Kyle Lewis

Employment Discrimination in Organizations: Antecedents and Consequences

This article reviews the research on employment discrimination in organizations. It focuses on discrimination perceptions, charges, and lawsuits and discusses the consequences of discrimination. Among the conclusions are the following: (a) The proportion of claimants filing under different antidiscrimination statutes differs by race; (b) the area needs theories that can explain wide variance in perceptions of events; (c) the consequences of discrimination are best viewed from individual, group, and organizational levels; and (d) if the results of instruments are used in legal settings, social scientists should pay careful attention to reliability and validity, as well as standards of legally admissible evidence.

A Dynamic Model of Individual and Collective Learning Amid Disruption

Using the methodology of system dynamics, we model the effects of disruptive events on learning and productivity in organizations. We leverage the learning-by-doing and transactive memory system theories to model the underpinnings of learning processes at the collective and individual levels. We simulate the impact of disruptive events on organizational productivity and performance, such as employee turnover, technological innovation, reorganization, and extreme events such as natural disasters, which disrupt individual knowledge, collective knowledge, or both. Finally, we discuss implications of our findings for future research on organizational learning and productivity. One implication is that representing organizational learning by a single power-law learning curve or even by multiple noninteracting learning curves may be in many cases inadequate. Another is that disruptions to individual learning can be beneficial to organizations in the long run, whereas disruptions to collective learning are detrimental in the short and long run. We discuss the factors that might help organizations mitigate the negative effects of disruption so that learning can occur amid even the most disruptive events.

Applying sequence methods to the study of team temporal dynamics

In this paper, we explain how structuring, characterizing, and analyzing team experience in terms of temporal sequences can yield new insights about the dynamic nature of teams. We suggest that sequence methods can offer a fuller representation of team temporal dynamics than is typically possible with cross-sectional or longitudinal multiphase designs alone. We provide suggestions for how to use sequence methods to develop teams research questions and conduct sequence analysis. To make our suggestions more concrete, we develop detailed examples that highlight the potential for sequence methods to advance the study of team temporal dynamics by augmenting conventional methods.

Acute Abdominal Pain in the Bariatric Surgery Patient

Obesity is present in epidemic proportions in the United States, and bariatric surgery has become more common. Thus, emergency physicians will undoubtedly encounter many patients who have undergone one of these procedures. Knowledge of the anatomic changes specific to these procedures aids the clinician in understanding potential complications and devising an organized differential diagnosis. This article reviews common bariatric surgery procedures, their complications, and the approach to acute abdominal pain in these patients.

Transactive memory systems in context: A meta-analytic examination of contextual factors in transactive memory systems development and team performance.

Research on transactive memory systems (TMS) has been conducted in a variety of teams, a range of task types and increasingly, in settings around the world. Despite this proliferation, there has been relative inattention to contextual factors that produce TMS and explain heterogeneity in the TMS to team performance relationship. TMS studies are typically conducted in homogeneous settings (i.e., teams located in a single country) and often with sources of potential variation (i.e., environmental volatility, leadership, team human capital, and diversity) in TMS development controlled. Collating these individual studies, we use meta-analytic techniques to illuminate key contextual factors that may shape TMS and influence the TMS-performance association. Using 76 empirical studies representing 6,869 sampling units, we find that the strength of the TMS to performance relationship varies, depending on features of the national cultural context—the impact of TMS is stronger in cultural contexts where power distance and in-group collectivism are higher. Our results also suggest that environmental volatility, leadership effectiveness, and team human capital are positively associated with TMS, and informational and gender diversity are negatively associated with TMS development. Our findings also indicate fruitful areas for future research specifically aimed toward disentangling the effects of environmental, team, and national cultural context on TMS and team performance.