Jennifer A. Chatman

Being Different Yet Feeling Similar: The Influence of Demographic Composition and Organizational Culture on Work Processes and Outcomes

This research was supported by a Center for Creative Leadership grant to the first author. We thank Dan Brass, Ben Hermalin, Rod Kramer, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper, and Linda Johanson for working her usual editorial magic. We also thank Zoe Barsness, Joe Baumann, Mary Cusack, Brenda Ellington, Tiffany Galvin, Anne Lytle, Ann Tenbrunsel, Melissa Thomas-Hunt, and Kim Wade-Benzoni for help in administering the study. Drawing from self-categorization theory, we tested hypotheses on the effects of an organizations demographic composition and cultural emphasis on work processes and outcomes. Using an organizational simulation, we found that the extent to which an organization emphasized individualistic or collectivistic values interacted with demographic composition to influence social interaction, conflict, productivity, and perceptions of creativity among 258 MBA students. Our findings suggest that the purported benefits of demographic diversity are more likely to emerge in organizations that, through their culture, make organizational membership salient and encourage people to categorize one another as having the organizations interests in common, rather than those that emphasize individualism and distinctiveness among members..

Assessing the Relationship between Industry Characteristics and Organizational Culture: How Different can You Be?

This study investigated the relationship between two industry characteristics, technology and growth, and organizational culture. We examined this relationship by comparing the cultures of organizations within and across industries. Using 15 firms representing four industries in the service sector, we found that stable organizational culture dimensions existed and varied more across industries than within them. Specific cultural values were associated with levels of industry technology and growth. One implication of this finding is that the use of organizational culture as a competitive advantage may be more constrained than researchers and practitioners have suggested.

The Influence of Demographic Heterogeneity on the Emergence and Consequences of Cooperative Norms in Work Teams

Drawing from social categorization theory, we found that greater demographic heterogeneity led to group norms emphasizing lower cooperation among student teams and officers from ten business units of a financial services firm. This effect faded over time. Perceptions of team norms among those more demographically different from their work group changed more, becoming more cooperative, as a function of contact with other members. Finally, cooperative norms mediated the relationship between group composition and work outcomes.

Organizational communication : traditional themes and new directions

Introduction and Afterword - Phillip K Tompkins and Robert D McPhee Stumbling Toward Identity - W Charles Redding The Emergence of Organizational Communication as a Field of Study Vertical and Network Communication in Organizations - Rebecca Blair, Karlene H Roberts, and Pamela McKechnie The Present and the Future Communication and Organizational Climates - Marshall Scott Poole Review, Critique, and a New Perspective Data, Models, and Assumptions in Network Analysis - William D Richards Jr Bargaining as Organizational Communication - Linda L Putnam Formal Structure and Organizational Communication - Robert D McPhee Communication and Unobtrusive Control in Contemporary Organizations - Phillip K Tompkins and George Cheney Learning to Portray Institutional Power - Joseph Turow The Socialization of Creators in Mass Media Organizations Power, Praxis, and Self in Organizational Communication Theory - Charles Conrad and Mary Ryan

Getting to Know You: The Influence of Personality on Impressions and Performance of Demographically Different People in Organizations

This paper extends social categorization theory to understand how personality traits related to information sharing may correspond with positive perceptions of demographically different people, thereby enhancing their experience and performance in organizations. We tested our hypotheses in a sample of MBA candidates and a sample of financial services firm officers and found that people who were more demographically different from their coworkers engendered more negative impressions than did more similar coworkers. These impressions were more positive, however, when demographically different people were either more extraverted or higher self-monitors. Further, impressions formed of others mediated the influence of demographic differences on an individuals performance such that the negative effect of being demographically different disappeared when the relationship between impression formation and performance was considered. This suggests that demographically different people may have more control over the impressions others form of them than has been considered in previous research.

