Fabiola H. Gerpott

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management

A large number of organizations restructured their Human Resource Management (HRM) departments according to their interpretation of Ulrich’s (1997) business partner model into strategic business partners, centers of expertise and shared service centers. I argue that this approach could gain widespread acceptance in organizational practice because o...

Demographic shifts challenge organizations to qualify employees across all career stages and to ensure the transfer of company-specific knowledge between experienced and young workers. Human resource development programs for employees from different generations may help address these challenges. However, there is a lack of insight into what types o...

Integrating evolutionary signaling theory with a social attention approach, we argue that individuals possess a fast, automated mechanism for detecting leadership signals in fellow humans that is reflected in higher visual attention toward emergent leaders compared to non-leaders. To test this notion, we first videotaped meetings of project teams a...

Emergent leadership—the ascription of informal leadership responsibilities among team members—is a dynamic phenomenon that comes into place through social interactions. Yet, theory remains sparse about the importance of verbal behaviors for emergent leadership in self- managed teams over a team’s lifecycle. Adopting a functional perspective on lead...

Despite convincing evidence about the general negative consequences of commuting for individuals and societies, our understanding of how aversive commutes are linked to employees' effectiveness at work is limited. Drawing on theories of self-regulation and by extension a conservation of resources perspective, we develop a framework that explains ho...

Research highlights the benefits of play‐at‐work, yet little is known about training employees to self‐initiate it. We tested two programs to train employees on designing work with elements of fun (ludic work design [LWD]) or competition (agonistic work design [AWD]). Based on self‐determination theory, we propose that enhancing LWD or AWD will pos...

Cross‐functional teams are vital decision‐making units in supply chain management, and scholars emphasize the need to understand how team processes shape performance improvement. Despite promising research on communication within cross‐functional teams, scant attention has been paid to real‐time communication patterns—integral to behavioral supply...

Communication sits at the heart of any coordination within organization. Yet, what are the consequences when employes use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to copilot, i.e., support, their communication? While AI support in human interactions holds much promise for improving communication quality at work, it also fundamentally challenges how much people...

Knowledge exchange is crucial for organizations, but interpersonal dynamics can entail stress, affecting whether and how knowledge flows. Integrating social comparison and stress appraisal research, we propose that upward social comparison can be appraised as challenging or hindering. We suggest a dual pathway model involving an approach pathway vi...

Obtaining and retaining women in leadership positions is an ongoing challenge for scholars and practitioners in Human Resource Management (HRM). Research on the role of organisational context factors in supporting women who either are already in leadership roles or aspire to obtain them is fragmented and spread across multiple disciplines. In this...

Leader–follower relationships are a cornerstone of leadership research. Considering recent developments that point to emotions as key determinants of dyadic relationships, we shift the focus of this literature to the episodic interplay of leader emotional expressions and follower emotional reactions for the emergence of high‐quality interactions. S...

Bringing together 150+ scholars and practitioners from 50+ countries, and funded by the European Commission, COST Action LeverAge (https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22120/) is the first network-building project of its kind in the work and organizational psychology and human resource management (WOP/HRM) aspects of work and aging. Focused on the aging w...

Commuting is a global phenomenon that has primarily been studied in terms of its costs. However, anecdotes and recent theorizing suggest that some employees enjoy their commutes. Is it, thus, possible that commuting can also be beneficial for employees? We integrate the Work–Home Resources model with the Conservation of Resources theory to conceptu...

Society and organizations face a number of grand challenges (e.g., climate change, political instability, societal upheaval, and gender1 inequality; George et al., 2016). To confront these challenges and to more generally shape inclusive organizations, we need “all hands on deck.” That is, we must ensure that we identify and train all talents for w...

The Leadership Quarterly has helped as a pioneer in accepting Registered Reports (RRs), a submission format where authors provide the introduction, theory section, and methods of their paper for peer review before data collection. Proud but never satisfied, we aim to further boost the number of suitable RR submissions due to our firm belief in thei...

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the phenomenon of presenteeism. We further highlight that research needs to take a more nuanced perspective on the phenomenon, and we outline three concrete future directions. We also reflect on presenteeism in the "new normal"/the Future of Work characterized by flexible working models.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the phenomenon of curiosity. We shed light on the historical development of the concept as well as recent research on curiosity in organizations. Moreover, we highlight practical implications, critical reflections, and future research avenues.

Forschungsfrage: Wie lassen sich verschiedene Formen des renitenten Verhaltens von Mitarbeitenden klassifizieren? Wie häufig erleben Führungskräfte die Formen und unter­scheiden sich diese in der eingeschätzten Destruktivität Methodik: 40 Interviews und Befragung von 7.229 Führungskräften. Auswertung mit Methoden des maschinellen Lernens und Korre...

