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Organizational creativity and innovation are inherently complex phenomena, and subject to a myriad of broad contextual and social influences. As the evidence grows for the link between innovation and organizational effectiveness and, ultimately, organizational survival, there is no doubting the need for theoretical and practical advances in our understanding. The complex nature of these constructs, however, requires that such efforts utilize a multi-level lens. This chapter discusses key aspects of creativity and innovation in organizations, including fundamental construct definition issues, which underscore the need for a multi-level perspective. It also reviews extant theoretical perspectives for their contributions to a multi-level understanding, and the research in two key areas of social influence – group factors and leadership – that have received substantial attention in the organizational literature. The review and discussion of these areas reveal not only numerous advances, but also substantial limitations that must be resolved through more complex and comprehensive (i.e., multi-level) approaches. The chapter concludes with several recommendations intended to guide and inform future work in the organizational creativity and innovation field.

The present research builds on three complementary theories to explore how social influence processes in interaction bring about opinion and sentiment change: expectation states theory, affect control theory, and social influence network theory.

An experimental study is used to test intersections between the theories and assess how performance expectations, affective impressions of group members, and emergent perceptions of their influence work together to generate opinion and sentiment change.

Respondent opinions shifted in the direction of group leaders’ opinions, regardless of behavioral interchange patterns. Opinion change was greater when a third group member shared the leader’s opinion. Change in affective impressions was shaped by the group leader’s opinion, the assertiveness of their behavior, and the support of a third group member. The perceived influence composition of the group predicted opinion and sentiment change, above and beyond the effects of conditional manipulations. Features of the group interaction led to inferences about status characteristics that reinforced the influence order of the group.

The chapter tests hypotheses from earlier work and explores status signals not yet tested as predictors of opinion change – behavioral interchange patterns and the degree of support for one’s ideas. In addition, it examines inferences about status characteristics following the group discussion, and influence effects on the prevailing definition of the situation.

This chapter contributes to recent integrative work that explores the relationship between performance expectations, affective impressions, and social influence. Synergistic processes forwarded by earlier research are tested, along with several newly proposed linkages.

We explore how, and how accurately, people assess their influence over others’ behavior and attitudes. We describe the process by which a person would determine whether he or she was responsible for changing someone else’s behavior or attitude, and the perceptual, motivational, and cognitive factors that are likely to impact whether an influencer’s claims of responsibility are excessive, insufficient, or accurate.

We first review classic work on social influence, responsibility or blame attribution, and perceptions of control, identifying a gap in the literature with respect to understanding how people judge their own responsibility for other people’s behavior and attitudes. We then draw from a wide range of social psychological research to propose a model of how an individual would determine his or her degree of responsibility for someone else’s behavior or attitude.

A potential influencer’s beliefs about the extent of his or her influence can determine whether he or she engages in an influence attempt, how he or she engages in such an attempt, and whether he or she takes responsibility for another person’s behavior or beliefs.

For decades, scholars researching social influence have explored how one’s behavior and attitudes are shaped by one’s social environment. However, amidst this focus on the perspective of the target of social influence, the perspective of the influencer has been ignored. This paper addresses the largely neglected question of how much responsibility influencers take for the impact their words, actions, and presence have on others.

In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.

Although social influence plays an important role in organizational groups, past findings regarding culture's impact on social influence have been scarce and inconsistent. Past research has found that people from collectivist cultures are more susceptible to social influence, while other studies have found the opposite or no effect. One major weakness of prior research on social influence is the predominantly cognitive orientation that has underemphasized the role of affect in culture's impact on social influence. We address this weakness by outlining an affective model of social influence, thereby expanding our understanding of social influence in multicultural decision-making groups.

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.

This research identifies the conditions under which minority views are likely to be influential in problem-solving groups.

Predictions that status processes moderate the effect of being exposed to minority views on idea generation are tested with data collected from a controlled laboratory experiment.

Results indicate some support for the hypotheses that groups exposed to minority views generate more novel ideas, as do groups in which minority views are espoused by higher-status confederates.

Future research is required to establish the parameters that reduce flawed decision making based on convergence around the majority view.

Groups may realize their problem-solving potential through the consideration of more information and an examination of alternative views to the majority view by exposure to minority views, particularly those presented by higher-status people.

By integrating status characteristics theory and minority influence theory, we explain how the greater attention granted to higher-status people and their ideas results in the generation of more unique ideas by other members in a group. The integrated theory explains how status processes affect the consideration of ideas, the examination of alternatives to the majority view, and the generation of new ideas among group members.

This chapter describes a theory of intergroup leadership. Research on reducing prejudice and intergroup conflict identifies a number of conditions, such as empathy, shared goals, crossed categorization, recategorization, and intergroup contact, which can be beneficial. It also identifies social identity threat as a stumbling block – processes intended to reduce conflict often threaten people’s sense of having a unique and distinctive social identity and thus provoke a defensive reaction that sustains conflict. But social psychology says little about the role of group leadership in conflict resolution.

I summarize what we know from social psychology about conditions that attenuate intergroup conflict; then focus on social identity and influence processes to present a new theory of leadership across conflicting groups.

Prejudice and intergroup conflict reduction rests on effective messaging and influence, which is often a matter of intergroup leadership where a leader must bridge and integrate warring factions within a superordinate entity. The challenge of intergroup leadership is to construct an intergroup relational identity that focuses on collaboration and avoids identity threat. I describe a model of intergroup leadership and discuss strategies, such as identity rhetoric, boundary spanning and leadership coalition-building, that such leadership should adopt to effectively reconstruct social identity to reduce conflict and prejudice between groups.

This is a development and extension of a more narrowly focused theory of intergroup leadership in organizational contexts. It will be of value to social psychology, the behavioral and social sciences, and those seeking to reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict through leadership.