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Event System Theory: An Event-Oriented Approach to the Organizational Sciences
Abstract
Organizations are dynamic, hierarchically structured entities. Such dynamism is reflected in the emergence of significant events at every organizational level. Despite this fact, there has been relatively little discussion about how events become meaningful and come to impact organizations across space and time. We address this gap by developing event system theory, which suggests that events become salient when they are novel, disruptive, and critical (reflecting an event's strength). Importantly, events can originate at any hierarchical level and their effects can remain within that level or travel up or down throughout the organization, changing or creating new behaviors, features, and events. This impact can extend over time as events vary in duration and timing or as event strength evolves. Event system theory provides a needed shift in focus for organizational theory and research by developing specific propositions articulating the interplay among event strength and the spatial and temporal processes through which events come to influence organizations.
... Although the Karen trope emerged in a non-work context, such critical, novel, and disruptive societal events can nevertheless seep into the workplace and influence collective employee perceptions of certain behaviors or social groups (Morgeson et al. 2015). The rise of the Karen trope is critical, as evidenced by its enduring influence on social media and pop culture. ...
... Like other nonwork macro events (e.g., COVID-19, Black Lives Matter movement) that have affected how employees make sense of and behave within their work environment (e.g., McFarland et al. 2020), the overwhelming popularization of the Karen trope has the potential to disrupt employees' automatic cognitive routines at work (Morgeson et al. 2015). This suggests that the societal dialogue surrounding Karens may impact employee perceptions of certain White women at work. ...
... Prior work has underscored how the impact of a given societal event on organizational practices and employee attitudes and behaviors is tied to the nuanced characteristics of that event (Morgeson et al. 2015;Tilcsik and Marquis 2013). For example, the Black Lives Matter movement has influenced organizational inclusion initiatives, and the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the work-home interface (Bell et al. 2021;Vaziri et al. 2020). ...
As research largely considers White women a race‐neutral gender group associated with generic feminine attributes (e.g., communality), there is a limited theoretical understanding of how their intersectional racial and gender identities might combine to shape their work experiences. Yet the recently emerged Karen trope—popularized on social media as White women who complain incessantly—deviates from generic feminine attributes and may have seeped into the workplace to potentially create unique work experiences for White women based on their race and gender. Using a mixed‐method design across three studies, we explore the implications of how the Karen trope has manifested within organizations. Our qualitative study revealed that employees have adopted this trope to label White female colleagues who prohibitively voice as workplace Karens, leading to various social penalties for these individuals. Integrating these preliminary findings with a stereotype activation and application lens, we develop a conceptual model of when White women (vs. men and non‐White women) conduct prohibitive voice, they activate a broader stereotype that White women are workplace Karens, causing observers to perceive them as having less organizational concern, which leads to lower promotability evaluations and decreased intent to rely on their voice. Using a series of experimental vignettes and a field study combining a critical incident technique with random assignment to experimental conditions, we find empirical support for our model. Our results enhance the theoretical and practical understanding of a rare context wherein Whiteness and gender interact to create negative work experiences for an otherwise advantaged social group.
... seriousness of the illness) as causes of feelings of social isolation. A basic premise of this paper is that exogenous distal events and features also have a direct top-down impact on employees' affect reactions (Morgeson et al., 2015). Second, AET assumes that events and its features produce affect reactions because people engage in a cognitive appraisal process. ...
... In AET, affect reactions result from work events, which are preceded by stable or routine features of the internal organizational environment. This emphasis on enduring features of the work environment as the primary cause of organizational phenomena limits our understanding of how affect relates to attitudes and behaviors (Morgeson et al., 2015). Indeed, exogenous events differ from work environment features (proposed in AET), even in the ability to change them (Morgeson et al., 2015). ...
... This emphasis on enduring features of the work environment as the primary cause of organizational phenomena limits our understanding of how affect relates to attitudes and behaviors (Morgeson et al., 2015). Indeed, exogenous events differ from work environment features (proposed in AET), even in the ability to change them (Morgeson et al., 2015). In this study we combine two perspectives, namely HBM and AET, to propose that health features related to the exogenous work environment, more specifically health beliefs, trigger affective responses in employees. ...
Purpose
Drawing on the health belief model and affective events theory, the main objectives of this study are to: (1) analyze which health beliefs about COVID-19 (probability, seriousness and worry) trigger feelings of social isolation; (2) investigate whether psychological capital buffers the escalation of social isolation and (3) analyze the role of the feelings of social isolation as a mechanism that yields drawbacks on mental health, life satisfaction and performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Data came from two waves of online surveys administered to 678 employees of a private university in Mexico.
Findings
Results of structural equation modeling showed that beliefs of worry of getting COVID-19 trigger social isolation feelings, which, in turn, yields drawbacks on mental health, life satisfaction and performance (i.e. task, creative and organizational citizenship behavior). Moreover, psychological capital buffers the increases in feelings of social isolation generated by beliefs of the COVID-19 severity.
Practical implications
This study provides insightful recommendations for handling future events that might imply social restrictions as a measure of contagion containment.
Originality/value
We contribute to Affective Events literature by linking it to the health belief model. A main criticism of affective events theory is its exogenous blindness and lack of attention to how affect reactions are triggered at work. We address this limitation by bridging health belief model and affective events theory to show what specific health beliefs of COVID-19 produce affects and behavioral reactions in employees.
... The existence of these distinct profiles raises further question in terms of what predicts the enactment of one profile versus another and what are the outcomes of these strategy profiles for employees' performance and well-being. Using event systems theory (Morgeson, Mitchell, & Dong Liu, 2015), we propose that the intensity of the hostile event is a key driver of the emotion regulation profile individuals enact. Further, we draw on conservation-of-resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989) to describe the outcomes of profile enactment, including the possibility of a trade-off between performance and well-being. ...
... Given our focus on hostile interpersonal events, we identify the intensity of hostile events as a potential antecedent of profile membership. In line with event systems theory (Morgeson et al., 2015), we argue that encountering hostility is novel, disruptive, and critical-creating strong events that are likely to shape behavior and outcomes in important ways. In the current context, intensely negative interpersonal events may make it difficult for individuals to enact certain emotion regulation strategies. ...
... In Study 2, we demonstrated that the intensity of hostile events predicts which profiles will be enacted for a given hostile event, consistent with event systems theory (Morgeson et al., 2015). Our predictions here received only partial support, as the no-regulation profile was more likely to be enacted compared with the moderate-all (but not high-all) profile, and we did not observe a preference for disengagement strategies for more intense events. ...
When employees face hostility from others, emotion regulation is needed to perform effectively but can be personally costly. On the basis of current evidence, employees both perform better and avoid well-being costs with engagement-focused regulation (i.e., modifying feelings through deep acting) rather than with disengagement (i.e., modifying or faking expressions through surface acting). Yet, emotion regulation theorizing suggests this good–bad dichotomy is an oversimplification, and no known work has simultaneously considered the performance and well-being consequences of emotion regulation strategies at the event level. To address these issues, we apply the comprehensive six-strategy emotion regulation framework to identify emergent combinations of regulation strategies used in response to hostile events. Across two studies, we find six emotion regulation profiles, with the pattern of these profiles largely replicating across samples. Study 2 reveals that profile enactment is driven by the intensity of the event and has distinct consequences for employees’ event performance and well-being. We also find the first known evidence of a trade-off, where profiles that result in the highest negative affect were also the most effective for episodic performance. Meanwhile, profiles that maintained low levels of negative affect were linked with lower event performance ratings. Thus, in contrast to the good-bad strategy dichotomy common in the emotion regulation literature, we find that enhancing event performance comes at a cost to affect, and vice versa. This high-hostility work context points to a no-win situation for employees, who must choose between maximizing event performance and minimizing personal costs.
... In a similar vein, event-oriented research has called for studies taking an integrative theory-building approach to examine how entity features interplay with event characteristics to trigger responses and changes (Morgeson et al. 2021). In this regard, the event system theory provides us with a useful theoretical framework to quantify crises based on event strength (i.e., the level of salience and impact of an event to the entity; Morgeson et al. 2015). Integrating crisis management research and event system theory, we thus investigate event strength as a situational contingency shaping the effects of inclusion management practices on resilient responses and performance during a crisis. ...
... Second, although we live in an age of disruption where organizations constantly deal with adverse events (Bridoux et al. 2021), organizational crisis has been a largely overlooked topic area in HR research (Lengnick-Hall, Beck, and Lengnick-Hall 2011;Wang, Hutchins, and Garavan 2009). With most studies focusing on the covariations of HR practices and stable organizational outcomes, we have limited insights into how to properly manage employees to survive crises and navigate changes (Morgeson et al. 2015). By linking pre-crisis inclusion management practices to resilient responses, we add to current knowledge about the important role that strategic HR plays during times of crisis. ...
... H6a and H6b represent moderated mediation hypotheses. accounts of event patterns or treated events in a dichotomous manner without delving into the event characteristics (Morgeson et al. 2015), we use event strength to explicitly capture the extent to which a crisis serves as a salient and impactful event to different organizations (Lin et al. 2021;Liu et al. 2021). By examining the interactive effects of inclusion management practices and event strength on resilient responses and performance, we answer the research call for examining enablers that lead organizations to respond (in)appropriately during crises (Wenzel, Stanske, and Lieberman 2020). ...