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the phenomenon of followership. We shed light on the historical development of the concept and its typologies as well as more recent approaches to studying followership via attitudes and expectations. Moreover, we highlight practical implications, critical reflections, and future research avenues.

Perspective taking is encouraged by organizations as a form of supporting coworkers. Yet, its impact on employees’ and coworkers’ well-being is not well understood. We, therefore, take a dyadic approach to understand the daily dynamics of employees’ perspective taking, its benefits for coworkers, and its costs for employees themselves. Specifically...

Management and applied psychology scholars are confronted with a crisis undermining trust in their findings. One solution to this crisis is the publication format Registered Reports (RRs). Here, authors submit the frontend of their paper for peer review before data collection. While this format can help increase the trustworthiness of research, aut...

Praxis und Forschung befassen sich gern mit all dem, was Führung leisten soll: Transformational soll sie sein, mittels neuer Impulse inspirieren und dabei die indivi­duellen Bedürfnisse der ver­schiedensten Mitarbeitenden im Blick behalten. Aber was ist eigentlich mit der anderen Seite? Viele Führungskräfte erleben regelmäßig, dass Mitarbeitende au...

Perspective taking is encouraged by organizations as a form of supporting coworkers. Yet, its impact on employees’ and coworkers’ well-being is not well understood. We, therefore, take a dyadic approach to understand the daily dynamics of employees’ perspective taking, its benefits for coworkers, and its costs for employees themselves. Specifically...

Rapid technological advancements and global workforce aging shape the future of work. Drawing on the technology acceptance model, our study aims to connect the literature on aging with the research on technology use in organizations. At its heart, the technology acceptance model suggests that the two core components perceived usefulness and perceiv...

Rapid technological advancements and global workforce aging shape the future of work. Drawing on the technology acceptance model, our study aims to connect the literature on aging with the research on technology use in organizations. At its heart, the technology acceptance model suggests that the two core components perceived usefulness and perceiv...

We expand research on the daily dynamics of employee effectiveness at work by integrating the core tenets of the Conservation of Resources Theory with the Broaden-and-Build Theory of positive emotions. Specifically, we argue that daily work-related self-control demands as a stressor deplete employees’ regulatory resources, which in turn impair work...

When competing for scarce resources, groups can behave aggressively toward one another. Realistic conflict theory suggests that intergroup hostility internally ties groups together, thus improving intragroup functioning. In contrast, conflict spillover theory suggests that aggressive behaviors between groups can permeate to the intragroup level and...

Beneath the verbosity of modern leadership theories, there is a simple truth: Leading people is essentially about communication. The respective communicative philosophies underlying leadership theories can be broadly separated into two camps: One arguing that leaders should tell-and-sell and one urging leaders to ask-and-listen. In the present essa...

50 days' free access: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1hV%7E6RM4TNsY Change is omnipresent in contemporary organizations. Employees’ change support (i.e., the provision of time, energy, and contributions to a change process) is a crucial reaction for change to be successful, while employees’ frustration (i.e., an intense negative feeling of depriva...

In diesem Artikel streifen wir die drei Idealtypen legitimer Herrschaftsformen, so wie sie von Max Weber beschrieben wurden. Es geht dabei um die Frage, wer Macht bekommt und behält, sowie wie diese ausgeübt wird – in Staaten und damit der öffentlichen Verwaltung, aber auch in Privatunternehmen. Dadurch eröffnet sich ein anderer Blickwinkel auf die...

There is an emerging consensus that traditional management roles could—and maybe should—be performed by machines infused with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Yet, “true” leadership—that is, motivating and enabling people so that they can and will contribute to the collective goals of an organization—is still predominantly viewed as the prerogative of...

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations has fundamentally changed from performing routine tasks to supervising human employees. While prior studies focused on normative perceptions of such AI supervisors, employees’ behavioral reactions towards them remained largely unexplored. We draw from theories on AI aversion and appreciation...

Whereas a plethora of research investigated subordinates who accept their leaders’ influence attempts (i.e., those who follow), we focus here on the reversed perspective, namely subordinates who decide not to follow their leaders’ requests. For example, a subordinate may intentionally lower their effort, regularly pass-off work tasks to colleagues,...

Previous research has demonstrated that work-related self-control demands deplete regulatory resources and thus impair employees’ functioning. But what is more harmful to employees – facing consistent self-control demands throughout the day or frequently switching between activities that require varying levels of self-control (i.e. self-control dem...

The few studies that have considered psychological processes during the commute have drawn an ambiguous picture, with some emphasizing the negative and others the positive consequences of commuting. Drawing on self-determination theory, we develop a framework that expands on the costs and benefits of commuting for employees’ subsequent domain-relat...

