Contributions published at Management Nonprofit-Organisation (Agnes Bäker)

Mentors in academia may act as teachers, sponsors and/or collaborators. However, so far there was no evidence on which role mentors should enact to best promote their mentees’ careers. This paper focuses on mentors in academia who are not the academic advisor. We provide first evidence on the relationship between the perceived role of mentors as teachers, sponsors and/or collaborators and mentees’ subsequent academic career success. Specifically, we find that mentees who perceive their mentors as sponsors who extend their social networks are most successful – in particular if they perceive their mentors also as teachers. Further, we find that collaborating with mentors who are not their academic advisors on joint research projects has negative implications for mentees’ subsequent career success.

In this paper, Gloor, Okimoto, and Li examine how bystanders react to incivility toward women at work in two studies. They first surveyed 1,896 scholars to examine the cross-lagged relationship between identification (gender and organizational identification) and their subsequent perceptions that incivility toward women is attributable to gender discrimination. While they observed no effect of gender identification, they found a negative effect of organizational identification, such that those who identify with their employer were less likely to attribute the incivility to gender discrimination. Then, they ran an experiment to better assess the possibility that gender discrimination may be “missed”. From this experiment they found that, after observing incivility toward a woman, participants with higher organizational identification were less likely to perceive the incivility as discrimination and less likely to act in response to such incivility. Their research adds to the selective incivility and the broader workplace mistreatment literatures by focusing on a bystander perspective and has implications for how coworkers (especially bystanders of incivility) can affect inclusive workplaces.

In this paper, Gloor examines humor as a micro-level strategy to deal with interpersonal and situational uncertainty (i.e., in more demographically dissimilar dyads and upon first meeting, respectively). Gloor argues that humor relieves the greater intergroup anxiety that is more likely to occur in intergroup pairs (e.g., a man and a woman). With a behavioral experiment, Gloor extends humor research at the dyadic level, causally demonstrating how positive, affiliative humor facilitates social relations and reduces interpersonal uncertainty.

Humor, a social communication intended to be amusing (Cooper, 2005), is ubiquitous at work. Although research on humor in organizations has increased in recent years, existing work heavily focuses on leader humor. As leaders are by definition higher in the hierarchy and formal status than employees relatively lower or within the same hierarchy, leaders enjoy a wider range of acceptable behaviors, including humor. Thus, the research within this symposium extends our knowledge of humor, its motives and effects by examining a broader range of humor users and humor use within and across hierarchies (e.g., among team members and bottom-up or top-down, respectively). Within their respective hierarchical niche, each of the four papers also focuses on a specific context that shapes humor use (i.e., front-line workers, workplace incivility, interpersonal tension, and followership), while also exploring the theoretical mechanisms through which humor exerts its effects (i.e., social or relational capital accumulation, power approach theory, and territoriality theory). In this way, this symposium also builds on existing humor research that has examined general humor use collapsed across all types of situations, often overlooking potentially meaningful differences in context and the theoretical mechanisms by which humor influences outcomes. In summary, this symposium contributes mixed methods research to paint a more comprehensive picture of humor use within and across hierarchies and in specific contexts.

Humor and laughter are ubiquitous at work, predicting a wide range of outcomes such as improved impressions and better leader-follower relationships. Because leaders guide followers’ sensemaking processes, they also set the tone for expressions of and reactions to humor at work. But given its pervasiveness and positive effects, why would a leader react in a way to extinguish it? By integrating the literatures on humor, leadership, and power, we first conceptualize DARE–Deadpan or Aggressive Responses to Extinguish others’ humor–a collection of behaviors motivated to maintain power through increasing social distance and reducing others’ humor attempts. We further propose that subordinates’ humor triggers leaders’ DAREs in less stable hierarchies and among leaders with higher dominance motivation because these factors increase the odds that leaders view subordinates’ humor as power threats. We plan to test these propositions via a behavioral experiment. This research extends emerging work on the “dark side” of humor in organizations, integrating power theory to predict leaders’ negative reactions to their subordinates’ humor.

As behavioral social scientists, we focus on the individual, employee-level perspectives relevant to big data. By highlighting a specific big data application in organizations, artificial intelligence in hiring processes, we present illustrative cases from industry, while pointing out potential pitfalls and possible next steps.

The digital age has shaped scientific collaborations, enhancing opportunity and ease of virtual and international collaborations despite language differences and location (Stafford, 2010). Although international collaborations may create better scientific contributions compared with single-authored papers and national-level collaborations (Sugimoto, 2013), these effects may differ based on scholar gender (e.g., see Aguinis, Ji, & Joo, in press; Sugimoto, 2013). To exemplify the recurring theme of IPLS (i.e., leadership) as well as the focus of this particular conference (i.e., politics and power), we identify coauthor networks in a key journal in our field, with a particular focus on scholar gender. We apply networks analysis to identify the “elites” who have the power to drive leadership conversations and connections between scholars. Furthermore, we consider the notion of a “powerful network” in that there may be some scholars who are indirectly influential through their collaborators. In doing so, we consider power in its multiple forms to provide insight into modern scholarly collaboration and (leadership) science creation.