Organizations inevitably face various forms of disruptive events (e.g., external crises), and sustaining long‐term prosperity requires them to stay resilient when encountering unexpected adversity. Prior crisis management research predominantly relied on qualitative case studies to examine efforts after a crisis had occurred, treating the crisis as a “given” rather than a variable. The exceptionality of crisis situations and the ad hoc nature of crisis countermeasures largely limit current knowledge about how organizations may manage employees to remain in a preparative stance for disruptive events. Integrating the inclusion literature, crisis management research, and event system theory, we propose inclusion management practices as a viable pathway for organizations to develop resilience resources and capabilities prior to a crisis, allowing them to exhibit greater robustness and agility when a crisis arises. Such robustness and agility, in turn, enhance organizational performance thereafter. We further pinpoint the strength of a crisis event as an important contingency shaping the effects of pre‐crisis inclusion management practices on organizations’ resilient responses and thereby performance. We tested our hypotheses in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis using longitudinal manager‐report survey data (N = 884 workplaces). We found that workplaces that implemented more inclusion management practices before COVID‐19 were more robust and agile in response to the pandemic crisis. Agility (but not robustness), in turn, was positively related to organizational performance. In addition, the effect of inclusion management practices on agility was stronger for workplaces with greater COVID‐19 event strength.
... Chance events introduce unpredictability into the formation of temporal structures. Random events, unexpected disruptions, or serendipitous opportunities can alter the intended flow and timing of organizational activities (Morgeson, Mitchell, & Liu, 2015;Roulet & Bothello, 2023). To manage unpredictability, organizations often resort to resilience-building practices. ...
... Equating entities and paths would erase the inherent temporality of paths, which are defined in the next section. As Morgeson et al. (2015) point out, this definition is extremely broad. Morgeson et al (2015) restrict their attention to exceptional, disruptive events, but we include mundane, ...
... As Morgeson et al. (2015) point out, this definition is extremely broad. Morgeson et al (2015) restrict their attention to exceptional, disruptive events, but we include mundane, ...
This article proposes a link between temporal structuring and the dynamics of organizing that is manifest in a fabric of concurrent paths that we call a path net. Path nets are shaped by mechanisms of temporal structuring, such as entrainment, planning, agency, and chance. Path nets materialize the effects of temporal structuring “here” and “now” in the comings and goings of actors and resources, thereby setting the stage for doings and sayings of situated practice and shaping the dynamics of organizing. Path nets offer a parsimonious system of picturing the complexity of organizing that is built on a processual ontology of paths and events. Through the lens of the path net, we can picture temporal structuring as a motor for organizing that drives recurrence without assuming stability or change. Comings and goings are readily observable, so path nets open new directions for empirical research on temporality and the dynamics of organizing.
... Finally, future research should explore dynamic interactions between environmental events and EGB. Event system theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) suggests that broader environmental events (i.e., events happening in the broader societal context an organization is embedded in) trickle down to the organizational, team, and individual levels, influencing individual behavior. These effects are particularly strong for novel, disruptive, and critical events. ...
... • Theories related to organizational justice, e.g., equity theory (Adams & Freedman, 1976), organizational justice theory (Colquitt et al., 2001;Colquitt et al., 2013) • Vignette studies (e.g., exploring the acceptance of organizational environmental policies) • Intervention studies testing the effectiveness of different intervention strategies • Behavioral integrity theory (Simons, 1999;Simons et al., 2022) • Media richness theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984;Ishii et al., 2019) • Framing theory (Entman, 1993) • Experimental studies (e.g., manipulating communication framing, channel, and integrity gap) (Hofstede, 1984), Schwartz' values theory (Schwartz, 1999) • Event system theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) • Combining data on employee green behavior with secondary data on economic and political indicators (e.g., provided by the World Bank, United Nations) • Cross-cultural surveys, international collaboration • Longitudinal studies covering a significant time period with potentially significant environmental events (e.g., heatwaves, floods) ...
Humanity faces an unprecedented challenge in the necessity to rapidly change behaviors across various life domains to address multiple environmental crises, such as climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. This includes the behavior of individuals at work and within organizations. Industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology is uniquely positioned to provide evidence-based recommendations for changing organizational decision-making and behavior toward greater environmental sustainability. Although a substantial body of research on this topic has emerged over the past decade, the discipline has yet to realize its full potential because the topic is currently not prioritized and the practical and societal impact of previous research is limited. This article aims to propel research on environmental sustainability at work forward. To do so, it (1) outlines the interconnections between organizations and environmental sustainability, (2) portrays previous research efforts on environmental sustainability at work, resulting in an integrative conceptual framework across micro, meso, macro, and magno levels, and (3) provides actionable recommendations for high-impact future I-O psychology research and practice related to environmental sustainability. Following an “impact-first” rationale, we identified ten areas for future research across the four levels of the conceptual framework. For each area, we present relevant theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, and connections to related disciplines. Finally, we provide suggestions for effective science-practice transfer. Overall, the article seeks to spark discussion on this crucial topic within the community and to inspire I-O psychology researchers and practitioners to contribute to environmental sustainability.
... The current work provides an initial theoretical grounding for why job and life satisfaction will influence each other over time, but-as noted earlier-additional theoretical and empirical work is needed to fully explain this relationship. Integrating motivational, value-based, event-based, identitybased, need-based, and well-being theories (e.g., Brickman and Campbell 1971;Carstensen 1992;Helson 1948Helson , 1964Kiefer, Barclay, and Conway 2024;Lucas 2007;Maslow 1943;McAdams and McLean 2013;Morgeson, Mitchell, and Liu 2015;Ryan and Deci 2000;Solomon and Corbit 1974) would help extend our initial theoretical work presented herein. For instance, Opponent Process Theory (Solomon and Corbit 1974)-which posits that emotional experiences are regulated by opposing processes, where an initial reaction is followed by a counteracting response that reduces the intensity of the emotion and brings it back to a baseline-could be used to explain why a work event that increases job satisfaction (e.g., pay increase) will eventually have a small impact on life satisfaction as it will initially (1) result in a primary reaction of positive feelings, (2) dampen over time as individuals go through a process of adaptation, (3) stabilize above an individual's hedonic baseline, and (4) may completely disappear (and may be accompanied by negative feelings) during an opponent process phase. ...
... Another potential theory to be incorporated is Event System Theory (EST; Morgeson, Mitchell, and Liu 2015), which suggests that particular types of events can interrupt established patterns of behavior and well-being, influencing both job and life satisfaction over time. These events can act as catalysts, initiating shifts in how individuals perceive their work and life environments. ...
Capturing the evolving journey of workers' well‐being, our research unveils how the intertwined paths of job and life satisfaction shift and shape each other over time. We contribute to the field's understanding of the dynamic interplay between job and life satisfaction by exploring the time‐bound nature of satisfaction, teasing apart the between‐ and within‐person effects, and uncovering the relative strengths of these effects. Our findings ( k = 28; N = 161 412) suggest that (1) job and life satisfaction are related to one another over time, (2) life satisfaction has a stronger effect (+32%) on future job satisfaction than the converse, (3) these effects peak around 17.2 months (between‐person effects), and (4) effects peak at shorter intervals of 8.2 months when accounting for unobserved heterogeneity (within‐person effects). In the latter case, the differences between the two effects were still significant, but the dominance of life satisfaction shrank from 32% to 8%. This investigation not only bridges critical gaps but also sets a new precedent for future research on the temporal dynamics of well‐being, promising to transform theoretical perspectives and practical approaches alike.
... This heightened interdependence often creates more pressurized work relationships wherein counterparts are more likely to clash with one another (Korsgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002). At the same time, novel and disruptive organizational events have downstream consequences experienced by all members (Morgeson, Mitchell, & Liu, 2015). As interpersonal relationships navigate their changing contextual landscape and respond to discrete organizational events, their normal patterns of trust can be disrupted (Korsgaard, Kautz, Bliese, Samson, & Kostyszyn, 2018). ...
... We conceptualize a relational threat as: "any disruption, from an internal or external source that disturbs the familiar patterns of trusting in an existing relationship, and has the potential to damage the trust, if not proactively dealt with." For example, a change in one party's role, or a discrete organizational event, such as the acquisition of the trusting party's organization, that has downstream consequences for the trusting relationship (Morgeson et al., 2015). Such experiences destabilize an existing trusting relationship and transform the relational context from being more predictable to one characterized by heightened uncertainty and vulnerability. ...
Interpersonal trusting relationships frequently experience relational threats that require both parties to engage actively in trust maintenance efforts. Yet, trust research has tended to focus on trust formation, or trust repair in the case of a violation, and offers us little insight regarding how these more ambiguous threats to trusting relationships are experienced and overcome relationally. To provide novel insight on this topic, this exploratory study gathers dyadic interview data from 26 manager–employee trusting relationships regarding their experience of relational threats and their proactive efforts to overcome these negative relational experiences. Findings show that the experience of a relational threat triggers a three-stage trust maintenance process that includes an assessment phase, an active maintenance phase, and an outcome phase. Threats are assessed at the individual level via cognitive and affective sensemaking, while trust maintenance efforts (creating a shared mental model, cognitive and structural reassurance, and dyadic problem solving) require dyadic counterparts to act with mutual agency to overcome the relational threat and avoid a loss of trust. Trust maintenance processes support dyads to either maintain or strengthen their existing trusting relationships. Our findings advance our theoretical understanding of interpersonal trust maintenance by demonstrating that this process unfolds across three phases and can lead to different outcomes for dyads’ trusting relationships. We offer practical guidelines to safeguard existing trusting relationships, as well as a new agenda for trust scholars to extend our theorizing.
