Katja Rost

• Professor (Full) at University of Zurich

We appreciate Ricardo Nieva’s thoughtful engagement with our paper and his proposal to interpret our case study through the lens of his theoretical framework. Indeed, we noted the potential of such a connection in the original paper, and thank Professor Nieva for taking up our suggestion. This response aims to identify points of overlap between our...

The meritocratic paradigm of Western cultures is based on the imagination that success is mainly due to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, ability, wisdom, effort, willpower, hard work or willingness to take risks. This manuscript shows that in winner-take-all markets external circumstances play a crucial role in achieving significant...

The gender gap in the fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science) in richer and more egalitarian countries compared to poorer and less egalitarian countries is called the “Gender Equality Paradox” (GEP). We provide an overview of the evidence for the GEP and discuss criticism against the GEP and its explanat...

Mobilization for revolts poses a significant challenge for rational choice theory because revolts are vulnerable to free-riding, which disincentivizes rational actors from mobilizing. Strong, informal relations such as kinship ties have been identified as factors that can shift the rational calculations of individuals and lead to mobilization for r...

The gender gap in the fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science) in richer and more egalitarian countries compared to poorer and less egalitarian countries is called “Gender Equality Paradox” (GEP). We provide an overview of the evidence for the GEP and respond to criticism against the GEP. We explain the G...

This article examines how digitalisation is used for organisational distinction in the field of Swiss universities for the period 2010-2020. It shows that digitalisation does not fundamentally challenge the order of the Swiss university field but triggers competitive dynamics that are accompanied by different forms of identity articulation. The art...

The digital age has transformed many aspects of contemporary life, and academic work is no exception – just envision the manifold activities revolving around issues such as open science, digital skills, and data science. The everyday use of digital technologies and the political discourse on digitalization have become pervasive in research and high...

Michels’ iron law of oligarchy states that political organizations tend inexorably towards oligarchy, to the likely detriment of the organizations themselves and, by extension, to the detriment of society more broadly. We suggest focal randomization as a historically proven countermeasure: a lottery decides who wins promotion from a preselected poo...

In his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber (1904) identi-fied the Calvinist type of the Protestant ethic as a significant influence in shaping capitalism in Northern Europe. We may observe different transformation process-es in geographical areas influenced by other religious traditions, such as Islam, Judaism, Confucianis...

A lottery (or random selection) is often considered to be irrational. However, a qualified lottery can lead to a second‐order rationality on an institutional level. The main idea is to make use of uncertainty, either by exploiting existing fundamental uncertainty or by deliberately enlarging uncertainty through lotteries. In both cases, decision qu...

Caused by perceived norm violations, online firestorms confront organizations with large volumes of hostile-emotional comments on public social media leading to a damage to reputation or the cancellation of products and projects. Relying on social norm theory we analyze how people express perceived norm violations in their online comments and how t...

We explain the rise and decline of regional clusters of creativity over time. We argue that this dynamic is the result of the interplay of individually rational decision-making processes with collective externalities of unplanned social encounters; migration to particular places at particular times interacts with a preference to engage with similar...

Call for Papers: Digital Academia

One of the concerns in modern organizations is ethics, where few institutions are unaffected by scandals or abuse of power. Thus, we look for inspiration in difficult times to offer leaders and managers strategies to mitigate or prevent ethical challenges. This symposium brings together various values-driven leadership approaches to managing organi...

In this paper, we examine the impact of top managers' social class on their attitude towards employee downsizing. Mobilizing Bourdieu's concepts of social class as a unique social position defined by the combination of economic, cultural, and social capital, we develop hypotheses about the effects of different capital endowments, which we test with...

From 1718 to 1818, professors at the University of Basel were selected using a structured lottery procedure. This short paper presents this procedure and discusses its advantages and disadvantages. The example of the University of Basel shows that well-designed lottery systems can also be useful for expert organizations.

Gender differences in choosing to enter competitions are an important cause of the leaky pipeline for women in leadership roles and represent a considerable waste of human resources. We used an incentivized laboratory experiment to evaluate whether the introduction of random elements alters the gender gap in competitiveness. We found that focal ran...

Many studies have investigated barriers for women and minorities on their way to the top, but very few studies have examined which organizational practices indeed increase the diversity of the top management in organizations. This research analyzes whether various diversity practices increase the proportion of women and minorities at the top. The r...

Hubris is a tendency of leaders to hold an overly confident view of their own capabilities and to abuse power for their own selfish goals, sometimes with disastrous consequences for organizations. A major reason for hubris is the rigorous selection process leaders typically undergo. This study proposes a governance mechanism used successfully in hi...

Meta‐analysis has become the conventional approach to synthesizing the results of empirical economics research. To further improve the transparency and replicability of the reported results and to raise the quality of meta‐analyses, the Meta‐Analysis of Economics Research Network has updated the reporting guidelines that were published by this Jour...

Burt connects sociology with economic insights. He argues that short-run advantages on the path to equilibrium in markets can be explained by network entrepreneurs: by brokerage in the social structure of relationships. Societies are markets in which people exchange a variety of goods and ideas in pursuit of their interests. Certain people and grou...

