Decision fatigue, a mental state that occurs after extended periods of making streams of decisions, influences decision makers to favour less-taxing “default” decisions. A new study, based on data from the banking sector, reveals the cost of such decisions, highlighting the importance of addressing decision fatigue.
A new paper explodes the concept of the craft organization of work as musty history, presenting different configurations of craft that can offer solutions to challenges faced in the 21st-century workplace.
Personalized ads can sometimes repel consumers rather than attract them. A new study reveals the complex psychological mechanisms and other factors that impact the success of tailored marketing. A key success factor: convincing the consumer to spend time critically thinking about your message.
A qualitative study, based on interviews and roundtable discussions with 79 women in the financial sector, identifies 10 action steps companies can take to encourage and enable women to overcome gender barriers to promotions and leadership positions.
Caught between low-power employees and high-power executives, the ‘middle power’ of middle managers keeps them hopping between the roles of subordinate and superior. A new Theory of Power framework helps middle managers, their bosses and their organizations identify the challenges and psychological consequences of their caught-in-the-middle position.
Why Being a Middle Manager Is So Exhausting. Eric M. Anicich, Jacob B. Hirsh. Harvard Business Review (March 22, 2017). Through a series of empirical studies exploring the concept of charisma outside of an organizational leadership context, a team of researchers identify the two core dimensions of personal charisma and show that charisma is an informal personality trait observable in any context.
In their efforts to persuade and influence others, leaders pay close attention to the words they choose. Listeners, however, often doubt the sincerity of those trying hard to persuade them. Research into how leaders modulate their voices — by adjusting the volume of their speech, for example — reveals that such ‘paralinguistic cues’ can enhance their persuasiveness, and even increase their perceived sincerity.
Leaders have different origin stories—the stories of how they became leaders. For example, some were thrust in leadership positions; others became leaders when they decided to start an initiative. A new study shows that origin stories legitimize leaders in their leadership roles and explain the variety of motivations, styles and personalities through which they enact those leadership roles.
A new study building on leadership from an evolutionary perspective and exploring the needs of followers reveals that leadership is most in demand when a group needs to coordinate their activities, and when conflicts of interests threaten effective action by the group.
Societal expectations concerning gender and leadership attributes pull women leaders in opposite directions: if strong, they are criticized for not being empathetic or likeable; if empathetic, they are criticized for not being strong enough. The best women leaders thrive by managing these tensions through a paradox mindset.
Self-imposed constraints undermine employers’ resolve to promote employee health and wellness. When employers fully accept the link between healthy employees and long-term profitability, the once insurmountable constraints can be quickly resolved.
The individual personalities of coachees impact the success of coaching interventions. Individuals who are open to the new and the different, who have low self-esteem and other low core self evaluations, or who tend to set goals focused on avoiding failure are those more likely to benefit from coaching.
Get a good night’s sleep before the big meeting, but better yet, get enough sleep every night, follow a routine, and don’t stay out late even if you can sleep in, according to an MIT study that furthers our understanding of the productivity benefits of sleep.
An experimental study of the decision-making process in cross-functional teams reveals the impact of leadership, or lack thereof, on the quality of the teams’ decisions and the satisfaction of team members with those decisions.
Mentees with a growth mindset, mentors driven by empathy and a desire to give, and program administrators who invest in training for mentors and mentees on how to best leverage mentoring relationships are leading success factors for entrepreneurial mentorship programs.
The best entrepreneurship education and training (EET) programs for women, especially in developing countries, focus not only on the program goals and its contents or curriculum but also on often-overlooked human factors — e.g. the intentions of the participants — and the contextual environment in which the entrepreneurs will be working.
Women mentors and mentees both benefit from their involvement in mentoring programs, acquiring a range of cognitive, skill-based, and affective-related learning — and to a lesser extent social networking skills.
Within limits, constraints on innovation have a surprising effect: they increase the likelihood of success. This positive impact disappears when constraints are excessive.
Narcissistic tendencies in leaders can be productive as well as non-productive. A new study shows that non-productive narcissistic tendencies have an impact on turnover intention and job satisfaction, although this impact can vary depending on gender and position in the company.
More employers are discovering the benefits of the four-day working week, including increased productivity and employee satisfaction. Many employers, however, continue to express concern over the difficulty in implementing and managing the four-day working week, as well as its impact on customers.
Many organizations ignore the collaborative demands of agility and are then surprised when agile teams fail to produce the expected results. Four collaborative practices based on organizational network analysis takes full advantage of social networks to enhance the success of agile initiatives.
Inspiring the human desire to help others, customer contact sparks the collective energy of employees, leading to better company performance. Transformational leadership is vital, however, to capture the benefits of customer contact.
New research based on an exceptional database of unfaithful individuals reveal that people who are unfaithful to their spouses are more likely to engage in professional misbehaviour, supporting the contention that personal and professional misconduct are linked.
CEOs and CFOs with a high promotion focus, who are afraid to miss opportunities and willing to experiment, are more likely to lead a company to growth than low promotion-focused CEOs and CFOs, who are more aware of potential risks. The best strategic decisions, however, seem to come when the two executives have clashing levels of promotion focus.
Addressing perceived workplace danger from robots through immersive virtual environments helps employees overcome their fears and collaborate effectively with robots in the workplace.
Statistics consistently show older workers retiring rather than taking on part or full-time post-career jobs. A new study reveals that older workers want to continue working at least part-time and are willing to make wage concessions to do so; employers, however, are not offering acceptable work arrangements that make working after retirement desirable.
While competition between individuals is a fact of life in the world of business — people vying for that newly opened promotion, for example — a recent study explores the conditions that can turn healthy competition into dangerous conflict.