... Event system theory complements COR theory by framing AI adoption as a critical organizational event with significant implications for employees. According to Morgeson et al. (2015), the intensity and frequency of workplace events shape employees' cognitive and emotional responses. AI adoption, characterized by its disruptive intensity, constitutes a high-impact event that compels employees to reevaluate their roles, identities, and coping strategies. ...
... The AI adoption intensity scale measures employees' perceptions of the frequency, scope, and impact of AI-related changes within their organizations. Drawing on event system theory, this scale captures the intensity of AI adoption events, with items focusing on the degree of disruption and differentiation from previous workplace practices ( Morgeson et al., 2015). The positive self-image scale assesses employees' perceptions of their self-worth and competence within the workplace. ...
The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming workplaces, particularly in high-tech industries, with profound effects on employee behavior and psychology. This study examines how the intensity of AI adoption influences job crafting behaviors, emphasizing positive self-image as a mediating factor and work meaningfulness as a moderator. Drawing on conservation of resources theory and event system theory, the research adopts a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys and scenario-based experiments with 540 employees from Chinese high-tech enterprises. The results reveal that AI adoption intensity indirectly promotes job crafting through its impact on employees' need to maintain a positive self-image, especially in environments with low work meaningfulness. The study highlights the compensatory role of job crafting as employees strive to protect their self-image when faced with AI-induced disruptions. Additionally, it underscores the importance of fostering work meaningfulness to mitigate the negative effects of AI adoption on employees' psychological well-being. These findings offer valuable theoretical and practical insights for managing AI transitions in the workplace, providing strategies to enhance employee resilience and optimize job design. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics between technology and organizational behavior in AI-dominated environments.
... On the other hand, event system theory emphasizes the significant role of event characteristics in shaping individual cognition and behavioral responses. Generally speaking, the greater the novelty, disruption, and criticality of an event, the greater its impact [24]. Among these, event intensity, as one of the core elements of event system theory, directly reflects the severity and influence of an event. ...
... Specifically, the measurement of event intensity cognition refers to the scale developed by Morgeson et al., and 10 items were designed in conjunction with typical food safety incidents in recent years [24]. The content covers three dimensions of event intensity, including the novelty of the event (4 items), disruption of the event (3 items), and criticality of the event (3 items). ...
This paper, grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model and event system theory, examines the mechanisms through which public recognition—specifically novel, disruptive, and critical recognition—of the intensity of food safety incidents influences willingness to engage in food safety governance. Risk perception is identified as a mediating variable, while risk communication serves as a moderating variable. Based on survey data, the study found that various forms of public recognition significantly impact governance willingness. Furthermore, risk perception plays a crucial mediating role, and risk communication has a notable moderating effect on the relationship between risk perception and food safety governance willingness. These findings illuminate the intrinsic connection between public recognition of food safety incidents and governance willingness, offering robust theoretical support and practical guidance for enhancing food safety governance. This research contributes to the ongoing improvement and optimization of food safety governance systems.
... We are entering an era marked by an unprecedented frequency and intensity of disruptive events. Disruptive events are significant occurrences within the institutional environment that interrupt and challenge the routines and operations of firms (Johns, 2006;Li et al., 2024;Mithani et al., 2022;Morgeson et al., 2015). These events, encompassing economic shocks, natural disasters, wars, conflicts, epidemics, and technological breakthroughs, not only pose immediate threats to organizational stability but also serve as catalysts for profound transformation. ...
... EST emerges as a powerful framework to address the limitations in existing research by offering a structured approach to capturing the complexity of disruptive events (Morgeson et al., 2015). Unlike traditional geography-centric models, EST emphasizes three critical attributes-event strength, event time, and event space-which together provide a more holistic understanding of how events affect organizations. ...
We are entering an era filled with disruptive events, yet current research in strategy and international business has paid insufficient attention to the nature of these events and their far-reaching impacts. To address this gap, we introduce event system theory (EST) into these fields, offering a critical lens to analyze the complexity of disruptive events. EST provides a comprehensive framework to explore how events unfold and impact firms across various dimensions, moving beyond traditional place-centric views that focus primarily on geographic proximity. A key contribution of this perspective paper is the development of the event space perspective, a novel extension of EST that captures the relational, symbolic, and sociopolitical channels through which disruptive events influence organizations. This new perspective encourages a more dynamic and nuanced understanding of how events shape firm strategy and performance. Finally, we draw on both EST and the event space perspective to offer promising research directions on disruptive events for strategy and international business, laying a foundation for future studies to explore organizational resilience, strategic adaptation, and the management of uncertainty in an increasingly volatile global environment.
... Unlike mundane business problems, most organizations have little or no experience in dealing with war (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2015;Wenzel et al., 2021). In terms of the three criteria Morgeson et al. (2015) use to analyze an event, wars tend to be simultaneously (1) highly novel, as they represent a break in expectations and are largely unanticipated and nonroutine (Bechky and Okhuysen, 2011); (2) highly disruptive, as they reflect a critical discontinuity in the environment (Hoffman and Ocasio, 2001); and (3) highly critical, as they are "important, essential, or a priority" to the actors (Morgeson and DeRue, 2006, p. 273) and often a matter of life or death. ...
We argue that war as a phenomenon deserves more focused attention in management. First, we highlight why war is an important and relevant area of inquiry for management scholars. We then integrate scattered conversations on war in management studies into a framework structured around three building blocks – (a) the nature of war from an organizational viewpoint, (b) the actors involved in war and (c) war's contextual factors. This framework provides a roadmap to identify pressing questions that management scholars can address, thus laying the foundations of a programmatic theory for analysing war as a specific area of inquiry. We especially emphasize the recursive relationship between war and management theory, demonstrating how they can mutually inform each other. Finally, we highlight empirical challenges and offer specific recommendations to guide future management research on war. Aiming to stimulate a new scholarly conversation, this paper contributes to establishing a forward‐looking research agenda that can help management scholars problematize key issues in the analysis of war.
... By applying the framework of the event system theory that studies the behavior of individuals under the effect of an event characterized by strength, space, and time (Morgeson et al., 2015) combined with Spector & Goh's (2001) well-being of the employee (job strains) (Spector and Goh's, 2001). The model proceeds to explain that a job stressor can be anything that triggers a negative emotional response which leads eventually to a form of distress, the pandemic can be characterized as an environmental stressor but the seriousness of the response depends on how each employee is affected (physically or emotionally) and how each employee perceives the event (see Figure 3). ...
The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between psychological distress and absenteeism and presenteeism during the Covid-19 pandemic. We predict that the independent variable “psychological distress” has a significant contribution to the dependent variables “absenteeism” and “presenteeism”. Based on the literature, several studies investigated the relationship between those variables in a normal context (before the pandemic) and also during the pandemic, and they also looked into the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the mental health of individuals. However, this relationship has not been investigated in Morocco. This study has its originality, and therefore it will contribute to the literature. Data were collected from 220 participants working full-time and part-time in different departments within different sectors in Morocco, using a survey in the French language that was distributed online. The hypotheses were tested using IBM SPSS Statistics 25. Findings showed that psychological distress and its sub-dimensions have significant contributions to absenteeism and presenteeism and their sub-dimensions.
... Under normal circumstances, informal networks tend to resist change and to protect informal institutions (Bian, 2018;Horak & Klein, 2016). However, unique events, such as wars, crises, social catastrophes, or perhaps pandemics, can trigger transformative and disruptive changes in informal networks, as suggested by event system theory (Morgeson, Mitchell, & Liu, 2015). One example of an event that led to disruptive changes was the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which had consequences for Russia's economy of favors (Ledeneva, 1998). ...
... Als mögliche Treiber der studentischen emotionalen Erschöpfung wurden in Anlehnung an die Event-System-Theorie (Morgeson et al. 2015) ...
Zusammenfassung: Bereits vor der Coronapandemie berichteten Studierende zu-nehmend von einer emotionalen Erschöpfung aufgrund vielfältiger Belastungser-fahrungen im Studium. Seit dem Frühjahr 2020 belegen die Zahlen der psychologi-schen Beratungsstellen der Hochschulen, dass dieses Thema noch virulenter gewor-den ist. Daher stellt sich die Frage, welche Bedingungsfaktoren grundsätzlich die psychischen Probleme von Studierenden erklären können. Der vorliegende Artikel will hierzu einen Beitrag leisten und stellt Ergebnisse einer Studierendenbefragung im Rahmen des BMBF-Forschungsprojekts "Resilienz und Studienerfolg in MINT-Fächern (ReSt@MINT)" vor. Abstract: Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, students increasingly reported emotional exhaustion in reaction to various stressful experiences during their studies. Data collected by universities' psychological counseling centers, however, show that this issue has become even more virulent since early 2020. Therefore, the question arises as to which conditioning factors have an impact on mental health problems among students. The present article aims to contribute to an answer, presenting the results of a student survey that was part of the BMBF research project "Resilience and academic success in STEM subjects (ReSt@MINT)".