Gender inequality in the workplace is a central issue in both management practice and management research (Bohnet, 2016; Bowles & McGinn, 2008; Dobbin, 2009: 61; Phillips, 2005; Ridgeway, 2014). Two central theoretical perspectives proffer different explanations for gender inequality: theories of in-group bias and status construction theory. Accord...

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the ways in which organizations realize and shape normative expectations and values. We start from the assumption that different organizations (i.e., schools, foundations, banks, hospitals, political parties etc.) are all exposed to value- laden expectations. To maintain their legitimacy, organizations c...

Ego’s network, in which ego ‘lends’ the advantages of structural holes from a sponsor. (TIFF)

Longitudinal GLS-model with random effects predicting ‘years without internal promotions’ by token-split, with departments as fixed-effects. Prediction of ‘years without internal promotions’ by splitting in token and non-token females and using department instead of faculty as fixed-effects. Standard errors are in parenthesis. +< p. 0.10; *< p 0.05...

Longitudinal GLS-model with random effects predicting ‘years without internal promotions’ by token-split, separated for the professorial ranks. Prediction of ‘years without internal promotions’ by splitting in token and non-token females and using only two professorial ranks. Standard errors are in parenthesis. +< p. 0.10; *< p 0.05; **< p 0.01; **...

Longitudinal Logit-model predicting ‘received promotion’. Prediction of ‘received a promotion’ without any gender or network variables. Standard errors are in parenthesis. +< p. 0.10; *< p 0.05; **< p 0.01; ***< p 0.001. (DOCX)

Ego occupies a structural hole and thus acts as a broker between two groups. Without ego, the group on the left would be disconnected from the group on the right. (TIFF)

This paper examines how gender proportions at the workplace affect the extent to which individual networks support the career progress (i.e. time to promotion). Previous studies have argued that men and women benefit from different network structures. However, the empirical evidence about these differences has been contradictory or inconclusive at...

In view of the numerous accounting and corporate scandals associated with various forms of moral misconduct and the recent financial crisis, economics and business programs are often accused of actively contributing to the amoral decision making of their graduates. It is argued that theories and ideas taught at universities engender moral misbehavi...

Frauen, die eine Führungsrolle einnehmen, sind in einer schwierigen Lage: Entsprechen sie den schlechterstereotypen nicht, gelten sie als unsympathisch.

Stationed at the border between the past and the present, the corporate governance of religion is concerned with the governance mechanisms by which religious organizations are controlled and directed. Building on similarities between contemporary organizations and their predecessors in Roman Catholic monasticism, this essay illustrates that studyin...

We develop a theory that explains when commenters choose to be aggressive versus civilized in social media depending on their personal social norm context. In particular, we enrich traditional social norm theory by introducing the concept of moral legitimacy. This concept suggests that justifications, particularly those that put social norm violato...

Reporting biases refer to a truncated pool of published studies with the resulting suppression or omission of some empirical findings. Such biases can occur in positive research paradigms that try to uncover correlations and causal relationships in the social world by using the empirical methods of (natural) science. Furthermore, reporting biases c...

Impact factors are commonly used to assess journals relevance. This implies a simplified view on science as a single-stage linear process. Therefore, few top-tier journals are one-sidedly favored as outlets, such that submissions to top-tier journals explode whereas others are short of submissions. Consequently, the often claimed gap between resear...

A few economists still believe that the extraordinary high and yearly increasing salaries for CEOs can at least be partially explained by talent. Underlying this are elaborate theories and models such as an increasing demand by a simultaneous shortage of talented people, which is driven by external factors like globalization, technological progress...

This paper examines how family firms substitute corporate governance with family governance and self-governance at different stages of their development. We argue that the types of agency problems that family firms face as they pass from one generation to the next determine the extent to which these mechanisms can be used as substitutes for one ano...

Actors of public interest today have to fear the adverse impact that stems from social media platforms. Any controversial behavior may promptly trigger temporal, but potentially devastating storms of emotional and aggressive outrage, so called online firestorms. Popular targets of online firestorms are companies, politicians, celebrities, media, ac...

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations. (DOCX)

Understanding current technological changes is the basis for better forecasting of technological changes. Because technology is path dependent, monitoring past and current trends of technological development helps managers and decision makers to identify probable future technologies in order to prevent organizational failure. This study suggests a...

We draw on Kanter’s Token theory to analyze the relationship between sex proportions, the distribution of power and the survival chances of 4,606 Catholic monasteries over a period of 1,483 years. We find evidence for female underachievement in token situations. Our results further indicate that females benefit from a numerically increase in region...

Economics suggests that owners, CEOs and chairmen have different claims in a company's output, and thus that these groups exert different efforts. However, the effort an agent invests in his/her firm is difficult to measure. Golf handicaps enable us to look into the relationship between different degrees of ownership and their implications for the...

