3590 Posts Found

Everyone knows that on average women earn less than men for the same work. Social psychological research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s suggested that women even pay themselves less than men pay themselves. But that was then, right? John Jost decided to see if women’s attitudes about their worth had changed since the advent of feminism. His research, which measures the “depressed-entitlement effect” among … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John Jost | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Women in Business

Mother Nature has spent millennia perfecting its communication systems. How can large complex organizations draw on these lessons?

Content: Article | Authors: Paul Jackson, Vincent-Wayne Mitchell | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Most brain activities don’t systematically distinguish between an activity and the avoidance of that activity. When someone repeatedly thinks, “I should not break this rule,” they are activating and strengthening neural patterns related to breaking the rule.

Therefore, to engender change among people in an organization, it’s important to keep attention focused on the desired end state, not on avoiding problems. This goal-directed positive reinforcement must … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Doug Lennick, Jeffrey Schwartz, Pablo Gaito | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

People may have only limited free will, but they have powerful “free won’t.” In organizations, when a strong impulse reflects “the way we do things around here,” there is always the option to veto the action, especially if people have practiced this ability.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Doug Lennick, Jeffrey Schwartz, Pablo Gaito | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Teams with too many overlaps in their social networks are less creative — the team members all know the same stuff. Teams that aren’t networked at all, however, aren’t good at sharing what they do know. The most successful teams are those in which everyone knows one or two others but not everyone — and not no one.

For that reason, organizations should subvert the “proximity … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brian Uzzi, Jennifer Robison | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

The basic theory of why companies issue stock options to their employees is fairly simple: Profit from exercising those options creates what employers hope is an incentive that will motivate employees. But new research by Wharton professor Peter Cappelli and senior fellow Martin J. Conyon finds that the practice only impacts employee performance when workers earn a sizable payoff from exercising their stock options. Even … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Martin J. Conyon, Peter Cappelli | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Organizational Behavior

A simple rule of thumb is that a team of specialists or generalists doesn’t really work, especially with messy, creative problems. You really need a mixture of specialists who see one part of the problem with a whole lot of depth and a generalist who can help integrate the views of the individual specialists.

Content: Quotation | Author: Brian Uzzi | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

The ability to diagnose the beneficial attributes of a culture, and then use them to motivate strategically important behavior, is one of the key factors that differentiate peak-performing organizations from the also-rans in their field.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Ashley Harshak, Jon R. Katzenbach | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Culture

A corporate culture takes some of its attributes from the professional and educational background of participants. An electronics engineering–driven company has a very different cultural ambiance from a pharmaceutical firm, a bank, or a “metal-bending” manufacturer. Culture is also influenced by the attitudes of the founders, the location of the headquarters, the types of customers that the company serves, and the experiences people have together. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Ashley Harshak, Jon R. Katzenbach | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Social connections explain a lot — from why some teams excel to why, when a husband comes home crabby, his wife soon becomes cranky too. That begs the question: What would social connections do for business if executives used them on purpose?

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Jennifer Robison | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subject: Organizational Behavior

There is mounting evidence that giving people more responsibility for making decisions in their jobs generates greater productivity, morale, and commitment. Yet, in spite of the substantial economic returns to decentralization and delegation, many American managers resist such practices in favor of traditional command-and-control approaches to managing people.

Content: Article | Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Culture is multifaceted, and every company has many subcultures. At the top, there might be an executive subculture, trained in finance, which wants good numbers above all else. There’s also probably an engineering subculture, which assumes that crises can be prevented only with fail-safe, redundant systems that kick in automatically. There are other subcultures for middle management, supervisors, the union, and marketing. Every company combines … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Edgar H. Schein | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Culture, Organizational Behavior

Where reputation comes from—and how to change yours.

Content: Article | Author: Marshall Goldsmith | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Career, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

“The single greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged workforce. That is not conjecture. That is now a confirmed scientific fact.

[…] In my research and consulting in 42 different countries during the worst economic downturn in recent history, I have discovered that most companies and schools around the world follow the same implicit formula: If you work hard, you will … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Shawn Achor | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Organizational Behavior

IN early 2009, statisticians inside the Googleplex embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen. Their mission was to build better bosses. So, as only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints. Later that year, the “people analytics” teams at the company produced what might be called … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Adam Bryant | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Organizational Behavior | Company: Google

How do you maximize the experience that customers have in the value zone where they meet your company’s work? We think the answer is for management to see itself as an enabler, and for employees to see themselves as “doers” with a great deal of accountability and autonomy: the ability to choose much of what they do. In this way, we create organizations in which … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Vineet Nayar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Management, Organizational Behavior

I characterize [organizational] responses in three zones. In Zone 1, we had transformers and go-getters. The people in Zone 2 were lost souls, taking energy away from the organization. They tended to project the idea that things would not work or that I was just trying to get rid of people. Zone 3 had fence sitters, who took no risks or positions. In any transformation … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Vineet Nayar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

There’s nothing quite as common as watching an established organization—a company that reached great heights in one era of technology, markets, and culture—struggle to regain its stature as a force for leadership in a new era. The work of deep-seated, sustainable change remains the hardest work there is. That’s why, over the past two years, I immersed myself in the struggles and triumphs of 25 … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: William C. Taylor | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Psychological studies have consistently shown that it’s very difficult to compare and contrast the attributes of more than about seven different things. When faced with the cognitive demands of choosing, people often become overwhelmed and frustrated. As a result, they may forgo the choice altogether, reach for the most familiar option, or make a decision that ultimately leaves them far less satisfied than they had … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kanika Agrawal, Sheena Iyengar | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales, Personality / Behavior

INSEAD’s expert on leadership development clarifies how self-awareness can break the destructive pattern of corporate narcissism.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Art Kleiner, Manfred Kets de Vries | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior