Monica C. Higgins

Follow the Leader? The Effects of Social Influence on Employer Choice

This article examines career decision making in the rapidly changing organizational and employment context at the end of the 20th century, the context some scholars have called the “boundaryless career” environment. The particular focus is the extent to which different sources of social influence and the combination of such sources affect employer choice: specifically, whether individuals conform to a dominant employer choice (i.e., make a popular employment decision). Hypotheses are tested with survey data on a sample of master of business administration students in the process of making career decisions for their work lives following graduate school. Results provide compelling evidence that normative sources of social influence have a significant effect on compliance with the dominant employer choice whereas informational sources of influence, such as one’s network of advisors, do not. Implications for how different types of social influence may affect different types of career decisions in today’s work environment are discussed.

Understanding Psychological Safety in Health Care and Education Organizations: A Comparative Perspective

Psychological safety plays a vital role in helping people overcome barriers to learning and change in interpersonally challenging work environments. This article focuses on two such contexts—health care and education. The authors theorize differences in psychological safety based on work type, hierarchical status, and leadership effectiveness. Consistent with prior research, the authors employ cross-industry comparison to highlight distinctive features of different professions. The goal is to illuminate similarities and differences with implications for future psychological safety research. To do this, the authors review relevant literature and present analyses of large data samples in each industry to stimulate further research on psychological safety in both sectors, separately and together.

Leading Teams of Leaders: What Helps Team Member Learning?

A study of Connecticut leadership teams finds that they are more effective when team members, not team leaders, coach other members and when coaching focuses on accomplishing their task.

Learning to Succeed at Scale.

Dynamic new ventures like the Knowledge is Power Program, Teach For America, and New Leaders for New Schools, are increasingly being asked to step in to assist struggling school districts. While promising, these ventures have thus far typically been characterized by “one-off” examples of success that are extraordinarily reliant on talent and passion, philanthropic funding, and exhausting work schedules. For many funders, practitioners, and policymakers, scaling up the most successful ventures has become the sine non qua of successful reform. The appeal of growth by “best practice” imitation is undeniable, but narrowly following such a course is unlikely to deliver large-scale educational reform. Markets are local, clienteles differ dramatically from one place to the next, and the challenges and availability of facilities, staff, and other resources vary enormously. A primary reason these organizations initially “work” is the uniformity of their approach to organizational systems and culture or their “organizational career imprint”—the set of capabilities, connections, confidence, and cognitions that individuals share as a result of working for a given organization at a particular point in time. But the factors that strengthen imprinting and early success in new ventures, such as creating stretch assignments and hiring in cohorts, can become flaws if left unchecked. Drawing on lessons from the biotechnology industry, this article examines how successful new ventures in the education sector might revisit and reorganize original (internal and external) arrangements to facilitate more sure-footed growth.

When is Helping Helpful? Effects of Evaluation and Intervention Timing on Basketball Performance

This research investigates how expectations of evaluation and the timing of help giving affect an individual’s ability to perform on a learning task. Results suggest that help given by a nonevaluative other facilitates performance improvement, irrespective of timing, whereas help given by an evaluative other can inhibit performance improvement, depending on timing. Exploratory analyses regarding individuals’ cognitive and behavioral reactions to helping interventions provide insight into underlying mechanisms that account for the relationships observed.