Illuminating the nature of leadership and followership requires insights into not only how leaders and followers behave, but also the different cognitions that underpin these social relationships. We argue that the roots of leader and follower roles and status asymmetries often lie in basic mental processes such as attention and visual perception....

Proposal presented at the Professional Development Workshop on Workplace Play at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2022 in Seattle, Washington.

There are myriad organizational anecdotes about middle managers who advance their careers by ingratiating themselves with their superiors while exploiting and abusing their subordinates. We formally define this behavioural combination as the Kiss‐Up‐Kick‐Down (KUKD) phenomenon and develop a resource‐focused framework that not only explains when mid...

Over the last decade, management and applied psychology scholars have been confronted with a crisis that has undermined trust in their findings. One potential solution to this crisis is the publication format of Registered Reports (RRs). Here, authors submit the frontend of their paper for peer-review before data collection. While this format can h...

Knowledge transfer between younger and older employees can help to prevent organizational knowledge loss and contribute to business success. However, despite its potential benefits, knowledge transfer does not occur automatically. To better understand the challenges associated with age-diverse knowledge transfer, we develop a conceptual model outli...

Our study seeks to contribute to scholarly understanding of the antecedents and consequences of the crucial, but so far overlooked within-person daily fluctuations in presenteeism. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of presenteeism, which conceptualize presenteeism as an adaptive behavior to deliver work performance despite limitations due to ill-he...

We argue that the literature on presenteeism needs to consider that employees not only go to work despite being ill but also often work from home despite being ill, especially since the COVID‐19 crisis enabled home‐office work on a large scale. We label this phenomenon “workahomeism” and develop theory that shows its distinctness from traditional p...

Status symbols undergo constant changes depending on the ‘zeitgeist’ and the social reference group. For something to be considered a status symbol, access to it must be limited—it's all a question of having what others can't have. But what can one exclusively own in an affluent society? And what impact do technological advancements have on status...

Status symbols undergo constant changes depending on the ‘zeitgeist’ and the social reference group. For something to be considered a status symbol, access to it must be limited—it's all a question of having what others can't have. But what can one exclusively own in an affluent society? And what impact do technological advancements have on status...

Status symbols undergo constant changes depending on the ‘zeitgeist’ and the social reference group. For something to be considered a status symbol, access to it must be limited—it's all a question of having what others can't have. But what can one exclusively own in an affluent society? And what impact do technological advancements have on status...

In this conceptual paper, we define a person's meeting mindset as the individual belief that meetings represent opportunities to realize goals falling into one of three categories: personal, relational, and collective. We propose that in alignment with their respective meeting mindsets, managers use specific leadership claiming behaviors in team me...

Purpose: Knowledge exchange between older and younger employees enhances the collective memory of an organization and therefore contributes to its business success. In this study, we take a motivational perspective to better understand why older and younger employees share and receive knowledge with and from each other. Specifically, we focus on ge...

Knowledge‐related interactions between older and younger employees are crucial for business success. Although research has contributed much to understanding why older employees share knowledge with younger colleagues, little is known about older employees' motivation to seek knowledge. In this study, we answer the question of how age‐inclusive huma...

Scholars are increasingly embracing innovative research designs and measures to capture actual leader and/or follower behaviors in real interactions. Our systematic review of this emerging research stream and development of a research agenda seeks to move the literature further in this direction. Specifically, we aim to inspire scholars with techni...

Forschungsfrage: Welche Konstellationen im Zusammenspiel formeller und informeller Führung zwischen Führungskraft und Teammitglieder existieren und wie wirken diese? Methodik: Wir entwickeln auf Basis bisheriger Forschung ein konzeptuelles Model des Abgebens und Annehmens von Führungsverantwortung zwischen formeller Führungskraft und Teammitglied...

Due to the convenience of survey approaches, empirical aging research largely became a science of questionnaires that has limited its investigation of behavior to the boxes participants tick in a survey. In doing so, scholars have equated what people report they (or others) do with what actually happens. Although survey-based research can provide v...

We expand research on the daily dynamics of employee effectiveness at work by integrating conservation of resources theory with a broaden-and-built perspective on positive emotions. Specifically, we expect that on days with high work-related self-control demands, employees experience regulatory resource depletion, which makes them less effective at...

Social desirability (SD) scales have been used for decades in psychology and beyond. These scales are sought to measure individuals’ tendencies to present themselves overly positive in self‐reports, thus allowing to control for SD biases. However, research increasingly questions the validity of SD scales, proposing that SD scales measure substantiv...

Managers play a pivotal role in the innovation process; yet, the mechanisms through which managers enhance or undermine innovation are not well understood. Drawing upon self‐concordance theory, we argue that managers can augment employees' self‐concordance—defined as the congruence of goals and actions with inner values and preferences—through tran...

