William J Becker

Virginia Tech | VT · Department of Management

While crises like the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impact well-being, understanding their impacts on employee work functioning remains nascent. To fill this gap, we develop and test a process model examining how situational anxiety leads to increased loneliness and reduced job performance during a crisis. We also observe if mindfulness strengthe...

The literature on individual differences constitutes a key area of research in organizational sciences, such as organizational psychology, organizational behavior, and behavioral strategy. In line with this, there is a vast and further growing body of knowledge within this literature. This volume aims to provide an accessible overview of the academ...

Purpose This paper utilizes generativity to explore the relationship between mentoring support and organizational identification, turnover intention and reciprocated mentoring in protégés. Design/methodology/approach The paper used a cross-sectional design with surveys administered to 351 working adults in the USA to test the hypotheses on the rel...

Research Question/Issue For firms with institutional dual holders, is proxy voting affected by whether the vote is confidential? Does confidential voting affect firms' cost of debt? Research Findings/Insights Consistent with social exchange theory and reciprocity norms, we find that, in the absence of confidential voting, firms with institutional...

Backed by both research and practice, the organizational psychology field has come to value emotional intelligence (EI) as being vital for leader and employee effectiveness. While this field values EI, it has paid little attention to the antecedents of emotional intelligence, leaving the EI domain without clarity on (1) why EI might vary across ind...

With supply chains targeting increased efficiency, leadership behaviors are critical in influencing the employee experience, and thus the success of employees in organizations. Yet, behavioral work withdrawal, e.g., lateness and absenteeism, among frontline logistics employees is an acute challenge, estimated to contribute millions annually in rela...

Affective computing, which is a noteworthy field within the sphere of artificial intelligence, interprets, analyzes, and reproduces human emotional expressions. More specifically, affective computing involves two separate computer technologies – emotion recognition and emotion expression – that may operate independently or in concert. Both of thes...

This paper investigates the impact of job control and work‐related loneliness on employee work behaviors and well‐being during the massive and abrupt move to remote work amid the COVID‐19 pandemic. We draw on job‐demands control and social baseline theory to link employee perceived job control and work‐related loneliness to emotional exhaustion and...

We present an experimental study of dynamic pricing in which two retailers compete to sell perishable goods over a finite horizon. Consumers arrive at the market one at a time and remain there for a single period. Each consumer compares the two simultaneously posted prices, one by each retailer, and then decides probabilistically whether to purchas...

Emerging research demonstrates detrimental effects of work-related email use after hours on employee emotions and well-being. This paper extends existing literature by examining organizational expectations for email monitoring during non-work hours (OEEM) as an antecedent of employee low work detachment, emotional exhaustion, diminished work-life b...

This paper tests the relationship between organizational expectations to monitor work-related electronic communication during nonwork hours and the health and relationship satisfaction of employees and their significant others. We integrate resource-based theories with research on interruptions to position organizational expectations for e-mail mon...

Organizations often address agency concerns through reward systems such as goal setting and monetary incentives, and while these are important mechanisms for increasing and aligning employee effort, they can lead to undesirable or unethical behaviors. In this article, we explore the interactive effects of goals and pay structures on the amount of d...

This article contributes to research on emotion expression, attributions, and discrete work emotions by developing an observer-focused model to explain the outcomes of crying at work. Our model is focused on crying as a form of emotion expression because crying may be driven by different felt emotions or be used as a means of manipulation. In addit...

We investigated the relationship of emotional labor to perceived team support, extra-role behaviors, and turnover intentions. Our primary research question involved whether the relationships of individual deep acting with perceived team support and extra-role behaviors were conditional on the level of peer deep acting in the team. The possibilities...

We introduce the concept of chronotype diversity to the team diversity literature. Chronotype diversity is defined as the extent to which team members differ in their biological predispositions towards the optimal timing of daily periods of activity and rest. To explain the effects of chronotype diversity on team outcomes, we develop a theory of te...

According to deontic justice theory, individuals often feel principled moral obligations to uphold norms of justice. That is, standards of justice can be valued for their own sake, even apart from serving self-interested goals. While a growing body of evidence in business ethics supports the notion of deontic justice, skepticism remains. This hesit...

Scholars who study negotiation increasingly recognize the importance of social context, seeing negotiations not merely as 1-shot interactions but as influenced by what came before. Under this longitudinal conceptualization of negotiation, a number of recent studies demonstrate that social psychological outcomes from prior negotiations are positivel...

Theory and research on affect in organizations has mostly approached emotions from a valence perspective, suggesting that positive emotions lead to positive outcomes and negative emotions to negative outcomes for organizations. We propose that cognition resulting from emotional experiences at work cannot be assumed based on emotion valence alone. I...

In this review, we consider the advent of neuroscience in management and organizational research. We organize our review around two general themes pertaining to how areas of the brain may be relevant to management and organizational behavior. First, intrinsic, at-rest activity in the brain provides trait-like information that can be used to better...

