Inga Carboni

Using Student-Centered Cases in the Classroom An Action Inquiry Approach to Leadership Development

This article addresses the concern that business schools are not adequately developing the practical leadership skills that are required in the real world of management. The article begins by discussing the limitations of traditional case methods for teaching behavioral skills. This approach is contrasted with an alternative case method drawn from action inquiry (AI) that uses ongoing student cases to develop more effective leadership behaviors. The student-centered case approach is distinguished from traditional case teaching by tracing an important similarity between AI and Socratic pedagogy. A leadership workshop for evening MBAs that uses AI pedagogy to help students improve their leadership behaviors at work and in the class is also described. The article concludes with a discussion of the significant benefits and challenges associated with helping students develop new leadership behaviors.

Validation of the ostracism experience scale for adolescents.

This study validates a new self-report measure, the Ostracism Experience Scale for Adolescents (OES-A). Nineteen items were tested on a sample of 876 high school seniors to assess 2 of the most common ostracism experiences: being actively excluded from the peer group and being largely ignored by others. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, bivariate correlations, and hierarchical regression provided support for the construct validity of the measure. The findings provided psychometric support for the OES-A, which could be used in research into the nature and correlates of social ostracism among older adolescents when a brief self-report measure is needed. Further, the OES-A may help determine how social ostracism subtypes differentially predict health-compromising behaviors later in development, as well as factors that protect against the most pernicious effects of ostracism.

The impact of interpersonal affective relationships and awareness on expertise seeking: A multilevel network investigation

Transactive memory theory suggests that general awareness of expertise location in a group is sufficient to predict expertise seeking. Yet expertise seeking is, at least in part, a social phenomenon between two individuals embedded in a network of social relationships. Taking a multilevel, network perspective, we examined the interplay of affective relationships and awareness on expertise seeking in groups. Hypotheses were tested using network data collected from 693 employees in 53 sales groups. HLM analysis results indicated that awareness of expertise distribution positively influenced the decision to seek expertise at all levels of analysis examined. In addition, both positive and negative affective relationships influenced expertise seeking, although their pattern of influence differed across different levels of analysis. More specifically, having either a positive or a negative affective relationship with another group member affected the decision to seek expertise from that person. Although having many positive relationships had a positive effect on expertise seeking, having many negative affective relationships had no effect. Moreover, having both an awareness and a positive affective relationship with another group member amplified their positive effect on expertise seeking. Last, individuals who had more negative affective ties were less likely to leverage the positive impact of each awareness relationship on expertise seeking.

Love Me or Hate Me: Exploring Controversial Sociometric Status

Research on sociometric status among youth and adolescents offers a new framework within which to explore outcomes for individuals who are at the center of conflict in the groups and organizations to which they belong. In particular, individuals who are both well-liked and disliked—so-called controversials—may occupy a unique and previously unrecognized role in organizational life. In this chapter, we explore controversial sociometric status. Drawing mainly upon psychological and organizational research, we consider personality, behavioral, and structural antecedents that may contribute to the formation and maintenance of controversial sociometric status and advance propositions regarding socioemotional and performance-related outcomes for individuals with controversial sociometric status. Lastly, we report and reflect upon insights gained through a series of interviews we conducted among 15 executives.

Adolescent controversial status brokers: A double-edged sword.

Using a 3-wave longitudinal, multidimensional approach, this study investigated the influence of social network position and social status on the psychosocial outcomes of 440 youth (45.1% girls; Mage = 16.1 years; 90.9% Caucasian) over 26 months, focusing on the controversial status classification (i.e., youth who are highly liked and disliked by their peers). Brokerage (i.e., the degree to which a person has relationships with peers who do not have a direct relationship with each other) was examined in conjunction with sociometric status to explain potential heterogeneity of outcomes for controversial status youth. Adolescents completed peer nominations and self-reports of adjustment. Results demonstrated that brokerage was related to poorer psychosocial outcomes for controversial compared to average status youth. Brokerage appears to add predictive value to youths’ adjustment beyond traditional sociometric classifications, especially for controversial status youth.