Martin Hoegl’s research while affiliated with Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and other places

Organizations launch diversity initiatives to promote diversity within their ranks, improve the work experiences of underrepresented groups, and satisfy growing demands for diversity in workplace settings. While typically welcomed by the target group, diversity initiatives can be compromised when employees who are not the initiative’s targets—for example, men in the case of gender diversity initiatives—withhold their support. Particularly organizations that are mostly composed of nontargets may thus struggle with a lack of support for their diversity initiatives. To understand how organizations can successfully implement diversity initiatives while preserving nontarget support, we take an uncertainty management perspective and examine the interactive effects of diversity practice type (identity-conscious vs. identity-blind) and leader continuity rhetoric (high vs. low vision of continuity) on nontarget support. In Study 1, using data from a 2 × 2 between-person field experiment in a firefighter organization, we find that framing the initiative under a vision of high (vs. low) continuity preserves nontargets’ anticipatory distributive justice in the face of identity-conscious (vs. identity-blind) practices and thereby promotes initiative support. Study 2, a vignette experiment, replicates our findings and shows that other justice dimensions above and beyond distributive justice appear secondary in this context. Our work has important implications for managing the initiation phase of diversity initiatives in organizations primarily composed of nontargets in a way that fosters nontargets’ perceived justice and support.

Multinational teams face numerous challenges arising from pressures in the global business environment and complexities posed by national diversity within teams. Team resilience capacity has been identified as an important capability for successful performance in challenging work environments, yet little is known about which factors contribute to it in a multinational context. Given that teams are inherently situated within a specific context and shaped by team leaders and the organizational environment, enhancing our understanding of contexts involving multinational teams is crucial for fostering team resilience and performance. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we investigate the influence of leader inclusiveness on the resilience capacity of multinational teams and explore how the organizational diversity climate shapes this relationship. Findings from our quantitative, multi‐informant study based on data collected from 111 multinational teams reveal that leader inclusiveness enhances team resilience capacity and that such an effect is stronger when the organizational diversity climate is high. We also highlight that leader inclusiveness improves team performance indirectly via its effect on team resilience capacity, contingent on the organizational diversity climate.

Research about innovation management explores how the future is created—who is creating it (organizations, collaborations, etc.), for what aims (customer satisfaction, market performance, etc.), and with what broader effects (social, environmental, etc.). With this extended essay, we explore the potential futures of innovation management research in three ways. First, we briefly review the history of past research agendas and priorities published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM), highlighting three broad topic areas (technological, social/environmental, and organizational) that have emerged over time and their potential disruptive implications for innovation management research. Second, we describe the outcome of a gathering of leading scholars in innovation management tasked with the challenge of identifying critical research paths for our field. This collaboration resulted in five “deep dive” essays into areas ripe for innovation management research in the years ahead: liquid innovation, artificial intelligence in innovation, business model innovation, public value innovation, and responsible innovation. Third, we reflect on this expansive effort and offer a discussion of implications (tensions, challenges, and opportunities) for future innovation management scholarship.

Employees’ responses to diversity initiatives are critical to understand the effectiveness of such initiatives. However, prior research has largely considered the isolated effects of specific favorable or unfavorable employee responses (e.g., support or resistance) from a variable-centered perspective. This prior focus overlooks the potential (a) coexistence of more complex configurations of cognitive, affective, and behavioral response types within individuals and (b) the existence of subpopulations of employees who may respond both favorably and unfavorably, thus displaying ambivalence. To address these shortcomings, we build on the tripartite response model and adopt a person-centered approach to shed light on a more comprehensive spectrum of employees’ responses to diversity initiatives. Using latent profile analysis, our results across three studies reveal (Study 1, n = 605) and replicate (Study 2, n = 503 and Study 3, n = 514) four distinct response types: excited supporters, calm compliers, torn shapers, and discontent opponents. Furthermore, using time-lagged data from Study 3, we provide initial insights into relevant person and situation predictors of profile membership and show how employees across profiles differ on work-related outcomes that can be functional or dysfunctional for their organization. Taken together, we aim to initiate a conversation on the complex nature of responses to diversity initiatives within the diversity management literature and call for more research, specifically on ambivalent responses.

Knowledge work—frequently characterized as nonroutine and complex—requires individuals to be deeply engrossed with or “absorbed” in their work. Notwithstanding, organizations tend to put knowledge workers in multiple teams, undermining their ability to achieve the level of absorption required to realize their full potential. We examine how knowledge workers who are operating in multiple team contexts navigate competing demands on their time on a daily basis. Based on conservation of resources theory, we posit that the time devoted to the focal team—that is, the primary team in which knowledge workers are most actively involved—fosters absorption. However, this positive relationship is moderated by the number of different team contexts and problem-solving demands that knowledge workers experience daily, as together, these contextual conditions block optimal resource utilization. To test our hypotheses, we apply hierarchical linear modelling to experience-sampling data from 140 knowledge workers surveyed over 10 consecutive working days. Our findings support the hypothesized model, suggesting that daily involvement in multiple team contexts hinders full absorption, especially if daily problem-solving demands are high. Our insights emphasize the importance of the role and potential cost of multiple team membership (MTM) for understanding knowledge workers’ optimal functioning.

Research suggests that teams can greatly enhance their performance through boundary management, which comprises activities that establish, maintain, and regulate linkages with the surrounding environment. However, such performance gains do not materialize equally in all instances, and some teams struggle to benefit from boundary management. Integrating insights from social network and team-level resource allocation theories, we develop a contingency framework that considers the internal organization of a team's boundary management (i.e., the carrier, target, and type of such activities) as a key moderating factor that accounts for the varying effects. To test this framework, we use a meta-analytic approach that synthesizes >30 years of empirical research (i.e., 85 primary studies covering 10,848 teams). Our results show a positive main effect of team boundary management on team performance. Crucially, these performance benefits are more pronounced when the target of boundary management is extraorganizational rather than inside the home organization and when the type of boundary management activities is boundary spanning (e.g., coordination, representation, or information search) rather than boundary strengthening (e.g., buffering, guarding, or sentry activities). Moreover, boundary management is more effective when executed by formal team leaders rather than team members, and our results tentatively suggest that this may reflect differences in effectiveness between leaders and members in boundary strengthening, rather than boundary spanning. Overall, our findings advance theory on team boundary management by clarifying previously ambiguous findings and illustrating how teams can design their boundary management activities to be most effective.

Ethical climates remain one of the most popular ways to assess the ethical orientations of companies. There has been a plethora of studies examining the relationship between ethical climates and critical outcomes, which was triggered by Victor and Cullen's seminal work published 35 years ago. After such a long period of strong research activity in this topic area, it is time to take stock of the accumulated empirical evidence. This meta-analytic review incorporates the considerations of alternative conceptualizations of ethical climates and integrates an international comparative perspective on the consequences of ethical climates. Given the state of the field, it is imperative to assess the tenability of the various relationships of ethical climate types across national contexts. As such, we first provide an update on how ethical climates are related to key organizational outcomes and assess how country-level factors affect the consequences of ethical climates. We present our findings along theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues, discuss the implications of our findings for extant research and provide suggestions for future research for each of the three avenues.