... Als mögliche Treiber der studentischen emotionalen Erschöpfung wurden in Anlehnung an die Event-System-Theorie (Morgeson et al. 2015) ...
... Because of this, we explore the possibility that venting receipt will exhibit stronger daily positive effects with personal distress and empathy when coworker similarity is higher versus lower. Across both affective reactions, when coworker similarity is higher, people may be more likely to see themselves in their coworkers (Avery, McKay, and Wilson 2007), making the relational shock of receiving venting more impactful (Morgeson et al. 2015). Coworker similarity may thus activate the self-motivated pathway connecting venting receipt and personal distress, as there is a greater likelihood of seeing the possible threat to the self. ...
As a form of social communication at work, venting—expressing negative feelings about a person or event to others—is fairly ubiquitous. Yet little is known about how those who are the recipients of venting react affectively and behaviorally to this experience at work. To advance our understanding of venting receipt in the workplace, we integrate the archaic view of vicarious emotions into research related to venting at work to develop theory regarding how receiving venting is likely to evoke feelings of personal distress and empathy as employees react to and process this social information. In turn, we theorize that while personal distress leads to venting enactment, empathy leads to helping that can promote more positive social relations, highlighting the double‐edged nature of this phenomenon. Finally, beyond clarifying the theoretical ways that venting recipients react, we also consider how the broader social context—namely, coworker similarity—has the potential to shape these reactions. Across two within‐person field studies, both of which utilize a newly developed measure of venting receipt at work, and a supplemental recall experiment, our research highlights why and when venting at work can have divergent effects on venting recipients.
... Before we introduce our hypotheses, we first describe the context within which the posited relationships are examined -a failed produch launch. Our decision to focus on a significant organizational event was inspired by event system theory (Morgeson, Mitchell, & Liu, 2015). Event system theory is focused on one of the least explicated aspects of context: how discrete events affect organizations and organizational behavior (e.g., Cohen & Duberley, 2015). ...
Leader exemplification involves implicit and explicit claims of high moral values made by a leader. We employed a 2 × 3 experimental design with samples of 265 students in Study 1 and 142 working adults in Study 2 to examine the effects of leader exemplification (exemplification versus no exemplification) and ethical conduct (self-serving, self-sacrificial, and self-other focus) on perceived leader authenticity, trust in leader, and organizational advocacy. In Study 1, we found that exemplification produced elevated levels of perceived authenticity, trust, and advocacy in the form of employment and investment recommendations. We also showed that leader ethical conduct moderated this effect, as ratings were highest following a leader’s self-sacrificial conduct, lowest for self-serving conduct, and moderate for conduct reflecting self-other concerns. In Study 2, we replicated these findings for perceived authenticity and trust, but not organizational advocacy, which yielded mixed results. The leadership implications and future research directions are discussed.
... In such situations, teachers are more inclined to adopt defensive strategies, avoiding active coping efforts to preserve their resource reserves. They might also engage in compensatory efforts, but due to the "diminishing marginal utility" of these efforts (Morgeson et al., 2015), the effects are minimal. At this point, internally, teachers need to lower their goals and replan outcomes to halt resource loss; cognitive restructuring is considered an effective technique for stress reduction. ...
The promotion of blended learning has not only enhanced instructional quality but also increased the workload, pressure, and professional challenges faced by university teachers. This study aims to identify patterns of work-related behavior and experience pertaining to successful blended instruction. From the perspective of conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study adopts self-regulation types to describe the behavioral patterns exhibited by teachers in their efforts to balance resource investment (work engagement) with resource conservation (resilience). To identify the different self-regulation types among teachers involved in blended teaching, a survey and latent profile analysis was conducted with 161 Chinese university teachers. Regression analysis was then employed to investigate whether these self-regulation types significantly impact two critical criteria for the success of blended instruction: instructional quality and occupational well-being. The findings of this research are as follows. 1) Four self-regulatory patterns were identified among blended instruction teachers: Actively Balanced (40%), Calmly Content (14%), Fatigued and Burnt-Out (11%), and Aggressively Imbalanced (35%). 2) These patterns of self-regulation significantly influence teachers’ instructional quality and occupational well-being scores. 3) The distribution of self-regulatory types differs markedly between blended instruction teachers and classroom teachers. 4) As a noncognitive ability, the incorporation of self-regulation into models of teachers’ blended instruction competency is both sound and necessary. The implications for improving teachers' resilience in blended learning were also discussed.
... Affective events are external stimuli that trigger changes in an individual's emotional response and attitude. According to event system theory (EST), the intensity of an event is defined by the intensity, time, and space of the event [26]. Kahneman states in the peakend rule that an individual's emotional experience is influenced by the "peak" and the "end" of an affective event [27]. ...
In the context of China’s community governance, as a result of the insufficient willingness and ability of residents to participate, most communities have formed a “strong political–weak social” governance structure, which limits the effective expansion of social capital. To address this challenge and promote resident participation, achieving a “strong social and political” transformation in governance structure has become a core issue in current research. Meanwhile, “sense of community” serves as a crucial perspective in this research, which remains to be deepened in domestic studies and needs to consider the impact of emerging factors such as smart technologies. This study innovatively introduces affective events theory (AET), constructing a theoretical model and taking Wuhan as an example. By adopting quantitative and case comparison research methods, the paper delves into the factors influencing Wuhan residents’ sense of community in the context of a smart society and the promoting role of smart governance. On the basis of the findings, this paper presents the following conclusions: (1) Communities should attribute equal importance to the construction of both traditional and smart environments while reinforcing the leading and participatory roles of community administrators; (2) In the community’s daily governance processes, equal focus and importance must be attributed to both service delivery and engagement; (3) Communities must acknowledge the individual distinctions among residents and implement tailored governing strategies accordingly; (4) The government should prioritize the research and development of smart applications while boosting financial investments in the creation and operation of smart communities.
Since the 2016 U.S. election and the U.K. Brexit campaign, computational propaganda has become an important research topic in communication, political and social science. Recently, it has become clearer that computational propaganda doesn’t start from a clean slate and is not precisely bound to single issues or campaigns. Instead, computational propaganda needs to be looked at as a complex phenomenon in a global environment of co-evolving issues and events, emerging technologies, policies and legal frameworks, and social dynamics. Here, we review the literature on computational propaganda from this perspective and theorize this evolving and longitudinal nature of computational propaganda campaigns through the lens of relational dynamics. Our conceptual contribution forms the basis for a new kind of empirical research on computational propaganda that is aware of the complex interdependencies, feedback cycles and structural conditions that are elusive when focusing on individual campaigns and short time frames.
This research applies a social identity lens to show that, during the COVID‐19 pandemic, the classification of occupations and labor market sectors as essential versus nonessential negatively affected the professional identity of those categorized as nonessential workers. We hypothesized that nonessential workers would report lower professional identification (PI) during the pandemic relative to essential workers; explored whether this was partially due to mandatory shifts to working from home and working fewer hours; whether gender differences would emerge in the impact of (non)essential categorization on PI; and if lower PI would negatively relate to work productivity and performance during the pandemic. Empirical evidence based on three datasets sampled among the Dutch working population during two peak waves of COVID‐19 infections and national lockdowns (May/June 2020; Study 1: N = 371; November/December 2020, Study 2: N = 467; Study 3 = 735) confirmed nonessential workers' lower PI relative to essential workers. During the first peak wave (Study 1), nonessential workers' lower PI was partially explained by being home‐bound by reduced work hours. As the pandemic continued (second peak wave; Studies 2 and 3), gender differences emerged, with more negative consequences of being classified as nonessential for women than men. Nonessential workers' lower PI levels were associated with lower work productivity and performance. These findings underscore the importance of understanding social identity processes during the pandemic. We discuss the sociopsychological ramifications of government regulations to control health crises, given how these may inadvertently undermine the professional identity of over half a working population in society.
This paper proposes a new turnover mechanism, namely shock anticipation, which explains how the anticipation of potential shocks triggers voluntary turnover by individuals in organizations. Drawing on the context of US sanctions on China initiated in 2018, we analyse a sample of foreign directors (FDs) from Chinese-listed firms between 2014 and 2021. We suggest sanctions on peer firms lead FDs to anticipate potential sanctions on their own organizations and become concerned about the associated negative effects on their careers, which in turn motivates their turnover. We further argue that FDs at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) anticipate a higher risk and, consequently, are more likely to leave after observing sanctions imposed on their peer firms. In contrast, FDs with shorter career horizons are less inclined to leave as they perceive diminished damage to their future career. Our empirical results provide robust support for these hypotheses. This study enriches the literature on turnover and sanctions while also offering practical implications.
