Search results

We augment a standard bilateral gift-exchange game to allow employees to communicate their gratitude for, or disapproval toward, the wage assigned to them by their manager. This provides employees with a means of reciprocation or emotion expression toward the employee which is not available in a standard gift-exchange game and may substitute for the higher-than-equilibrium efforts commonly seen in this environment. We find that employees express gratitude or disapproval according to the wage received, but these messages are not a substitute for monetary reciprocation as the relationship between wages and effort is unchanged. These results suggest that employees view the messages as a form of emotional expression independent from rewarding or punishing managers. Average wage levels are little affected by allowing messages, although wages do fall more over time in the absence of messages and individual managers’ wage choices are affected by the messages they receive.

The research uncovers an increase in the disapproval of Congress and a drop in public trust in government associated with exposed congressional corruption in the post-Watergate era. The tools Congress holds to punish members caught up in scandal are discussed and the chapter considers five major scandals to rock Congress since the 1970s. Importantly, we uncover evidence that government institutions and actors are somewhat resilient and can bounce back after experiencing negative public sentiment for a period of time. Yet, it seems in the aftermath of exposed corruption, the corresponding drop in public support has policy implications. We determine that movement in public disapproval of Congress and overall trust in government help explain public law output and the ability of Congress to pass its contemporary legislative agenda.

Recent experiments show that feedback transmission can mitigate opportunistic behavior in repeated social dilemmas. Two nonexcludable explanations have been investigated: strategic signaling and nonmonetary sanctioning. This literature builds on the intuition that under both partner matching (where the same groups of players interact many times) and stranger matching (where groups change continuously), feedback may work as a nonmonetary sanctioning device, but only the former also allows for strategic signaling. Empirical evidence on the two explanations is mixed. Moreover, the usual design may give rise to confounding matching protocol effects.

My experiment provides a novel empirical testbed for different channels by which feedback – costless disapproval points – may affect behavior in a repeated public goods game. In particular, it is based on a random matching scheme that neutralizes the confounding effects of different matching protocols on behavior.

The transmission of feedback is found to foster prosocial behavior. The data favor the nonmonetary sanctioning explanation rather than the signaling hypothesis.

This study provides a novel set of evidence that (i) communication may mitigate selfishness in social dilemmas and (ii) the source of this phenomenon may be linked to the emotional reaction that communication evokes in humans.

We test a multilevel exploratory predictive model, examining the relationships between emotional labor (EL) and workers' affectivity traits at a philanthropic hospital, where EL involves a process of emotional regulation at work involving emotional display rules, regulatory strategies, and emotional performance. Specifically, we test a model of the mediation effects of regulatory strategies and the moderation effects of emotional demands.

Participants were 306 workers from 45 different units of a hospital institution, whose performance was evaluated by 30 supervisors. Since workers' emotional display rules could not be represented as shared, unit-level beliefs, we chose two critical demands to test our hypotheses: (1) demand to express compassion and (2) demand to conceal anger or disapproval.

Using multilevel analysis, we found evidence that deep acting mediates between emotional demands to express compassion and emotional performance. We found further that demands to conceal anger toward coworkers increase the strength of the relationship between negative affectivity and surface acting.

Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.

Purpose – This research presents results concerning the impact of family financial stress on adolescent substance use.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing a sample of 18,614 adolescent males (9,459) and females (9,155) ages 12–17 years from the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, this work utilizes stepwise logistic regression and ordinary least squares to determine whether family poverty measures are associated with adolescent high-risk behaviors of smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and using marijuana.

Findings – This study found limited support for adolescent substance use within families who are experiencing economic distress. Adolescents from families who had moved at least once in the prior year were more likely to have used cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. Furthermore, males and females who disapprove of peers’ substance using behaviors are less likely to use those substances.

Research limitations/implications – This study may not explain adolescent substance using behavior outside of the United States. Further research into socioeconomic factors should be addressed in subsequent work as should the intermediary variables pertaining to the parent–child relationship.

Practical implications – Understanding contributing factors to adolescent substance use will assist in developing social policy that will support families.

Originality/value – This study provides insight into the consequences of family characteristics both socioeconomic and psychosocial which influence adolescent substance using behaviors.

This article demonstrates that the type of service setting and the first interaction with an employee influences the customers' intention to stay or leave during an unsatisfactory service encounter, and that these effects are mediated by social lock-in, which describes the perception of a customer that exiting a service encounter early violates social norms.

