Barry M. Staw

Threat Rigidity Effects in Organizational Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis

The authors wish to thank Jeanne Brett, Larry Cummings, Joanne Martin, J. P. Miller, and the anonymousASQ reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This paper explores the case for a general threat-rigidity effect in individual, group, and organizational behavior. Evidence from multiple levels of analysis is summarized, showing a restriction in information processing and constriction of control under threat conditions. Possible mechanisms underlying such a multiple-level effect are explored, as are its possible functional and dysfunctional consequences.

Knee-deep in the Big Muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action.

It is commonly expected that individuals will reverse decisions or change behaviors which result in negative consequences. Yet, within investment decision contexts, negative consequences may actually cause decision makers to increase the commitment of resources and undergo the risk of further negative consequences. The research presented here examined this process of escalating commitment through the simulation of a business investment decision. Specifically, 240 business school students participated in a role-playing exercise in which personal responsibility and decision consequences were the manipulated independent variables. Results showed that persons committed the greatest amount of resources to a previously chosen course of action when they were personally responsible for negative consequences.

What Theory Is Not

We are grateful to Steve Barley, Max Bazerman, Daniel Brass, Gary Alan Fine, Linda Pike, Robert Kahn, James March, Marshall Meyer, Keith Murnighan, Christine Oliver, and David Owens for their contributions to this essay. This essay was prepared while the first author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. We appreciate the financial assistance provided by the Hewlett-Packard Corporation and the National Science Foundation (SBR-9022192). This essay describes differences between papers that contain some theory rather than no theory. The~re is little agreement about what constitutes strong versus weak theory in the social sciences, but there is more consensus that references, data, variables, diagrams, and hypotheses are not theory. Despite this consensus, however, authors routinely use these five elements in lieu of theory. We explain how each of these five elements can be confused with theory and how to avoid such confusion. By making this consensus explicit, we hope to help authors avoid some of the most common and easily averted problems that lead readers to view papers as having inadequate theory. We then discuss how journals might facilitate the publication of stronger theory. We suggest that if the field is serious about producing stronger theory, journals need to reconsider their empirical requirements. We argue that journals ought to be more receptive to papers that test part rather than all of a theory and use illustrative rather than definitive data.

Affect and Creativity at Work

This study explored how affect relates to creativity at work. Using both quantitative and qualitative longitudinal data from the daily diaries of 222 employees in seven companies, we examined the nature, form, and temporal dynamics of the affect-creativity relationship. The results indicate that positive affect relates positively to creativity in organizations and that the relationship is a simple linear one. Time-lagged analyses identify positive affect as an antecedent of creative thought, with incubation periods of up to two days. Qualitative analyses identify positive affect as a consequence of creative thought events, as well as a concomitant of the creative process. A preliminary theory of the affect-creativity cycle in organizations includes each of these links and proposes mechanisms by which they may operate.

The Dispositional Approach to Job Attitudes: A Lifetime Longitudinal Test.

This research was supported in part by grant AG 4178 from the National Institute of Aging to the Institute of Human Development (John Clausen, principal investigator) and by a University of California faculty research grant to Barry Staw. Correspondence regarding this paper should be sent to Barry M. Staw, School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. Recent debates between the job enrichment and socialinformation-processing perspectives have led to a trend toward greater situationalism in organizational research. This paper, however, argues for a more dispositional approach in which the role of the person is emphasized. Using a longitudinal sample, measures of affective disposition from as early as adolescence were used to predict job attitudes in later life. Results showed that dispositional measures significantly predicted job attitudes over a time span of nearly fifty years. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of both theories of job attitudes and organizational development activities that attempt to alter employee job satisfactions

What Bandwagons Bring: Effects of Popular Management Techniques on Corporate Performance, Reputation, and CEO Pay

This paper examines some of the important organizational consequences of popular management techniques. Using informational reports on quality, empowerment, and teams, as well as a measure of the implementation of total quality management programs, we found that companies associated with popular management techniques did not have higher economic performance. Nevertheless, these same companies were more admired, perceived to be more innovative, and rated higher in management quality. Higher pay was also given to chief executives when their companies were associated with these management trends. These results provide strong support for institutional theory, demonstrating how both internal and external legitimacy can be gained by using popular management techniques. They also extend institutional theory from its usual emphasis on organization-environment relations to new within-firm dynamics.

The scarcity-munificence component of organizational environments and the commission of illegal acts / 230

Barry M. Staw and Eugene Szwajkowski This study examines the relation between the scarcitymunificence of organizational environments and the occurrence of illegal acts. It is hypothesized that the less munificent the organizations environment; the more effort the organization will exert to obtain resources from that environment and, thus, the more likely it will engage in legally questionable activities. Analyses of company and industry data for firms cited for unfair market practices and restraint of trade activities provide support for the hypothesis.

Commitment to a Policy Decision: A Multi-Theoretical Perspective.

March 1978, volume 23 Subjects in an experimental simulation played the role of a decision maker in the World Bank. This simulation was designed to tap some variables relevant for policy situations and to compare specific predictions derived from six psychological theories. Subjects were asked to allocate resources to one of several courses of action and their commitment was measured following a financial setback. Causal information pertaining to the financial setback was experimentally manipulated as was prior success or failure experience. The results showed that individuals may process information differently after a failure as opposed to a success experience, and that this differential processing may account for differences in commitment to policy decisions.

Affect and favorable work outcomes: two longitudinal tests of the happy–productive worker thesis

This research examined relationships between alternative measures of affect and supervisory performance ratings. The first study showed that dispositional rather than state affect significantly predicted supervisory ratings of performance over time. Since the measures of affect differed on both content and temporal dimensions, a follow-up study was conducted to explicate the results. The second study found that a pleasantness-based measure of dispositional affect (Berkman, 1971a) again predicted rated performance over time, but activation-based measures of both dispositional and state affect (using PANAS scales) were not predictive of supervisory evaluations of performance. The implications of these findings in terms of research on affect and the longstanding pursuit of the happy–productive worker are discussed. Copyright

The Tradeoffs of Social Control and Innovation in Groups and Organizations

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the description of research on social influence that moves rather freely between laboratory settings and organizational contexts. The laboratory studies follow several well-developed research paradigms, with variations in conditions and resultant findings occurring in a cumulative fashion. The organizational studies of social influence have tended to draw on a wide variety of psychological and sociological theories, resulting in a more disparate set of findings that have rarely been drawn together. Whereas the social psychological work has typically been experimental, the organizational research ranges from quantitative experiments and surveys to more qualitative case studies. Thus, the integration of work on social control and innovation will necessitate mixing results with varying levels of internal and external validity. The chapter explains the discussion of social control and innovation that moves freely between the microscopic and the macroscopic. The chapter explores the way the studies of organizational behavior can profit from knowledge of more basic social influence processes and the way experimental group research can be enriched by an understanding of more complex organizational processes.