Herrscht hoher Konkurrenzdruck, ist die Schadenfreude nicht weit. Forschende der Universität Zürich haben mit Kollegen dieses spezielle Gefühl unter die Lupe genommen und halten warnend fest: Schadenfreude kann ansteckend werden. Moderne Organisationen bemühen sich oft, den Teamgeist zu fördern. Herrscht aber hohe Konkurrenz zwischen Mitarbeitenden, ist dies ein fruchtbarer Nährboden für Schadenfreude. Forschende um Jamie Gloor von der Universität Zürich haben die Voraussetzungen für dieses Gefühl und seine Konsequenzen für Organisationen untersucht und berichten von ihren Ergebnissen im Fachblatt «Academy of Management Review». Schadenfreude richtet sich demnach oft gegen Konkurrenten oder Mitarbeitende, die aufgrund herausragender Leistungen beneidet werden. Werden diese unfair behandelt, schaffe dies plötzlich ausgeglichene Wettbewerbsbedingungen, erklärte Gloor gemäss einer Mitteilung der Hochschule. Ansteckende Schadenfreude Besonders problematisch ist laut den Forschenden, wenn die Beobachterinnen und Beobachter der unfairen Behandlung ihre Schadenfreude für gerechtfertigt halten. Dies ist der Fall, wenn sich der oder die Betroffene vorher selbst falsch verhalten hat. Davon unterscheiden die Forschenden mit Schuldgefühlen verbundene Schadenfreude, die sie als ambivalent bezeichnen. Gloor und ihre Kollegen von der Shanghai Jiao Tong University und der National University in Singapur halten warnend fest, dass als gerechtfertigt empfundene Schadenfreude ansteckend wirke. Die Folge sei, dass die betroffene Person von den Beobachtenden fortan auch unfair behandelt wird, zum Beispiel dass ihr Hilfe verweigert oder sie aktiv ausgeschlossen wird. «Ist Schadenfreude unter Mitarbeitenden plötzlich verbreitet, wird auch asoziales Verhalten normal», so Gloor. An ihre Warnung knüpfen die Forschenden daher eine Reihe von Empfehlungen für Führungspersonen: teamorientierte statt individuelle Anreize zu fördern, mit den Mitarbeitenden gemeinsame Visionen zu entwickeln, faire Richtlinien und Abläufe zu implementieren und einen besonderen Fokus auf Meinungsführer innerhalb sozialer Gruppen zu legen. Dies könne Schadenfreude vorbeugen und Ansteckungseffekte verringern, schreibt die Universität Zürich.

Although almost all employees have heard of or witnessed their colleagues being mistreated, we have an incomplete understanding of how employees perceive and respond to such events. Whereas past research has established that observer emotions can be congruent with victim emotions, we examine observer schadenfreude, an incongruent emotion that is also prevalent in organizations. Based on appraisal theories of emotion, we propose a process model of schadenfreude emergence and development: initial schadenfreude occurs when observers appraise mistreatment incidents as relevant and conducive to their goals; this initial feeling evolves into either righteous or ambivalent schadenfreude, depending on observers' secondary appraisals of victim deservingness. We also address the implications of schadenfreude for observer behavior and the moderating effects of observers' moral foundations and organizational civility climates. Our model extends current knowledge about observer reactions and helps us understand the persistence and pervasiveness of workplace mistreatment.

Recent research has shown that the presence of peers can increase individual output both in the lab and the field. This paper tests for negative side effects of such peer settings. We investigate whether peer settings are particularly prone to cheating even if they do not provide additional monetary benefits of cheating. Participants in our real‐effort experiment had the opportunity to cheat when declaring their output levels. Although cheating did not have different monetary consequences when working alone than when working in the presence of a peer, we find that cheating is a more severe problem in peer settings.

schadenfreude social relations mistreatment emotion workplace organization

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Previous research has shown a detrimental effect of low task meaning on individual work output. This paper analyzes whether peer settings are able to counteract this negative effect of low task meaning. First, our results confirm that a low level of task meaning decreases individual output when working alone. However, this effect vanishes completely when working in the presence of a peer. Our analysis implies that organizing work in peer settings might be particularly beneficial in work environments with a low level of task meaning.

Parenthood increases gender inequality in paid (employment) and unpaid labor (e.g., caretaking). New parental leave plans aim to increase gender equality by reducing managerial discretion and offering gender-neutral benefits. However, coworkers may undermine these inclusive aims, particularly if they show variable support per employee characteristics. Thus, we examine why and how employee gender and obesity interactively predict coworkers’ support for parental leave and test an intervention to increase equality. Three between-subjects experiments with working American adults (Ns=133-252) indicate that obesity decreases coworkers’ parental leave support for men, but increases coworkers’ parental leave support for women; these effects are replicated and mediated by coworkers’ caregiving ability expectations of the employees, inequalities that are reduced when parental leave is made the default. Discussion focuses on our results’ implications for theory, practice, and for men and women’s paid and unpaid labor, including recommendations for parental leave policy design and delivery to increase equality

We examine a counterintuitive effect of parental leave policies: supervisors and coworkers view women who have yet to have children (i.e., childless women) as a greater inconvenience compared with their counterparts (women with children or childless men), especially in organizations with greater maternal than paternal leave. We propose that these “maybe baby” expectations manifest as subtle, disrespectful treatment (i.e., incivility) towards childless women, which leads to greater career withdrawal among this group of employees. In a time-lagged survey study, we examined 474 early career employees’ experiences of workplace incivility at Time 1 and career withdrawal cognitions one year later at Time 2; we also collected objective data on organization’s maternal and paternal leave policies. As expected, childless women experience more incivility than their counterparts, a difference that is greater in organizations offering more maternal leave than paternal leave, and associated with downstream career withdrawal. Results support selective incivility and family-work conflict bias theories. Discussion focuses on the importance of examining individual- and organizational-level work-family antecedents for understanding modern workplace mistreatment and its career effects in context, as well as the effective design and implementation of parental leave policies.