The hypotheses are tested with two scenario-based experiments using a collective (theater) and high-contact service (restaurant) (N = 1143; 1485).

The results suggest that social lock-in and the intention to stay are higher in a closed as opposed to an open setting and that the type of setting is, in fact, more important for the decision to stay than sunk costs. Moreover, customers are more likely to stay after an interaction with an employee.

This article contributes to the research aimed at explaining customers' decisions to stay or leave during an unsatisfactory service encounter. In doing so, the study highlights the constraining power of social norms in service encounters, which contributes to the research on the relationship between the social context and customers' behavior.

This study suggests that service providers can manage servicescape cues and employee behavior to influence customers' social lock-in perceptions and their decision to stay on or to leave early.

This is the first study to provide quantitative evidence for social lock-in and its determinants in service encounters.

This study aims to review Luhmann's theory of moral communication while focusing on symmetry conditions, in light of Armin Nassehi's criticism, to clarify issues regarding this concept. Then, Luhmann's symmetry condition is reconstructed as a concept containing double meaning via a case study in Japan. Correspondingly, interesting situations and characteristics of moral communication, such as “inflation,” the “polemogene” and ubiquity of moral communication, are interpreted more consistently.

In today's society, moral communication may spiral out of control and even be fatal. By examining Niklas Luhmann's theory, in this paper, the author elaborates on why and how this mechanism occurs.

The author emphasizes that the suspicion pertaining to the asymmetry of communication is stressed in the case of anonymity. When an individual communicates using a moral code, it is impossible to discern whether the implications of self-bindingness are undermined or not through observations or consequences of communication and can only be questioned or confirmed through communication. However, criticizing the outburst of the masses and exchanging blame by isolating only one aspect of such a phenomenon will only be superficial.

This study reveals that the very condition that makes moral communication possible enables people to communicate respectfully or contemptuously with others without any special qualification. Such an analysis can serve as a theoretical underpinning for the analysis of today's phenomena.

The aim of this study is to apply the concept of social norm dynamics to explain how corporate governance soft law is enforced.

Using data of German listed stock companies and of economic media coverage between 2001 and 2010, the authors observe the complex relationship between sanctions and behavior in the social context of corporate governance soft law.

The authors find the public discussion of normative demands related to corporate governance issues increases if firms do not comply with the German Corporate Governance Code. The authors show that groups of actors, such as DAX companies, represent the addressees of normative demands, i.e. targets of expectations about what is appropriate and what is not. The authors also find that normative demands tend to be personalized, as public discussion is greater when initiated by a specific individual or firm. Finally, the authors demonstrate that social control in terms of public sanctioning positively influences a firm’s compliance with the soft law whereby negative statements (disapproval) outweigh the effects of positive statements (approval).

We corroborate the social character of normative demands in the context of corporate governance soft law, and contribute to a better understanding of why soft law can work, despite it having no legally binding force. The results of our study suggest that sanction mechanisms in the context of social norms underpin the strength of soft law as an alternative to, or extension of, hard law.

Whereas much previous research focuses on the ways consumers strive to gain social approval, consumption that may result in social disapproval must be considered. In order to do so, the purpose of this paper is to explore consumers' self‐concepts within a risky consumption context, namely smoking. Self‐concept discrepancies and the resulting emotions and coping strategies are identified.

A qualitative methodology based on 30 focus groups conducted across ten European countries is employed.

Findings demonstrate self‐concept discrepancies between both the actual self and ought/ideal guiding end states, as well as between the “I” and social selves. Such discrepancies generate negative emotions and result in emotion‐focused coping strategies. In addition, the accuracy of smokers' social self‐concepts with reference to the actual perceptions of non‐smokers is discussed.

Important implications for the design of effective anti‐smoking advertising are discussed, based on the findings. It is suggested that counter advertising should encourage dialogue between smokers and non‐smokers and that message themes should centre on building the self‐efficacy of smokers.

The reason why the social context should be an integral part of consumer self‐concept research is highlighted. Moreover, the importance of moving beyond merely understanding the existence of self‐discrepancies, to focus on the emotions that are generated by these discrepancies and the consequent coping strategies employed to resolve them is identified. As such, the potential contributions that may arise by recognising the intersection between two bodies of literature that are often treated separately, namely, consumer coping and the self‐concept, are highlighted.