Lisa Hisae Nishii

Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study

The differences across cultures in the enforcement of conformity may reflect their specific histories. With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure). This research advances knowledge that can foster cross-cultural understanding in a world of increasing global interdependence and has implications for modeling cultural change.

On the nature and importance of cultural tightness-looseness.

Cross-cultural research is dominated by the use of values despite their mixed empirical support and their limited theoretical scope. This article expands the dominant paradigm in cross-cultural research by developing a theory of cultural tightness-looseness (the strength of social norms and the degree of sanctioning within societies) and by advancing a multilevel research agenda for future research. Through an exploration of the top-down, bottom-up, and moderating impact that cultural tightness-looseness has on individuals and organizations, as well as on variance at multiple levels of analysis, the theory provides a new and complementary perspective to the values approach.

Do Inclusive Leaders Help to Reduce Turnover in Diverse Groups? The Moderating Role of Leader-Member Exchange in the Diversity to Turnover Relationship

This research examines leader-member exchange (LMX) at the group level as a moderator of the relationships between demographic (i.e., race, age, gender) and tenure diversity and group turnover. Drawing primarily from LMX, social categorization, and expectation states theories, we hypothesized that through the pattern of LMX relationships that they develop with followers, group managers influence inclusion and status differentials within groups such that the positive relationship between diversity and group turnover will be weaker when the group mean on LMX is high or when group differentiation on LMX is low. Results from a sample of supermarket departments (N = 348) yielded general support for the study hypotheses. We also found evidence for a 3-way interaction involving demographic diversity, LMX mean, and LMX differentiation such that the interaction between demographic diversity and LMX differentiation was only significant when LMX mean was high. These findings highlight the important role that leaders play in influencing the relationship between diversity and turnover through the patterns of inclusion that they create in their units.

The Human Side of Strategy: Employee Experiences of Strategic Alignment in a Service Organization

Excerpt] There is now good research to substantiate the idea that practices internal to the organization have important implications for service quality and customer satisfaction. Prior literature, especially the work on The Service Profit Chain by researchers at the Harvard Business School about large organizations and Len Berry’s On Great Service and Discovering the Soul of Service in smaller organizations, suggests that a key to service excellence is implementing a service strategy. Such a strategy would consist of having both explicit goals vis-à-vis customer delight and loyalty, and explicit processes that are in place to achieve those goals. In this paper, we offer an organizing concept—namely alignment. In what follows, we first describe how we think about service and service delivery, and then how we think about alignment. Then we illustrate, through a case study of a small consumer bank known for its service excellence, how the components of an aligned service strategy look and feel to organizational members. It is this focus on how the service strategy looks and feels to organizational employees that yields our title: The human side of strategy. We then show how an outcome of the processes we describe is a very high level of organizational commitment. Finally, we conclude with some surprises and insights gained, as well as some practical implications for executives seeking to improve service quality.

Accumulative Job Demands and Support for Strength Use: Fine-Tuning the Job Demands-Resources Model Using Conservation of Resources Theory

Absenteeism associated with accumulated job demands is a ubiquitous problem. We build on prior research on the benefits of counteracting job demands with resources by focusing on a still untapped resource for buffering job demands-that of strengths use. We test the idea that employees who are actively encouraged to utilize their personal strengths on the job are better positioned to cope with job demands. Based on conservation of resources (COR) theory, we hypothesized that job demands can accumulate and together have an exacerbating effect on company registered absenteeism. In addition, using job demands-resources theory, we hypothesized that perceived organizational support for strengths use can buffer the impact of separate and combined job demands (workload and emotional demands) on absenteeism. Our sample consisted of 832 employees from 96 departments (response rate = 40.3%) of a Dutch mental health care organization. Results of multilevel analyses indicated that high levels of workload strengthen the positive relationship between emotional demands and absenteeism and that support for strength use interacted with workload and emotional job demands in the predicted way. Moreover, workload, emotional job demands, and strengths use interacted to predict absenteeism. Strengths use support reduced the level of absenteeism of employees who experienced both high workload and high emotional demands. We conclude that providing strengths use support to employees offers organizations a tool to reduce absenteeism, even when it is difficult to redesign job demands.

Disentangling the Fairness & Discrimination and Synergy Perspectives on Diversity Climate Moving the Field Forward

We provide a theory-driven review of empirical research in diversity climate to identify a number of problems with the current state of the science as well as a research agenda to move the field forward. The core issues we identify include (a) the fact that diversity climate is typically treated as unidimensional, whereas diversity research would suggest that there are two major perspectives that could be reflected in diversity climate—efforts to ensure equal employment opportunity and the absence of discrimination versus efforts to create synergy from diversity; (b) a tendency to let the level of analysis (individual psychological climate or shared team or organizational climate) be dictated by convenience rather than by careful theoretical consideration, thus sidestepping key issues for research concerning the causes and consequences of the sharedness, or lack thereof, of diversity climate perceptions; and (c) the tendency to include diversity attitudes and other nonclimate elements in climate measures even though they are different from climate both conceptually and in their antecedents and consequences. The research agenda we advance suggests a need both for different operationalizations and for new research questions in diversity climate, diversity, and relational demography research.

Demographic faultlines and creativity in diverse groups

Despite the oft made argument that demographic diversity should enhance creativity, little is known about this relationship. We propose that group diversity, measured in terms of demographic faultlines, affects creativity through its effects on group members’ felt psychological safety to express their diverse ideas and the quality of information sharing that takes place across subgroup boundaries. Further, we propose that the relationship between faultlines and creativity will be moderated by task interdependence and equality of subgroup sizes. Finally, we provide suggestions for how organizations can establish norms for self-verification and use accountability techniques to enhance creativity in diverse groups.