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Debriefs are a type of workplace meeting that often use after events and critical incidents. Debriefs are used to review performance, promote shared learning and understanding, and improve future team performance. Similarly, reflexivity refers to the extent to which team members reflect upon and openly discuss group processes, procedures, and actions to improve future team performance. In this chapter, the authors review the separate literatures and explore the relationship between debriefs and reflexivity. While the debrief literature does focus on aspects of reflection, what occurs between the aspects of reflection, planning, and action is left unexplored. The concept of reflexivity fits well with the successful use of debriefs, as reflexivity ensures that reflection results in outcomes and moves beyond just an overview or discussion during debriefing. Additionally, important constructs such as psychological safety and sensemaking are relevant to both debriefs and reflexivity such that open and honest discussion as well as developing shared understanding are necessary for effective debriefing and reflection. Using the constructs of psychological safety and sensemaking, the authors propose a model that situates both reflexivity and effective debriefs in the context of team learning. This model integrates team reflexivity with team debriefs, provides a better understanding of how teams can carry out more effective debriefs, and explains how more effective debriefing and greater team reflexivity lead to enhanced learning and improvement in team performance.

This chapter provides an in-depth understanding of the cognitive processes that facilitate creativity from a multi-level perspective. Because cognitive processes are viewed as residing within the individual and as an individual-level phenomenon, it is not surprising that a plethora of research has focused on various cognitive processes involved in creative production at the individual level and the factors that may facilitate or hinder the successful application of these processes. Of course, individuals do not exist in a vacuum, and many organizations are utilizing teams and groups to facilitate creative problem solving. We therefore extend our knowledge from the individual to the team level and group level, providing more than 50 propositions for testing and discussing their implications for future research.

In this reply, we offer responses to two commentaries on our work on individual and team cognition and team creative problem-solving processes. We first acknowledge the contributions and depth of expansions to our work by Sacramento, Dawson, and West and by Shalley. We next clarify our views on some issues they raise. Finally, we offer additional multi-level extensions on these processes by incorporating ideas on leadership and organizational context.

Recent research suggests that individual difference variables that measure emotional reactions may be useful in understanding sexual harassment judgments. In the present study, 503 male and female working adults viewed two videos of sexual harassment cases and were asked to make judgments about the nature of the behavior. Participants also completed measures of sexism and empathy. Results indicated that Perspective Taking (PT), a component of empathy, interacted with gender to explain judgments regarding sexual harassment. Contrary to expectations, PT did not eliminate the typical gender differences found, but rather magnified them.

Mark D. Agars is an associate professor of psychology at California State University, San Bernardino. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in industrial and organizational psychology, where he worked with James L. Farr.

The chapters in this volume are drawn from the best contributions to the 2006 International Conference on Emotion and Organizational Life held in Atlanta, in conjunction with the Academy of Management's Annual Meetings. (This bi-annual conference has come to be known as the Emonet conference, after the listserv of members). The selected conference papers were then complemented by additional invited chapters. This volume contains six chapters selected from conference contributions for their quality, interest, and appropriateness to the theme of this volume, as well as eight invited chapters. We acknowledge in particular the assistance of the conference paper reviewers (see Appendix). In the year of publication of this volume the 2008 Emonet conference will be held in France, and will be followed by Volumes 5 and 6 of Research on Emotion in Organizations. Readers interested in learning more about the conferences or the Emonet list should check the Emonet website http://www.uq.edu.au/emonet/.

Gregory Ashley is a Ph.D. student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the area of Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology. Greg holds undergraduate degrees in Psychology and telecommunications, and Masters degrees in Business and Economics. His research has been published in both economic and psychology-related publications. Prior to entering academia, Greg accrued over 20 years of hands-on business experience working in a variety of management positions in the telecommunications industry.