We highlight our research findings on ‘‘after- hours’’ electronic communication. This research has offered insights on both the upside and downside of connectivity to work, providing practical guidance for orga- nizations, managers, and individual employees to most effectively manage after-hours electronic communication and the blurring of boundari...

This chapter overviews organizational neuroscience (ON), covering the past, present, and future of this growing field of inquiry. First, we define ON and clarify the boundaries of the field. Second, we describe the evolution of ON by starting with early papers that tended to discuss the potential of ON to benefit both research and practice. Through...

This chapter advocates the use of neuroscience theoretical insights and methodological tools to advance existing organizational justice theory, research, and practice. To illustrate the value of neuroscience, two general topics are reviewed. In regard to individual justice, neuroscience makes it clear that organizational justice theory and research...

The application of physiological methods to the study of psychological phenomena has garnered considerable interest in recent years. These methods have proved especially useful to the study of emotions, since evidence suggests that validly measuring a person's emotional state using traditional, psychometric methods such as surveys or observation is...

As advances in communication technologies have made organizations more easily connected to their workforce outside of normal work hours, there is increased concern that employees may experience heightened work-nonwork conflict when away from the office. The current study investigates the effects of electronic communication received during nonwork t...

This study proposes and tests a meso-level model of deep acting in work teams that draws on emotional contagion theory to explain how shared means of complying with display rules can arise in work teams. We argue that the presence of influential deep actors can lead to greater convergence (lower dispersion) on individual deep acting in the team. Th...

The emerging domain of organizational neuroscience asks ‘how does the architecture of the brain explain and predict behavior in organizations?’ Such a question calls for deep expertise in multiple disciplines. Accordingly, this symposium invites an interdisciplinary panel of neuroscientists and management scholars to discuss the application of brea...

We investigated the implications of subjective value perceptions for the conduct of sequential negotiations. Sequential negotiations are characterized by multiple negotiation sessions that occur within a relatively short period of time, but with different counterparts. According to our theoretical model, the outcome of an antecedent negotiation can...

Organizational neuroscience has great promise for advancing organizational research and practice. The field, however, is developing rapidly and has also become the subject of technological and methodological challenges that must be considered when conducting or interpreting neuroscience research as applied to organizational behavior. We explore fou...

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of neuroscience research related to adult intelligence and explore the implications of adopting an organizational neuroscience perspective for workplace research and practice. We argue that neuroscience will have several important consequences. First, it will force us to refine our definition of what...

The aim of this paper is to delineate how insights from neuroeconomics research can inform organizational theory and practice. We argue that neuroeconomics stands out from other more general neuroscience approaches by providing a powerful normative lens through which organizational research questions can be analyzed. We use the example of prosocial...

Psychophysiological measurement is rapidly emerging as a new window into behavior in organizations. Such measures, which involve recording bioelectric event potentials on the surface of the skin, offer a novel way to examine variables that cannot be directly reported or observed. Within this domain, sophisticated cardiovascular measures such as hea...

Scholars in the disciplines of human resource management (HRM) and organizational behavior (OB) have primarily focused on explicit processes and measures in their research, but much of human feeling and behavior is triggered through implicit processing outside of conscious awareness. In this article, we discuss how explicit and implicit processes i...

In this short response, we extend Lindebaum’s ethical analysis of organizational neuroscience. We do so in three ways. First, we examine the contemporary technical state of modern neuroscientific tools. Second, we consider the ethical implications of future investigations, including the possibility that neuroscience could enrich and otherwise impro...

Previous research on emotional labor has typically been conducted at the individual level of analysis, despite the fact that many organizations have incorporated work teams into their business model. The use of work teams turns emotional management into a group task on which employees work as a collective. The present chapter proposes a conceptual...

Previous research pertaining to job performance and voluntary turnover has been guided by 2 distinct theoretical perspectives. First, the push-pull model proposes that there is a quadratic or curvilinear relationship existing between these 2 variables. Second, the unfolding model of turnover posits that turnover is a dynamic process and that a down...

This paper introduces the reader to Organizational Neuroscience, an emerging area of scholarly dialogue that explores the implications of brain science for workplace behavior. We begin by discussing how going inside the brain adds new levels of analysis that can advance and connect theories of organizational behavior. We then present three concrete...

Previous research pertaining to job performance and voluntary turnover has been guided by 2 distinct theoretical perspectives. First, the push-pull model proposes that there is a quadratic or curvilinear relationship existing between these 2 variables. Second, the unfolding model of turnover posits that turnover is a dynamic process and that a down...

We review and discuss an Organizational Neuroscience perspective on management science research. Reviewing recent findings in the brain sciences, we provide concrete examples of how an organizational neuroscience perspective can advance organizational behavior research. We conclude that this new paradigm offers powerful insights and tools that comp...

Employers often enjoy some discretion in how quickly they extend job offers following candidate interviews. Applicant reactions research suggests that quicker offers are more likely to be accepted. This paper reports an archival study investigating the effect of offer timing on offer acceptance and employment outcomes with field data (N = 3,012) fr...