Innovation in Services: Corporate Culture and Investment Banking

The article discusses service innovation in the investment banking industry. Service industry innovations differ from innovations in industries that produce physical products because they rarely have intellectual property and patent protections. However, investment banking services are typically a series of interrelated businesses such as consulting, wealth management and accounting, and innovations require a business wide coordinated approach. The authors argue that a strong corporate culture can support rather than hinder innovation. The creation of such a culture requires strong leadership and an emphasis on innovation in hiring and promotions.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Work Orientations as Moderators of the Effect of Annual Income on Subjective Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study:

Income is only weakly associated with both subjective well-being (SWB) and job satisfaction in the United States, a surprising finding in light of the importance placed on financial status in capitalistic societies. To explore this further, the authors examined intrinsic and extrinsic work orientations as potential moderators of the effects of financial compensation on SWB and job satisfaction. Masters of business administration students (N = 124) completed measures of work orientation and, 4 to 9 years later, reported their current salary, SWB, and job satisfaction. As predicted, individuals high in extrinsic orientation experienced higher SWB and job satisfaction to the degree that they earned more money, whereas those high in intrinsic orientation were lower on SWB at higher income levels. These findings are discussed in terms of the Values as Moderators Perspective of SWB and Cognitive Evaluation Theory.

Full-Cycle Micro-Organizational Behavior Research

We advocate a full-cycle approach to conducting organizational behavior research. Full-cycle research begins with the observation of naturally occurring phenomena and proceeds by traveling back and forth between observation and manipulation-based research settings, establishing the power, generality, and conceptual underpinnings of the phenomenon along the way. Compared with more traditional approaches, full-cycle research offers several advantages, such as specifying theoretical models, considering actual and ideal conditions, and promoting interdisciplinary integration. To illustrate these advantages, we provide examples of an implicit approach to conducting full-cycle research and present suggestions for fostering more explicit full-cycle research programs in the future. We encourage individual researchers to adopt this approach rather than to assume the field will naturally avoid the inevitable vulnerabilities that emerge from relying on particular methodological approaches. We conclude by discussing the relevant constraints and opportunities for engaging in full-cycle organizational research.

The Promise and Problems of Organizational Culture CEO Personality, Culture, and Firm Performance

Studies of organizational culture are almost always based on two assumptions: (a) Senior leaders are the prime determinant of the culture, and (b) culture is related to consequential organizational outcomes. Although intuitively reasonable and often accepted as fact, the empirical evidence for these is surprisingly thin, and the results are quite mixed. Almost no research has jointly investigated these assumptions and how they are linked. The purpose of this article is to empirically link CEO personality to culture and organizational culture to objective measures of firm performance. Using data from respondents in 32 high-technology companies, we show that CEO personality affects a firm’s culture and that culture is subsequently related to a broad set of organizational outcomes including a firm’s financial performance (revenue growth, Tobin’s Q), reputation, analysts’ stock recommendations, and employee attitudes. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on organizational culture.

Creativity from Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity in Mixed-Sex Work Groups

As work organizations become increasingly gender diverse, existing theoretical models have failed to explain why such diversity can have a negative impact on idea generation. Using evidence from two group experiments, this paper tests theory on the effects of imposing a political correctness (PC) norm, one that sets clear expectations for how men and women should interact, on reducing interaction uncertainty and boosting creativity in mixed-sex groups. Our research shows that men and women both experience uncertainty when asked to generate ideas as members of a mixed-sex work group: men because they may fear offending the women in the group and women because they may fear having their ideas devalued or rejected. Most group creativity research begins with the assumption that creativity is unleashed by removing normative constraints, but our results show that the PC norm promotes rather than suppresses the free expression of ideas by reducing the uncertainty experienced by both sexes in mixed-sex work groups and signaling that the group is predictable enough to risk sharing more—and more-novel—ideas. Our results demonstrate that the PC norm, which is often maligned as a threat to free speech, may play an important role in promoting gender parity at work by allowing demographically heterogeneous work groups to more freely exchange creative ideas.