Amid increasing trade disputes and broader geopolitical tensions, there is a growing focus on enhancing the resilience of global supply chains from a dynamic and holistic perspective. This chapter provides a concise overview of the evolution of supply chain resilience, contrasting engineering resilience with social-ecological resilience. In response to an uncertain global trade environment, it proposes strategies to strengthen supply chain resilience, including bridging and buffering approaches, proactive reconfiguration of global supply chain networks, and leveraging opportunities offered by emerging digital technologies. Finally, the chapter explores critical implications and future research directions, such as achieving balanced supply chain resilience, addressing its multi-scale nature, navigating the double-edged sword of digital technologies, and assessing the salience of disruptive events.
Background: The nursing shortage is a major global problem and a multifaceted challenge in healthcare systems that have reached warning thresholds. A shortage of nurses jeopardizes the delivery of quality care to clients. Aim: Assess contributing factors of the nursing shortage and its strategies for solution. Methods: Cross-sectional study was performed on 50 nurses. The study was conducted in a private hospital in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected by using a structured interview questionnaire to identify contributing factors of the nursing shortage and the strategies for solution. Results: The factors of nurses' shortage in a private hospital in Saudi Arabia as low salary income and discrimination in dealing with nurses leads to longer patient hospitalization period and an increased number of medical errors so, for solving these issues it should increase community awareness about nursing value as a profession; give enough support for the nursing profession and restructure nursing education to attract new people to the profession. Conclusions: The current study was concluded that main contributing factors to the nursing shortage are financial, and administrative support and community misunderstanding about nursing as a profession Recommendation: Increase community awareness about nursing value as a profession; give enough support to nursing profession and restructure nursing education to attract new people to the profession.
The purpose of this paper is to understand the conditions that influence family CEOs’ resilience in times of crisis. Drawing upon social cognitive theory and adopting a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis analytic approach, the article analyzes data from 67 family businesses. The findings show that CEO resilience emerges from the interplay of different sets of conditions in single- and multi-generational family businesses. The study makes the contribution that CEO resilience is contingent on dynamics at individual, family, and business levels, suggesting that CEO resilience in crisis times reflects a “crisis bricolage” of “making do” with resources that are “in hand” and “within reach.”
Interpersonal trusting relationships frequently experience relational threats that require both parties to engage actively in trust maintenance efforts. Yet, trust research has tended to focus on trust formation, or trust repair in the case of a violation, and offers us little insight regarding how these more ambiguous threats to trusting relationships are experienced and overcome relationally. To provide novel insight on this topic, this exploratory study gathers dyadic interview data from 26 manager–employee trusting relationships regarding their experience of relational threats and their proactive efforts to overcome these negative relational experiences. Findings show that the experience of a relational threat triggers a three-stage trust maintenance process that includes an assessment phase, an active maintenance phase, and an outcome phase. Threats are assessed at the individual level via cognitive and affective sensemaking, while trust maintenance efforts (creating a shared mental model, cognitive and structural reassurance, and dyadic problem solving) require dyadic counterparts to act with mutual agency to overcome the relational threat and avoid a loss of trust. Trust maintenance processes support dyads to either maintain or strengthen their existing trusting relationships. Our findings advance our theoretical understanding of interpersonal trust maintenance by demonstrating that this process unfolds across three phases and can lead to different outcomes for dyads’ trusting relationships. We offer practical guidelines to safeguard existing trusting relationships, as well as a new agenda for trust scholars to extend our theorizing.
Research Summary
Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study develops and tests a model to clarify the boundary conditions and mechanisms through which coworker entrepreneurship influences employee entrepreneurship. Two time‐lagged field studies support our predictions: employee moral attentiveness moderates the effect of coworker entrepreneurship on employee entrepreneurship, with coworker entrepreneurship reducing employee entrepreneurship among those with high moral attentiveness and increasing it among those with low attentiveness. Additionally, deontic injustice mediates the negative relationship when moral attentiveness is high, while vicarious learning mediates the positive relationship when attentiveness is low. These findings indicate that interpersonal influence in organizations is much more complex than the simple “Monkey see, Monkey do” explanation of social learning and emphasize the need to integrate moral and justice considerations into entrepreneurship research.
Managerial Summary
This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the dual impact of coworker entrepreneurship on employee entrepreneurship. It suggests that employees characterized by high moral attentiveness are more likely to perceive deontic injustice when witnessing coworker entrepreneurship, thus prompting resistance to imitating such behavior. Conversely, employees with low moral attentiveness are prone to engage in vicarious learning, potentially leading them to mimic their coworkers' entrepreneurial actions. These findings highlight crucial factors that may deter employees from replicating their coworkers' entrepreneurial endeavors and offer valuable insights for managers seeking to mitigate the negative influence of coworker entrepreneurship and its spread within organizational contexts.
Nearly 100 years ago, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by today, technological advancements would allow the workweek to dwindle to just 15 hours, or 3 hours per day, and that the real problem of humanity would be filling their time with leisure. Although much has changed in the world of work since this prediction, such a drastic change has not taken place. In this article, several industrial-organizational psychology scholars discuss why this is the case. Why do we continue to work as much as we do, and how might that change? More fundamentally, what do these trends, contra Keynes’ prediction, tell us about the nature of work itself? We use this discussion to propose several research directions regarding the nature of work and how it might change in the future. We depict the phenomenon of working hours as multilevel in nature, and we consider both the positive and negative possible implications of working less than we do now.
Purpose
Cooperative enterprises are uniquely different from all other for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises in that the onus of success does not lie on any one team leader, promoter or founder but on all members of the team equally and collectively. This paper attempted to investigate the key enablers of success in the unique context of cooperative enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a combination of focus groups, in-depth interviews, observations and archival data, resulting in interactions with 744 members across 13 rural cooperative enterprises, we uncovered the enablers of team performance in a cooperative setting. The theory of entrepreneurial bricolage emerged as the most appropriate theoretical lens to interpret the findings.
Findings
We found empirical evidence to conclude that the emergence of an entrepreneurial bricolage mindset in rural cooperative enterprises acted as an enabler of collective success. On the other hand, the failed rural cooperatives exhibited the absence of the bricolage mindset.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the extent of data collected from a large number of individuals in each team, the number of teams studied is small. Further, most of the data comes from cooperative teams based in similar settings and with similar challenges. Extrapolating these findings in other organizational settings should be done only after replication.
Practical implications
A clear focus and commitment toward the collective accumulation and utilization of resources is imperative for the success of cooperative enterprise teams. Only those teams that actively confront resource scarcity and work toward addressing it are the ones that eventually perform well in cooperative structures.
Originality/value
Large-sized rural cooperative enterprises offer a unique setting to understand rural development. However, due to the challenges of first getting access to a cooperative enterprise context, then collecting data from a significant representation of the large team, and finally the inability to record the conversations due to issues pertaining to team psychological safety, limited attempts have been undertaken to understand team dynamics in such rural settings. The present study is among the first few to study large-sized cooperative teams and explore the enablers of their performance.
Intensive longitudinal models (ILMs) allow researchers to analyze nested data collected through frequent measurements—typically 20 or more repeated occasions—over densely spaced durations. Rather than being a single statistical approach, ILMs encompass various models unified by their capability to handle densely collected longitudinal data. We briefly summarize the nature of intensive longitudinal designs and why such designs require the use of ILMs. We then provide a classification typology to help readers understand the features of an ILM they should adopt. This classification typology provides the structure for a narrative review of existing ILM research. We conclude with specific recommendations for using ILMs to enhance theory, design, and analysis. Altogether, ILMs are a fairly straightforward extension of longitudinal models many researchers already use, and so we encourage their application to a broader range of theories and topics.
Purpose
Emergencies have become a growing concern for organizations, which require flexibility to respond to changes in emergencies based on their contingency, dynamic evolution rapidly and other characteristics. In order to enhance the ability of engineering project organizations to cope with emergencies, this study explores the mechanism of its influence on knowledge innovation under emergencies from the perspective of bricolage theory, and provides a new perspective for the traditional preplanning-based handling of emergencies by improvising to enhance the ability and results of improvisation.
Design/methodology/approach
Firstly, a structural equation model of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation was constructed by introducing improvisational behavior and serendipity as mediating and moderating variables of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation based on bricolage theory; secondly, drawing on previous well-established measurement scales about bricolage, improvisational behavior, knowledge innovation and serendipity, a questionnaire survey was conducted with different types of engineering project managers and technicians in Gansu Province as the research subjects, and 238 valid questionnaires were returned; finally, validation factor analysis and correlation analysis were performed, and the hypothesized relationships were verified using AMOS 24.0 software.
Findings
The results show that bricolage positively influences improvisational behavior; improvisational behavior positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage influences knowledge innovation through the mediating role of improvisational behavior and serendipity positively moderates the impact of resource bricolage on knowledge innovation.
Originality/value
It reveals the mechanism of knowledge innovation of engineering project organizations in response to emergencies and the innovation mechanism of the episodic nature of emergency decision-making, extends the applicable context of bricolage theory and provides a new perspective for engineering project organizations in response to emergencies.
