Sandy Bogaert

Social Value Orientation: Related to Empathy and the Ability to Read the Mind in the Eyes

This study explores correlates of social value orientation, a personality trait that reflects a stable individual difference in the way people evaluate outcomes for themselves and others in situations of interdependence. Previous findings (e.g., the triangle hypothesis) have indicated that people with a prosocial orientation tend to view their interacting partners as having heterogeneous social motives, whereas people with a proself orientation tend to believe all people are alike and selfish. Consistent with this idea that people vary in their perception of others social motives, the data in this study indicate that a prosocial orientation correlated positively with the ability to adopt another persons point of view and infer mental states from eye gazes. These social skills correlated negatively with an individualistic orientation.

Social Value Orientation and Climate Strength as Moderators of the Impact of Work Group Cooperative Climate on Affective Commitment

We investigate the moderating role of an individuals social value orientation (which refers to self- versus other-regarding preferences) and of climate strength (which refers to the extent of agreement among group members on group norms and values) on the relationship between work group cooperative climate and affective commitment among professional employees. We develop two plausible but opposite hypotheses on the moderation effect of social value orientation, one based on the behavioural assimilation assumption and the other on goal transformation theory. We argue that the work groups climate strength is an important contingency factor that affects which of both contradictory predictions holds. In a sample of 209 academic employees of a Belgian university, we find support for our arguments. Specifically, a cooperative climate enhances the affective commitment of employees with a prosocial value orientation (as predicted by the behavioural assimilation argument) but only when there is strong consensus among group members about the groups climate (high climate strength). Conversely, for those whose social value orientation is towards the self rather than others, a cooperative climate enhances affective commitment (consistent with goal transformation theory), especially when the climate is not agreed upon (low climate strength). These findings underscore recent claims that the predictive power of different theories in organizational behaviour depends on an individuals motives and values. We discuss the implications of our findings for the management of work groups consisting of employees with different social value orientations.

Organizational form emergence and competing professional schemata of Dutch accounting, 1884–1939

Understanding when new forms will emerge constitutes a core theoretical issue for organizational theory. The ecological theory of form emergence falls short of providing a full explanation because it treats legitimation as a primitive (unexplained) concept. Here, we use Hannan, Polos, and Carrolls (2007) revised theory of organizational evolution to interpret and respecify the legitimation part of the density dependence model. Among other advantages, the respecification allows us to incorporate the insights of the “cultural-frame” institutional perspective. We study early Dutch accounting, an industry setting where form legitimation was fiercely contested by several professional associations in the period 1884–1939. We develop an analytical narrative about the historical legitimation process, and we also present systematic tests of the theory examining predictions about “fuzzy” density and population contrast. Estimated models of firm exit support the revised theory and reveal that fuzziness, induced from fragmented collective action, hampers it.

Organizational Form Emergence A Meta-Analysis of the Ecological Theory of Legitimation

In this study, the authors provide an assessment of the ecological theory of organizational form emergence and focus on the positive density effect associated with legitimation. The argument comes in two steps. First, organizational ecology seeks to understand cross-population similarities in search of general patterns in form emergence processes. Using summative meta-analysis, the authors show that the average effect of density dependence on population-level legitimation is positive, but this average effect hides large variation across different populations. Second, in the spirit of recent revisions of this theory, the authors introduce two concepts that can be linked to industries or populations to explain this unaccounted-for variation: perceived simplicity of organizational goals and tangibility of offerings. Using formative meta-analysis, the study reveals that both population-level characteristics increase legitimation. Density effects on organizational founding rates tend to be stronger in manufacturing and for-profit industries, which are arguably settings featuring higher simplicity of goals and larger tangibility of offerings, respectively. On the basis of this set of findings, the authors conclude with a plea for a population-level theory of ecological differences, developing a comparative research strategy that is distinct from the current emphasis on single-population studies.