Older employees’ knowledge sharing with younger colleagues is pivotal for organizational knowledge retention. We developed a social-cognitive internalization model that explains why older employees’ knowledge sharing with younger colleagues is often inhibited. Specifically, we focused on perceived age discrimination at work as a threat to older emp...

In Krisenzeiten blicken Menschen verstärkt zu denjenigen, die Führungspositionen innehaben, sei es auf politischer oder unternehmerischer Ebene. Aber was macht eine gute Führungskraft in Krisenzeiten aus? Wissenschaftler sind sich einig: Die eine Erfolgseigenschaft der perfekten Krisenführungskraft gibt es nicht. Stattdessen bedarf es eines vielfäl...

Purpose - We investigate the role of gender in linking communicative acts that occur in the interactions of self-managed teams to emergent leadership. Specifically, this study presents a framework that differentiates between agentic and communal task-and relations-oriented communication as predictors of emergent leadership, and it hypothesizes that...

Entrepreneurs are modern heroes. What explains their extraordinary popularity? We argue that there are no measurable success factors that predict entrepreneurial mastery. Instead, it is the goal of upholding the entrepreneurial ideology that ensures that those who are successful are celebrated as entrepreneurial role models. We recap the assumption...

Ambidextrous leadership theory proposes that a leader's interplay between opening behaviors and closing behaviors enhances followers' exploration and exploitation behaviors, which ultimately increases innovative outcomes. Unfortunately, previous research suffers from problems with causal interpretation and endogeneity concerns threatening the valid...

Context frames such as describing a Prisoner's Dilemma as a “community” or a “stock exchange” game cause significant variation in cooperative behaviour. Here, we draw on recent advances in research on situation construal to propose that perceived conflict of interests is a mechanism underlying framing effects on cooperation in experimental games. S...

Due to demographic change, age diversity is increasing in many organizations. We aimed to understand how organizations can use age diversity training to overcome the challenges and realize the benefits of an age-diverse workforce. We built on the two predominant theoretical perspectives in the diversity literature–social identity theory and the inf...

All authors contributed equally. Open Access - Article available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726719844813. Abstract: Knowledge sharing is a discretionary act of employees who might see benefits in keeping their knowledge to themselves. We focus on the other-oriented nature of knowledge sharing to outline how respectful leadershi...

This chapter outlines how the objective and subjective interdependence structure of social situations can, together with personality, influence behavior. We first review the premises of Interdependence Theory which suggests that six dimensions describe objective characteristics of interdependent situations: mutual dependence, power, conflict, coord...

Research on work and aging predominantly relies on self-report data to create new insights relevant to individuals, organizations, and society. Whereas surveys and interviews based on self-reports offer a valuable inward-directed perspective on individuals and their understanding of others, they can only provide limited knowledge on the behaviors o...

Team processes are interdependent activities amongst team members that transform inputs into outputs, vary over time and are critical for team effectiveness. Understanding the temporal dynamics of team processes and related team phenomena with a high resolution lens (i.e., methods with high sampling rates) is particularly challenging when going “in...

This study advances theorizing on human resource development by conceptualizing a training group’s age diversity composition as an antecedent of participants’ learning outcomes in organizational training courses. Drawing from social identity theory, we propose that a high age diversity of the training group can inhibit participants’ learning outcom...

Despite the proliferation of research on ethical leadership, there remains a limited understanding of how specifically the assumingly moral component of this lead- ership style affects employee behavior. Taking an identity perspective, we integrate the ethical leadership literature with research on the dynamics of the moral self-concept to posit th...

This chapter contributes to the literature by examining how a company’s hierarchical structure influences the representation of women in top management. We start by reviewing the hierarchy literature and discussing the advantages of tall hierarchies in terms of organizational effectiveness. We then highlight the potential misalignment of tall hiera...

The nature of the consequences of knowledge hiding, defined as an intentional attempt to withhold knowledge that has been requested, and the mechanisms through which knowledge hiding affects outcomes are undertheorized. In this research, we propose that knowledge hiding can evoke guilt and shame in the knowledge hiding perpetrator. We zoom into the...

Interaktionsdynamiken sind die Basis für funktionierende Zusammenarbeit in Gruppen und können somit wesentliche Inhalte für ein Coaching liefern. Dieses Kapitel verdeutlicht den Einfluss von Interaktionsdynamiken auf die Leistungs- und Lernfähigkeit von organisationalen Gruppen. Wir diskutieren Methoden zur Interaktionsanalyse sowie die Entstehung...

Leadership is a relational, dynamic process that comes about through the temporal course of verbal interactions between leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). Whereas the interactive nature of leadership evoked much interest in understanding how leaders’ communication affect follower behavior over time, research so far has mostly captured l...