Working Papers

This paper extends a formal theory of structural aspects of organizational change initiated by Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2002a, hereafter HPCa). This analysis focuses on the implications of limited foresight of the cascades of consequences of…

Building on a formal theory of the structural aspects of organizational change initiated in Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2002a, 2002b), this paper focuses on structural inertia. We define inertia as a persistent organizational resistance to…

In this chapter, we trace the historical and intellectual origins of system justification theory, summarize the basic assumptions of the theory, and derive 18 specific hypotheses from a system justification perspective. We review and integrate…

The current research investigates the proposal that cross-cultural differences in conflict resolution choices are driven by culturally conferred cognitive scripts-expectancies about appropriate actions in a setting and outcomes they will evoke.…

Because we live in an economy in which all work is becoming knowledge work and in which intellectual capital is important for company success and, indeed, its value in the capital markets, there is an assumption that the company with the best…

According to McGuire and McGuire’s (1991) “rationalization postulate,” people should adjust their judgments of the desirability of a future event to make them congruent with its perceived likelihood. In a political survey administered to 288…

Various industries are marked by rapid technological change and increasingly global competition. We explain how such developments provide a context for “Red Queen” competition, where organizational learning and competition accelerate each other…

Many tendencies in social perceivers’ judgments about individuals and groups can be integrated in terms of the premise that perceivers rely on implicit theories of agency acquired from cultural traditions. Whereas, American culture primarily…

Periods of social and political change often are marked by struggles among competing ideologies. Given the importance of formal organizatons to such struggles, we propose that competitions among ideologies can be understood and modeled as an…

Psychologists have taken several approaches to modeling how culture influences the ways individuals negotiate interpersonal conflict. Most common has been the approach of searching for cultural traits, general, stable value-orientations that…

Organizational theory has addressed the role of metaphor in analyzing organizational culture, fostering innovation in organizational development, and in maintaining control of employees through language and socialization. We argue that metaphors…

Virtual teams are increasingly common in organizations, yet explicit theory and research on virtual team processes and outcomes is relatively rare. In this chapter, we first place virtual teams in context and provide a two dimensional framework…

Information technology may play the role of a jealous mistress when it comes to the relationship between individual and organizational knowledge creation. Information technology can facilitate the dissemination of knowledge across the…

We examine two broad, opposite approaches that often guide managers in managing diversity issues. One approach, the universalist approach, emphasizes similarity as the basis of justice, as embodied in the often-heard managerial motto that…

In this study, we investigate the role of experience diversity on learning by U.S. airlines. Do firms learn more from diverse of homogeneous accident experiences? Existing literature provides conflicting answers to this question, with some…

According to system justification theory, which complement theories of similarity, social identification, and homophily, people internalize and perpetuate systemic forms of inequality, event if it means harboring preference for members of higher…

We investigate whether the size and quality of the networks of firms engaging in illegal/unethical acts are affected by those acts. Using legitimacy, status, and resource dependence theories, we hypothesize that size will be affected and quality…

In an experimental study involving power differences between groups, the effects of legitimate and illegitimate explanations for power were investigated on measures of affect, stereotyping, and memory. We found that powerless groups reported more…

This paper examines how power influences human behavior. We consider evidence from diverse literatures relating elevated power to approach and reduced power to inhibition. Specifically, power is associated with (a) positive affect, (b) attention…

We investigate how sociological argumentation differs from the classical first-order logic. We focus on theories about age dependence of organizational mortality. The overall pattern of argument does not comply with the classical monotonicity…