but historically group negotiation has represented only a small part of that dialogue. There are three general categories of group negotiation: multiparty negotiation, team negotiation, and multiteam negotiation. The core issue addressed in this chapter is how – viewed through the lens of the four identified core negotiation elements of preferences, people, processes, and places – the quantity and arrangement of negotiators involved in a negotiation qualitatively changes the negotiation experience, and specifically how (different types of) negotiating groups make more complex the challenge of identifying, agreeing to, and implementing integrative agreements.

Implications – More than dyadic negotiation, the difficulty of reaching agreements that satisfy all parties can lead to agreements that some negotiators are less than enthusiastic about implementing. It is the difficulty and importance of finding agreements that satisfy all parties in group negotiation that makes it so important to understand the influence of group negotiation by people, processes, and places.

Value of the Paper – This chapter organizes the landscape of group negotiation research by illuminating both what we know about the people, processes, and places that influence the negotiation of group members' preferences, as well as pointing the way – both theoretically and methodologically – for future researchers to fill in the blanks that remain.

This work examines the interplay between power, status and style. Building on the dual role of power and status as two primary sources of social influence in contemporary consumer society, we propose that stylistic choices associated with greater status can imbue the wearer with greater feelings of power. We focus on a pervasive stylistic choice for women – whether to wear heels – and test two critical relationships regarding consumers' choice of heels that can act as a bridge between status and power. First, we propose that the stylistic choice of wearing heels increases wearers' perceived status (but not perceived power) – the heeled status-enhancement hypothesis, whereby (1) wearing heels increases wearers' perceived status (but not perceived power) among observers and (2) lacking power (vs having power or baseline) yields greater desire for heels over flats. Second, we propose that an increase in status stemming from wearing heels increases consumers' feelings and behaviours of high power – the status–power transfer hypothesis. Three studies confirm the use and perception of heels as status symbols and provide support for both hypotheses. We show that wearing heels (vs flat shoes) makes individuals feel and behave more powerfully by thinking more abstractly and taking more actions, two hallmarks of high power, but only when heels are worn conspicuously (i.e., the wearer knows the observer sees them). In addition, these effects are mediated by wearer's feelings of power and unexplained by perceptions of sexiness. Implications for the literatures on style, status, power and conspicuous consumption are discussed.

Purpose – There are a number of ongoing debates in the organizational literature about conflict in groups and teams. We investigate two “conflicts about conflict” (i.e., two meta-conflicts) in the literature: we examine whether and under what conditions conflict in workgroups might be beneficial and we also explore the idea that group members may not always perceive the same levels of conflict.

Design/approach – We bring together the research and theorizing of the past 15 years to inform the current state of literature and move forward research on these conflicts about conflict. We examine and develop the two meta-conflicts to illustrate the importance of studying these ideas and to provide guidance for future research.

Findings – These two meta-conflicts in the conflict literature are important to investigate as conflict is a multifaceted construct that contains many dimensions that may influence group outcomes. We explore these two issues by briefly reviewing the literature on conflict and then highlighting some of the recent research on the conflict debate (i.e., is conflict constructive or destructive?) and conflict asymmetry in workgroups.

Originality/value – We identify interesting areas that future researchers could explore with respect to team conflict and conflict asymmetry.

Bus use in later life tends to increase, especially in countries where there is cheaper or free travel on buses for older people. That said, there are still many barriers to bus use. The most major barrier for older people is feeling unsafe on the bus, especially at night. Accessibility issues are also important, with concerns for step-free access and getting a seat. A bus driver driving off before the older person has sat down is another major concern for older people. The presence of a friendly helpful, understanding bus driver is seen as a huge benefit for older people. Training to support bus drivers in providing an age friendly service are therefore highly recommended. In many countries, public transport is supplemented by community transport offering a door-to-door on demand facility to help older people stay mobile where there is a lack of accessible public buses. There are real advantages for older people using such buses, especially creating a safe environment taking older people to important places, such as hospitals or shops. Such services can be supplemented by journeys for days out and these are very popular with users. Older people aren’t large users of railway services. Barriers include concerns over getting a seat, worry about what happens if connections are missed and services are disrupted. Older people are more likely to want staff to help them complete their journey and emphasise the need for seats, cleanliness and facilities over journey length and cost.

The purpose of this theoretical chapter is to rework a promising but limited theory of the foundations of reciprocity. Reciprocity is often attributed to an “internalized norm of reciprocity” – a deeply felt moral obligation to help those who have helped us in the past. Leifer's theory of local action develops a radically different and compelling foundation for reciprocity – one in which the impetus for reciprocity is a thinly veiled battle for status. We rework the theory to offer a new one that addresses its limitations. The key idea is that the impetus for reciprocity is the desire to signal that one intends to create joint value rather than to capture it from the counterparty.

Our analytical approach rests on close examination of a puzzling and underrecognized feature of social exchange: people who initiate social exchange routinely deny giving anything of value (“it was nothing”) while the receiver inflates their indebtedness to the giver (“this is too much!”). We refer to this negotiation strategy as reverse bargaining and use it as a window into the logic of social exchange.

We develop a more general theory of how people manage the threat of opportunism in social exchange that subsumes local action theory. The key insight is that people who initiate social exchange and seek reciprocity must balance two competing objectives: to ensure that the person receiving a benefit recognizes a debt she must repay; and to mitigate the receiver's suspicion that the giver's ulterior motive is to capture value from the receiver.