Seminar Series

*10:15 am start time*

Pri Shah (University of Minnesota)

Title:  Origins of Conflict

Abstract: Teams scholars have historically conceptualized and measured intragroup conflict at the team level. However, emerging evidence suggests that perceptions of intragroup conflict are oftentimes not uniform, shared, or static. These recent findings suggest two important questions: Where does intragroup conflict originate? And how does it evolve over time? We address these questions by investigating four conflict origins (individual, dyad, subgroup, and team) and three evolutionary processes (contagion, continuity, and concentration). Our longitudinal social networks study tracking conflict in project teams reveals less than 30 percent of teams experience team-level conflict. Instead, intragroup conflict more commonly originates and persists at the individual, dyadic, or subgroup level. We then examine the impact these differing conflict origins have on team effectiveness. Our results reveal conflict origins have both direct and indirect effects on team effectiveness. Our results both raise serious questions about existing methods and theory in the team conflict literature, but also suggest directions for the emerging literature looking beyond team-level conceptualizations of conflict.

Peter Bamberger (Tel Aviv University)

Title:  Pay Transparency's Wider Effects: How and When Pay Secrecy Affects Employee Turnover and Counter-Productive Work Behavior

Abstract: In this talk, after reviewing earlier research on pay transparency, I will discuss findings from two recent sets of studies building on uncertainty management theory. In the first set of studies, we develop and test a model explicating how and when secrecy in pay communication affect employee turnover-related outcomes (i.e., employee voluntary turnover intentions and firm turnover rates). Using data collected at the individual (Study 1) and enterprise (Study 2) levels, results indicate that rather than being universal, the relationship between pay secrecy and turnover is contingent upon perceptions of outcome fairness (i.e., distributive justice), with turnover intentions (at the individual level) and turnover rates (at the firm level) sensitive to the degree of secrecy in pay communication only under conditions of higher levels of distributive justice. In the second set of studies we examine the implications of procedural and distributive pay transparency on two forms of counter-productive work behavior (CWB), namely CWB directed towards the organization (CWB-O) and CWB directed against other individuals (CWB-I). Study 1, a field study, revealed that procedural pay transparency was inversely related to CWB-O with this effect mediated by higher perceived procedural justice, while distributive pay transparency was positively related to CWB-O via lower perceived distributive justice. Distributive pay transparency was also positively associated with CWB-I, with this effect explained by diminished social-mindfulness as moderated by social value orientation. Study 2, a lab-based team simulation manipulating participants’ pay level relative to that of teammates, extended these results. Pay transparency (vs. secrecy) generated higher (lower) levels of CWB-O via decreased (increased) perceptions of distributive justice when pay was lower (higher) than that of teammates. Moreover, for those low in social value orientation, pay transparency induced more CWB-I via reduced social-mindfulness when pay was lower than that of teammates, and via heightened entitlement when pay was higher than that of teammates.

Steve Burks (University of Minnesota - Morris)

Title:  High Turnover in Long Distance Truck Load (TL) Motor Freight: Is it a Driver Shortage and Will Autonomous Trucks Fix it?

Abstract: The trucking industry has argued since 2005 that there is a shortage of truck drivers. Industry leaders also express continuing concern about the high level of turnover in a key segment of the industry, long distance truckload (TL) freight, which has been reported since the mid-1990s.  Recently they have urged the rapid implementation of regulatory freedom to experiment with autonomous trucks, arguing, along with firms such as Uber, that autonomous trucks may “fix the driver shortage.” We analyze the issue of high turnover in a large industry segment–long distance TL firms–in which driver turnover has been persistently high for decades, and in which the industry says the shortage is most severe. We present a simple model of the management problem facing TL firms and use it to argue that high turnover is a natural result of cost-minimization strategies of TL firms, given the product market constraints they face.  We suggest that the perception of a shortage among driver managers is primarily due to this background fact plus the role that turnover rates play as a “shock absorber” in an institutionally sticky pattern of industry price responses to demand changes. With these insights and model in hand, we ask what autonomous trucks are likely to change about this labor market. The answer depends on exactly how this technology is implemented, and we offer some speculative ideas. But we also suggest that in the short-to-medium run the use of this technology in TL could either increase or decrease turnover and the associated perception of a shortage of drivers, depending on details that are not yet available. 

Melanie Wasserman (UCLA)

Title:  Hours Constraints, Occupational Chioce, and Gender: Evidence from Medical Residents

Abstract: Do the long work hours required by many high-paying professions inhibit the entry of women? I investigate this question by studying a 2003 policy that capped the average workweek for medical residents at 80 hours. Using data on the universe of U.S. medical school graduates, I find that when a specialty reduces its weekly hours, more women enter the specialty, whereas there is little change in men's entry. At the residency program level, I document that new female entrants into a specialty are drawn to programs with established female communities. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the reallocation of women among medical specialties due to the reform can close the physician gender wage gap by 13 percent.

Jasmine (Jia) Hu (Ohio State University)

Title:  How Significant Others Influence Servant Leadership: Exploring the Roles of Significant Others’ Emotions, Leaders’ Emotions and Behaviors, and Gender

Abstract: Extant research has shown the positive value of other-oriented leadership behaviors on employee and team outcomes, but what makes leaders to become servants? In the current research, I explore how leaders’ work attitudes and servant leadership behaviors are influenced by their significant others through integration of two new theoretical perspectives - work-family enrichment theory (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006) and broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001).  I propose that significant others’ emotions are positively related to leaders’ emotions, which are further associated with leaders’ job engagement, receptivity, and servant leadership behavior. I further propose that the associations of significant others’ emotions and leaders’ emotions and behaviors are stronger among female leaders than among male leaders. In Study 1, an experience sampling study using 117 high school managers in the Midwestern US, I found that, after controlling for other family factors, significant others’ positive (negative) emotions were positively related to leaders’ positive (negative) emotions and the relationships were stronger among female leaders than among male leaders. Positive emotions (but not negative emotions) were related to leaders’ job engagement, receptivity, and servant leadership. The findings were then replicated in a laboratory study (Study 2) with a sample of 44 Master of Business Administration students as team leaders and 178 undergraduate students as team members. Consistent with Study 1 findings, I found that the relationship of recall of significant others’ positive emotions and leaders’ servant leadership was mediated by leaders’ positive emotions, job engagement, and receptivity and that gender moderated these relationships. Similarly, recall of significant others’ negative emotions was positively related to leaders’ negative emotions, but the relationship of leaders’ negative emotions and their job attitudes and servant leadership and the moderating role of gender were not significant.