With increasing attention on Lunar and Martian missions, understanding the effects of Isolated, Confined, and Extreme (ICE) environments on human teams becomes critical. Conducting ecologically valid research on team dynamics within these contexts poses challenges due to the unique challenges they operate and stemming scarcity and inaccessibility of such teams. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study answers the call for more research to understand the nuances of teams operating in these conditions. Leveraging archival data collected from 36 Antarctic winteroverers, the relationships between challenge characteristics, team dynamics, affective states, and individual differences are investigated. The data’s nuanced nature shows the effect of task challenges on teamwork outcomes and the related increased negative affect. Furthermore, the strong effect of within-person factors on the ICE experience is illustrated in the qualitative and quantitative data. In line with this variability, the study reveals how both higher-level personality facets, as well as their subscales, influence individuals’ experiences in ICE environments. Exploring the connections between a set of challenges characteristics on three affective variables and eight discreet emotions, nine component variables of two latent teamwork constructs, and a suite of individual differences variables, the study contributes to the field by demonstrating the value of combining qualitative and quantitative data within small samples, allowing for in-depth insights into teamwork experiences in ICE. The manuscript also provides insight into temporal aspects of key relationships in ICE and how a set of individual differences relate to the use of journaling as a research methodology.
Der Sammelband analysiert interdisziplinär die Auswirkungen der Corona-Pandemie auf Studierende, mit Fokus auf psychische und soziale Belastungen sowie Lösungsansätzen. Expertinnen und Experten aus verschiedenen Disziplinen beleuchten individuelle und strukturelle Faktoren und unterstreichen die Bedeutung sozialer Aspekte für die psychische Gesundheit in der (post-)pandemischen Zeit. Ziel ist es, Erkenntnisse für Wissenschaft, Praxis und Hochschulpolitik zu liefern, um die akademische Resilienz der Studierenden zu stärken.
Kariyer şoku, son yıllarda mesleki araştırmalarda ilgi görmeye başlamıştır. İnsanlar profesyonel yaşamları boyunca, kronik hastalık veya iş kaybı gibi sürdürülemez kariyer yollarına yol açabilecek çeşitli beklenmedik şoklarla karşılaşmaya eğilimlidir. Bir kişinin mesleki yörüngesini etkileyen önemli ve genellikle beklenmedik olaylar olan kariyer şokları, COVID-19 sonrası çalışmalarda yoğunlaşarak incelenmektedir. Bu anlamda çalışma, 57 makale özelinde kariyer şokları yazınının kapsamlı bir incelemesini ve sentezini sunmaktadır. Çalışma, bibliyometrik ve sistematik analizle kariyer şokları özelindeki teorik ve ampirik çalışmaları yorumlayıcı paradigma yoluyla sentezleyerek bu alanda çalışacak araştırmacılara kapsamlı içgörüler sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu amaçla, ortak atıf ve bibliyografik eşleştirme analizi kullanılarak yazının entelektüel yapısı ve araştırma çerçevesi ortaya konulmaktadır. Bütünleştirici içgörülere dayanarak, özellikle Türkiye'deki insan kaynakları yönetimi araştırmacılarının kariyer şoklarının teorik, ampirik ve metodolojik gelişimi adına bir araştırma gündemi önerilmektedir.
Purpose
This study aims to use event system theory and job demands–resources (JD-R) model to examine the double-edged sword effect of event strength of Beijing Winter Olympics (BWO) on volunteers’ in-role performance and proactive behavior as mediated by work overload and meaningfulness.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample included 193 volunteer–leader dyads working at one BWO venue. The authors conducted a multitime and multisource study using Mplus 8 to examine the hypotheses.
Findings
Volunteers’ perceived BWO event strength was positively related to work overload, which reduced in-role performance and proactive behavior. Volunteers’ perceived BWO event strength was also positively related to work meaningfulness, which promoted in-role performance and proactive behavior. Perceived organizational support served as a moderator by mitigating the positive relationship between perceived BWO event strength and work overload; however, it did not strengthen the positive relationship between perceived BWO event strength and work meaningfulness.
Originality/value
This study developed a comprehensive model of how BWO event strength affected volunteers’ performance from the perspective of event system theory and the JD-R model, which enriches theoretical application and research in the context of mega sport events.
This special issue explores the transformative role of discrete events in fostering changes at different organizational levels, challenging traditional feature-oriented approaches that focus on stable attributes of individuals, groups, and organizations. Joining the growing body of event-oriented research in diverse settings, the nine published articles evoke a novel theoretical lens (i.e., Event System Theory) to examine a number of discrete events (e.g., everyday change events, organizational downsizing, merger, corporate scandal, technology implementation, the U.S.–China trade war, the Black Lives Matter movement). Their findings demonstrate the interesting ways discrete events disrupt routines, prompt adaptation, and impact individual and collective behaviors across various levels within organizations. Our further analysis underscores the importance of adopting an event-oriented perspective for a better understanding of management issues, offering new insights and directions for future research. We hope this special issue provides a robust foundation for integrating event-centric research approaches into organizational theory, emphasizing the need for continued empirical investigation and theoretical refinement in a variety of management research domains, such as strategic management, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, and human resource management.
Process studies focus attention on how and why things emerge, develop, grow, or terminate over time. We identify various ontological assumptions underlying process research, explore its methods and challenges, and draw out some of its substantive contributions revealed in this Special Research Forum on Process Studies of Change in Organization and Management. Process studies take time seriously, illuminate the role of tensions and contradictions in driving patterns of change, and show how interactions across levels contribute to change. They may also reveal the dynamic activity underlying the maintenance and reproduction of stability.
Organizations increasingly face surprises with regularity, yet little is known about how they develop the responses to unexpected events that enable their work to continue. We compare ethnographic data from two types of organizations that regularly deal with surprises, a police SWAT team and film production crews. We find that individuals engage in organizational bricolage, restructuring their activities by role shifting, reorganizing routines, and reassembling the work. Organizational bricolage depends on the sociocognitive resources that group members develop by drafting agreement on the work, reinforcing and elaborating task activities, and building cross-member expertise.
This study takes a dynamic multilevel approach to examine how the relationship between an employee's job satisfaction trajectory and subsequent turnover may change depending on the employee's unit's job satisfaction trajectory and its dispersion. Analyses of longitudinal multilevel data collected from 5,270 employees in 175 business units of a hospitality company demonstrate a significant three-way interactive effect of unit-level job satisfaction trajectory and its dispersion and individual job satisfaction trajectory on individual job exit. In particular, in the presence of a negative unit-level job satisfaction trajectory and low dispersion, a positive change in individual-level job satisfaction does not affect the odds of a person leaving an organization. Put differently, an employee's being out of step with prevailing unit-level attitudes appears to alter the relationship between his or her job satisfaction trajectory and turnover propensity. Further, unit-level job-satisfaction change and its dispersion jointly influence the overall turnover rate in a unit. The results indicate unit-level and individual-level job satisfaction trajectories have unique multilevel influences on turnover above and beyond static levels of job satisfaction. Accounting for these dynamics substantially increases the explained variance in turnover behavior. The findings increase understanding of the job satisfaction-turnover link over time and across levels.
Work motivation theories and research have tended to focus either on individual motivation, ignoring contextual influences of team processes on individuals, or on team motivation, ignoring individual differences within the team. Redressing these limited, single-level views of motivation, we delineate a theoretical multilevel model of motivated behavior in teams. First, we conceptualize motivational processes at both the individual and team levels, highlighting the functional similarities in these processes across levels of analysis. We then delineate a set of theoretical propositions regarding the cross-level interplay between individual and team motivation, and antecedents and outcomes of individual and team motivation. Finally, we discuss the implications of our theoretical model for future research and managerial practices.
We address gaps in the multilevel organizational theory development literature by critically examining the structure and function of collective constructs. Structure emerges from interaction and can, over time, come to influence systems of interaction. Functions represent the causal outputs of constructs and provide a mechanism for integrating constructs across levels. We then discuss implications arising from this perspective and present a set of guidelines for multilevel research and theory development.
This research investigates how organizational members respond to events that threaten their perceptions of their organization's identity. Using qualitative, interview, and records data, we describe how members from eight "top-20" business schools responded to the 1992 Business Week survey rankings of U.S. business schools. Our analysis suggests that the rankings posed a two-pronged threat to many members' perceptions of their schools' identities by (1) calling into question their perceptions of highly valued, core identity attributes of their schools, and (2) challenging their beliefs about their schools' standing relative to other schools. In response, members made sense of these threats and affirmed positive perceptions of their school's identity by emphasizing and focusing on their school's membership in selective organizational categories that highlighted favorable identity dimensions and interorganizational comparisons not recognized by the rankings. Data suggest that members' use of these categorization tactics depended on the level of identity dissonance they felt following the rankings. We integrate these findings with insights from social identity, self-affirmation, and impression management theories to develop a new framework of organizational identity management.
This study investigates how top management teams in higher education institutions make sense of important issues that affect strategic change in modern academia. We used a two-phase research approach that progressed from a grounded model anchored in a case study to a quantitative, generalizable study of the issue interpretation process, using 611 executives from 372 colleges and universities in the United States. The findings suggest that under conditions of change, top management team members' perceptions of identity and image, especially desired future image, are key to the sensemaking process and serve as important links between the organization's internal context and the team members' issue interpretations. Rather than using the more common business issue categories of ''threats'' and ''opportunities,'' team members distinguished their interpretations mainly according to ''strategic'' or ''political'' categorizations.(.)