Purpose – The aim of this study is to apply the concept of social norm dynamics to explain how corporate governance soft law is enforced. Design/methodology/approach – Using data of German listed stock companies and of economic media coverage between 2001 and 2010, the authors observe the complex relationship between sanctions and behavior in the...

Reporting biases refer to a truncated pool of published studies with the resulting suppression or omission of some empirical findings. Such biases can occur in positive research paradigms that try to uncover correlations and causal relationships in the social world by using the empirical methods of (natural) science. Further, reporting biases can c...

Kanter has argued that groups consisting of different gender proportions produce certain patterns of interaction which tend to handicap the minority group. Accordingly, minority group members, called tokens, underachieve in comparison to the dominant group members. Even though there is a wide agreement that the relative social status of the tokens...

This paper addresses career advancements of women in different minority situations within an organization. To date, research has come to conflicting conclusions regarding the existance and explanation of the gender promotion gap for people in senior positions. We argue that this can be explained with the fact that, researchers have not paid enough...

Purpose: This study applies the concept of social norm dynamics to explain how corporate governance soft law is enforced. Design/methodology/approach: Using data of German listed stock companies and of economic media coverage between 2001 and 2010, we observe the complex relationship between sanctions and behavior in the social context of corporate...

In the last decade regulatory pressure includes appeals that corporate elites should reduce their multiple directorships to a minimum. The functionality of this governance mechanism is suggested by agency theory. The embeddedness view counter-argues that social relationships matter for the effectiveness of corporate governance. In particular for il...

In the last decade regulatory pressure includes appeals that corporate elites should reduce their multiple directorships to a minimum. The functionality of this governance mechanism is suggested by agency theory. The embeddedness view counter-argues that social relationships matter for the effectiveness of corporate governance. In particular for il...

Strategieworkshops sind im Unternehmensalltag weit verbreitet, ihre Durchführung ist mit hohen Kosten und einem beträchtlichen Zeitaufwand verbunden. Dennoch wurden sie von den Managementwissenschaften als Forschungsgegenstand bisher weitgehend vernachlässigt. Mit der hier vorgestellten Studie liegen zum ersten Mal quantitativ-empirische Ergebnisse...

Manuscript Type Empirical Research Question/Issue Social norm theory goes beyond economic efficiency arguments and provides a framework that allows for the subjective, judgmental, and socially interactive processes involved in the determination of CEO remuneration. Building on this theory, we argue that current CEO pay practices infringe a social...

Meta-regression analysis (MRA) can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research. Their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades. To improve transparency and to raise the quality of MRA, the meta-analysis of economics research-network (MAER-Net) has created the below reporting guidelines. Future meta-analyses in economi...

Meta-regression analysis (MRA) can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research. Their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades. To improve transparency and to raise the quality of MRA, the meta-analysis of economics research-network (MAER-Net) has created the below reporting guidelines. Future meta-analyses in economi...

Within the literature, organizational rules are mostly taken for granted even though the reduction of office management into rules and the provision of their blueprints may be the main enabler for the management of organizations that conduct operations in multiple countries. Using the example of Catholic Orders and their monasteries, we analyze whe...

Organizational incentives are an important part of applied economics. Do even organizations like religious orders make the same trade-offs and substitutions as predicted by economics for firms? It is argued here that religious orders face the problem of controlling the actions of their branch offices to assure the continued value and uniqueness of...

Trotz ihrer weiten Verbreitung im Unternehmensalltag, den hohen Kosten und dem beträchtlichen Zeitaufwand, der mit ihnen verbunden ist, sind Strategieworkshops von den Managementwissenschaften als Forschungsgegenstand bisher weitgehend vernachlässigt worden. Mit der hier vorgestellten Studie liegen zum ersten Mal quantitativ-empirische Ergebnisse z...

There is an ongoing debate in innovation research as to which type of social capital is more conducive to innovation: structural holes as proposed by Burt or network closure as proposed by Coleman. Although Coleman focused on the quality of relationships, Burt argued that the structural configuration of relationships was more important. I argue tha...

In a former article we started to argue that publication and citation rankings of individual scholars do not effectively measure research quality, which should in fact be the essence of evaluation (Frey and Rost (2010)). For the field of economics we show that an alternative ranking based on membership on academic editorial boards of professional j...

Managementvergütung, optimale Verträge, Managermacht Executive compensation, optimal contract view, managerial power view Der weltweite Anstieg der Gehälter für angestellte Manager wird kontrovers diskutiert. Auf der einen Seite argumentieren Vertreter "optimaler Verträge", dass der Anstieg der Gehälter durch funktionierende Märkte verursacht ist....

In a former article we started to argue that publication and citation rankings of individual scholars do not effectively measure research quality, which should in fact be the essence of evaluation (Frey and Rost (2010)). For the field of economics we show that an alternative ranking based on membership on academic editorial boards of professional j...

To overcome agency problems, public sector reforms started to introduce businesslike incentive structures to motivate public officials. By neglecting internal behavioral incentives, however, these reforms often do not reach their stated goals. Our research analyzes the governance structure of Benedictine monasteries in order to gain new insights in...