This chapter outlines the two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on the affective associations or simple inferences tied to peripheral cues in the persuasion context. This chapter discusses a wide variety of variables that proved instrumental in affecting the elaboration likelihood, and thus the route to persuasion. One of the basic postulates of the Elaboration Likelihood Model—that variables may affect persuasion by increasing or decreasing scrutiny of message arguments—has been highly useful in accounting for the effects of a seemingly diverse list of variables. The reviewers of the attitude change literature have been disappointed with the many conflicting effects observed, even for ostensibly simple variables. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) attempts to place these many conflicting results and theories under one conceptual umbrella by specifying the major processes underlying persuasion and indicating the way many of the traditionally studied variables and theories relate to these basic processes. The ELM may prove useful in providing a guiding set of postulates from which to interpret previous work and in suggesting new hypotheses to be explored in future research.
Copyright © 1986 Academic Press Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
This longitudinal, multilevel study builds and tests a holistic model, which depicts when and why a founding CEO’s core self-evaluations (CSE) may affect new venture performance (sales and profits). We tracked 103 founding CEOs, top management teams (TMTs), and new ventures over 42 months. The findings suggest that founding CEOs’ CSE has a positive linear relationship with new venture sales but an inverted U-shape relationship with new venture profits. The criticality and novelty of events confronting TMTs moderate these linear and non-linear relationships. The linear and non-linear effects of CSE on sales and profits are mediated by TMTs’ collective efficacy. This research contributes to the understanding of the complex interface among founding CEOs, TMTs, and contextual factors affecting new venture performance over time.
This study measured changes in the constituency of an organizational field centered around the issue of corporate environmentalism in the period 1960-93, correlating those changes with the institutions adopted by the U.S. chemical industry to interpret the issue. The article develops the ideas that fields form around issues, not markets or technologies; within fields, competing institutions may simultaneously exist; as institutions evolve, connections between their regulative, normative, and cognitive aspects arise; and field-level analyses can reveal the cultural and institutional origins of organizational impacts on the natural environment.
A growing body of research is drawing attention to the material practices that support verbal exchanges and cognitive processes in collective sensemaking. In this study, building on an ethnographic study of a design consulting firm, we develop a process model that accounts for the interplay between conversational and material practices in the transition from individual to group-level sensemaking, and we begin to unpack how the "materialization" of cognitive work supports the collective construction of new shared understandings.
Dual-process and dual-system theories in both cognitive and social psychology have been subjected to a number of recently published criticisms. However, they have been attacked as a category, incorrectly assuming there is a generic version that applies to all. We identify and respond to 5 main lines of argument made by such critics. We agree that some of these arguments have force against some of the theories in the literature but believe them to be overstated. We argue that the dual-processing distinction is supported by much recent evidence in cognitive science. Our preferred theoretical approach is one in which rapid autonomous processes (Type 1) are assumed to yield default responses unless intervened on by distinctive higher order reasoning processes (Type 2). What defines the difference is that Type 2 processing supports hypothetical thinking and load heavily on working memory.
© The Author(s) 2013.
This study investigated the uses of sensemaking, influence, and symbolism in launching a strategic change effort at a university. It employed an ethnographic/interpretive approach in examining the ways that symbols, metaphors, and various subtle influence processes were used to lend meaning to concepts and possible courses of action by a task force instrumental to the strategic change process. Two distinct researcher perspectives were used: an ''insider'' perspective employing several informants along with an active participant-observer and an ''outsider'' perspective employing several researchers. Both perspectives were brought to bear as a means of countering the ''researcher arrogance'' that typifies organizational study by lending balanced voice to both insider and outsider interpretations of events. The findings showed that sensemaking and influence emerged as fundamental processes in the instigation of strategic change. Both processes were symbolically based and varied in directionality over the life of the task force (internally directed in the embryonic phases, and externally directed in the mature phases). Contrary to common wisdom, sensemaking and influence emerged as frequently coincident, interdependent processes that were difficult to distinguish from each other. The discovery of the common symbolic base for sensemaking and influence also indicated that symbols served both expressive and instrumental roles: suggesting that the accepted view of symbols as predominantly expressive devices does not present a complete picture of their dynamic nature. The use of symbolism also was shown simultaneously to reveal and conceal different aspects of the change process, thus providing task force members the means to circumvent resistance while accomplishing desired action. Symbols and metaphors thus facilitated both cognitive understanding and intended action in attempting to ''reinstitutionalize'' a major public university via the strategic change process. Overall, the study suggests that efforts to stabilize an organizational system in flux from the systematic upheaval represented by strategic change can be understood as the symbolic interplay between sensemaking and influence.
Recent popular and theoretical literature emphasizes the significance of communication technology for collaboration and information sharing across organizational boundaries. We hypothesize that due to the collaborative nature of their work and the way they are organized in work groups, technical employees, as compared with administrative employees, will communicate laterally, and will use the telephone and email for this purpose. We studied technical and administrative employees in seven departments of a large telecommunications firm. From logs of communication over two days, we examined vertical and lateral communication inside and outside the chain of command and department, and the use of telephone, email, and voice mail for this communication. Technical employees did have more lateral communication than administrators did, but all lateral communication (not just that of technical employees) tended to be by telephone. Over 50% of employees' communication was extradepartmental; extradepartmental communication, like lateral communication, tended to be by telephone. When employees used asynchronous technology, technical employees used email whereas administrators, especially those at high levels, used voice. Differential boundary-crossing by technical and administrative employees could be explained in part by the flatter structure of the technical work groups. Our results are consistent with Powell (1990), Barley (1994) and others who have argued that the rise of technical work and the horizontal organization of technical workers increases collaboration and nonhierarchical communication. Organizations can encourage communication flows across organizational boundaries by strengthening horizontal structures (for technical workers, especially) and supporting old and new technology use by all employees.
This study of the complete life-spans of eight naturally-occurring teams began with the unexpected finding that several project groups, studied for another purpose, did not accomplish their work by progressing gradually through a universal series of stages, as traditional group development models would predict. Instead, teams progressed in a pattern of "punctuated equilibrium" through alternating inertia and revolution in the behaviors and themes through which they approached their work. The findings also suggested that groups' progress was triggered more by members' awareness of time and deadlines than by completion of an absolute amount of work in a specific developmental stage. The paper proposes a new model of group development that encompasses the timing and mechanisms of change as well as groups' dynamic relations with their contexts. Implications for theory, research, and practice are drawn.
A longitudinal study of the social processes of organizational sensemaking suggests that they unfold in four distinct forms: guided, fragmented, restricted, and minimal. These forms result from the degree to which leaders and stakeholders engage in "sensegiving"—attempts to influence others' understandings of an issue. Each of the four forms of organizational sensemaking is associated with a distinct set of process characteristics that capture the dominant pattern of interaction. They also each result in particular outcomes, specifically, the nature of the accounts and actions generated.
This paper explores the case for a general threat-rigidity effect in individual, group, and organizational behavior. Evidence from multiple levels of analysis is summarized, showing a restriction in information processing and constriction of control under threat conditions. Possible mechanisms underlying such a multiple-level effect are explored, as are its possible functional and dysfunctional consequences.
Despite an increasing interest in justice in mergers and acquisitions, we lack a justice- based theory of post-merger integration that would elucidate the social processes through which idiosyncratic norms of justice are made sense of and given sense to. To develop a better understanding of the production and consumption of norms of distributive justice, we conducted a real-time analysis of post-merger decision-making in the recent merger between the Air France and KLM airlines. Our analysis leads to a model that highlights specific production- contextualization-consumption dynamics in post-merger sensemaking processes.
Most management problems involve multilevel phenomena, yet most management research uses a single level of analysis. A micro or a macro lens alone yields incomplete understanding at either level. Multilevel research addresses the levels of theory, measurement, and analysis required to fully examine research questions. This forum presents multilevel research on bribery, national identity, team boundary spanning, professional role identity, organizational citizenship, interorganizational exchanges, and divestitures. To enrich the impact of future management research, we recommend (1) applying multilevel designs to existing models (2) considering bottom-up effects, (3) collaborating across disciplines on multidisciplinary topics, and (4) addressing major real-world problems via multilevel approaches.
The purpose of this review was to examine published research on small-group development done in the last ten years that would constitute an empirical test of Tuckman's (1965) hypothesis that groups go through the stages of "forming," "storming," "norming," and "performing." Of the twenty-two studies reviewed, only one set out to directly test this hypothesis, although many of the others could be related to it. Following a review of these studies, a fifth stage, "adjourning," was added to the hypothesis, and more empirical work was recommended.
Research on how organizational systems develop and change is shaped, at every level of analysis, by traditional assumptions about how change works. New theories in several fields are challenging some of the most pervasive of these assumptions, by conceptualizing change as a punctuated equilibrium: an alternation between long periods when stable infrastructures permit only incremental adaptations, and brief periods of revolutionary upheaval. This article compares models from six domains-adult, group, and organizational development, history of science, biological evolution, and physical science-to explicate the punctuated equilibrium paradigm and show its broad applicability for organizational studies. Models are juxtaposed to generate new research questions about revolutionary change in organizational settings: how it is triggered, how systems function during such periods, and how it concludes. The article closes with implications for research and theory.
Using grounded theory, we examined a "defender" and a "prospector" bank's strategic adaptation to the Community Redevelopment Act across seven years during which they were under increasing regulatory pressure to comply. The interplay of institutional, organizational, and strategic issue context patterns led the defender to an aborted adaptation and the prospector to a reorientation. Each demonstrated a different form of resistance to demands for compliance to the act: identity resistance (change inconsistent with organizational identity) and virtuous resistance (change not needed since already part of the bank's identity). We observed both incremental and punctuated equilibrium change modes, though only incremental change was sustained. Institutional isomorphism and organizational performance exerted counterintuitive pressures for initiating and sustaining change. Drawing on our results, we develop propositions on organizations' adaptations to change.
This review selectively examines the theoretical and empirical organizational change literature over the past nine years (1990–early 1998). Four research themes or issues common to all change efforts are discussed: (a) content issues, which largely focus on the substance of contemporary organizational changes; (b) contextual issues, which principally focus on forces or conditions existing in an organization’s external and internal environments; (c) process issues, which address actions undertaken during the enactment of an intended change, and (d) criterion issues, which deal with outcomes commonly assessed in organizational change efforts. Research dealing with monitoring affective and behavioral reactions to change is also reviewed. In closing, general observations and suggestions for future research are offered and it is concluded that the organizational change literature continues to be responsive to the dynamics of contemporary workplace demands.
Organizations in which reliable performance is a more pressing issue than efficient performance often must learn to cope with incomprehensible technologies by means other than trial and error, since the cost of failure is too high. Discovery and consistent application of substitutes for trial and error—such as imagination, simulation, vicarious experience, and stories—contribute to heightened reliability. Organizational culture is integral to the creation of effective substitutes. Using examples taken from air traffic control, nuclear power generation, and naval carrier operations, this article demonstrates that closer attention to the ways people construct meaning can suggest new ways to improve reliability.
This paper proposes that crisis can be denoted with a specific meaning applicable to organizational behavior. A tentative series of interrelated propositions suggests how a crisis in an organization's external environment can activate behavior within the organization which hinders its response to the crisis. The propositions are illustrated with material from a range of political and nonpolitical studies. Some attention is directed to possible means of making the eight principal variables operational.
Proponents of a popular view of how individuals respond to ethical issues at work claim that individuals use deliberate and extensive moral reasoning under conditions that ignore equivocality and uncertainty. I discuss the limitations of these "rationalist approaches" and reconsider their empirical support using an alternative explanation from social psychological and sensemaking perspectives. I then introduce a new theoretical model composed of issue construction, intuitive judgment, and post hoc explanation and justification. I discuss the implications for management theory, methods, and practice.
We revisit a long‐held assumption in human resource management, organizational behavior, and industrial and organizational psychology that individual performance follows a Gaussian (normal) distribution. We conducted 5 studies involving 198 samples including 633,263 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and amateur and professional athletes. Results are remarkably consistent across industries, types of jobs, types of performance measures, and time frames and indicate that individual performance is not normally distributed—instead, it follows a Paretian (power law) distribution. Assuming normality of individual performance can lead to misspecified theories and misleading practices. Thus, our results have implications for all theories and applications that directly or indirectly address the performance of individual workers including performance measurement and management, utility analysis in preemployment testing and training and development, personnel selection, leadership, and the prediction of performance, among others.
Analyses of the events that occur in the context of organization process are rapidly advancing. Scholars holding otherwise disparate views share the sense that social actors, including organizations, attend to, interpret, and act upon events. Analyses of events are converging from two theoretical and methodological starting points. Analyses that emphasize human subjectivity and contextual specificity are seeking increased cross-situational learning. Nomothetic analyses are building on their strength in cross-situational learning by striving to represent the way subjects themselves construct events in relation to context. Rather than continuing to analyze classic organizational and environmental dimensions like formalization, general uncertainty, munificence, and stability, scholars are increasingly analyzing the qualities of events and the meanings they are given. They are treating events as elements that social actors abstract from social processes, and social actors as parties who interact to give events meaning. The present paper defines event analyzes its origins and current uses, and indicates how using and going beyond lessons from physics can promote organization studies. These lessons come from the analysis of physical events as particles in relation to waves, fields, and perspectives. The uniquely social element of potential takes us beyond the experience of physical science.
This article focuses on geographic communities as fields in which human-made and natural events occasionally disrupt the lives of organizations. We develop an institutional perspective to unpack how and why major events within communities affect organizations in the context of corporate philanthropy. To test this framework, we examine how different types of mega-events (the Olympics, the Super Bowl, political conventions) and natural disasters (such as floods and hurricanes) affected the philanthropic spending of locally headquartered Fortune 1000 firms between 1980 and 2006. Results show that philanthropic spending fluctuated dramatically as mega-events generally led to a punctuated increase in otherwise relatively stable patterns of giving by local corporations. The impact of natural disasters depended on the severity of damage: while major disasters had a negative effect, smaller-scale disasters had a positive impact. Firms’ philanthropic history and communities’ intercorporate network cohesion moderated some of these effects. This study extends the institutional and community literatures by illuminating the geographic distribution of punctuating events as a central mechanism for community influences on organizations, shedding new light on the temporal dynamics of both endogenous and exogenous punctuating events and providing a more nuanced understanding of corporate-community relations.
Knowledge is now being seen as the most important strategic resource in organizations, and the management of this knowledge is considered critical to organizational success. If organizations have to capitalize on the knowledge they possess, they have to understand how knowledge is created, shared, and used within the organization. Knowledge exists and is shared at different levels in organizations. This article examines knowledge sharing at the most basic level; namely, between individuals in organizations. Based on a review of existing literature in this area, this article presents a model that identifies factors that most significantly influence knowledge sharing at this level.
The phrase "switching cognitive gears" is used to call attention to the fact that cognitive functioning involves the capacity to shift between cognitive modes, from automatic processing to conscious engagement and back again. Effectiveness may be as much a function of an actor's capacity to sense when a switch is appropriate, as to process in one or another mode. In this paper the authors develop a perspective on the switch from automatic to active thinking and the conditions that provoke it. They apply the perspective to work settings and identify types of situations in which actors are expected to switch from habits of mind to active thinking. They propose further work to develop a framework for understanding the switch from active thinking to automatic.
This study explicates and tests three network-based mechanisms whereby individuals' attitudes toward an integrated health information system may be influenced by the attitudes of proximate sources of social information. Estimates of the attitudes of generalized others are not convincingly associated with the actual attitudes of specified others. Overall, specific others' actual attitudes have only a small effect on one's attitude. Social information operates positively through communication and work-unit mechanisms (especially when weighted by importance), and negatively through the mean attitude of one's structurally equivalent position, but not through overall organizational proximity or spatial proximity. Differences in attitudes among occupational groups may have been due to implementation policies.
The model of employee turnover described in this paper applies constructs and concepts from decision making, statistics, and social psychology to facilitate understanding and to redirect theory development and empirical research. The process of employee turnover is modeled by four distinctive decision paths; each decision path involves distinctive foci, psychological processes, and external events. Further, five specific contributions of the model are suggested, and recommendations for empirical testing and future research are offered.
Summary This study assessed the applicability of current theories of reliability in dynamic settings by exploring the sensemaking processes experienced by a sample of medical residents around lapses in reliability of patient care. Important differences in lapses surfaced, particularly with respect to whether actors were aware that a lapse was occurring in real-time and whether there was anything they could do or say to mitigate or prevent the lapse. In over half of the incidents recounted, the actors did not become aware of the lapse in reliability until after the consequence of the lapse had occurred or the consequence occurred simultaneously with the recognition of the lapse. In other incidents, they faced a critical moment in which they had to decide whether and how to act to intervene in real-time. In the majority of these critical moments, residents had an issue of concern to voice that could have helped mitigate or correct the lapse but instead they remained silent. Issues related to identity and relationships appeared to either inhibit or promote voice during critical moments. We end with ideas for how our findings can inform existing work on reliability in healthcare and the growing literature on voice and silence in organizations. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Purpose – We outline a theoretical model of the emergence of justice climate in groups, teams, and organizations, and in doing so integrate multiple justice perspectives (e.g., affective events, fairness heuristic, deonance, justice integration, multifoci justice, overall justice).
Approach – In this theoretical paper, we propose that justice climate is spawned at the level of the event; individuals experience discrete events and then use their emotional reactions related to these events as information in forming fairness judgments. Cognitive processes explicated in justice integration theory, fairness heuristic theory, and fairness theory also play a role. Over time, these judgments about various perpetrators – which may include the evaluation of outcomes, procedures, information, and interpersonal treatment – are aggregated to form individual-level, stable judgments regarding the fairness of exchange partners with whom employees interact (e.g., supervisors, coworkers, and customers). Through socialization and social-information processing, and influenced by organizational structure and social networks, these individual multifoci justice perceptions merge to form multifoci justice climate, which over time lead to the formation of shared cognitions of overall justice climate.
Value – The chapter proposes a temporal model of how discrete events at the individual level merge to form individuals’ multifoci justice perceptions, shared multifoci justice climate, and ultimately overall justice climate. The chapter offers multiple propositions and concludes with recommendations for empirically testing the model.