Research Tidbits

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Corporate responsibility affects high financial performance The growing literature on corporate responsibility (CR) has drawn attention to how different CR practices complement each other and interact in the form of configurations. This study investigated CR patterns associated with high financial performance for 466 firms in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Na Ni and colleagues identified similarities and differences across these three societies in CR [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Does having family members in the top team influence performance? Yes, according to Pankaj Patel and Danielle Cooper, who investigated the upper echelons of publicly-traded family firms that comprise both family and non-family members. Given that family members are often very influential in top teams, non-family members may participate less, thereby lowering the ability to devise strategic actions that increase performance. After examining 231 publicly-traded [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Managers’ empathy and wage cuts in difficult times Joerg Dietz and Emmanuelle Kleinlogel hypothesized that empathy affects decisions in ethical dilemmas that concern the well-being of not only the organization, but also of other stakeholders. They found that empathetic managers were less likely to comply with requests by an authority figure to cut the wages of their employees than were non-empathetic managers. However, when an [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Leader-follower trust enhances business performance Fenwick Jing and his associates reported a range of positive effects on performance in firms with trusting relationships between leaders and followers. The researchers used six measures of performance derived from surveys conducted in 100 small professional service firms: financial outcomes, staff and customer satisfaction, productivity, and staff and manager tenure. Firms with high levels of manager–follower trust outperformed their [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Do board age and gender diversity matter? An Australian test Muhammad Ali, Yin Ng and Carol Kulik sought to resolve some of the inconsistent findings of past board diversity research through a test of competing linear and curvilinear diversity–performance predictions. This research focuses on board age and gender diversity, and presents a positive linear prediction based on resource dependence theory, a negative linear prediction based [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Transparency and social responsibility in building consumer trust What builds trust between consumers and corporations? To answer the question, Jiyun Kang and Gwendolyn Hustvedt developed a model showing the relationships among transparency, social responsibility, trust, attitude, word-of-mouth intention, and purchase intention. Via an online survey with a US nationwide sample of 303 consumers, results indicated that consumers’ perceptions of a corporation’s efforts to be transparent [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Identifying corporate psychopaths and their effects Corporate psychopaths, particularly those in manager roles, can have serious consequences for an organisation, including stimulating counterproductive work behaviour among employees. Clive Boddy hypothesized that conflict and bullying would be higher, employee emotional well-being lower, and frequencies of counterproductive work behaviour would increase under corporate psychopaths. In a sample of 304 respondents in Britain in 2011, Boddy embedded a [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. What shapes voluntary green behaviour in the workplace? Andrea Kim and associates shed new light on the psychological and social conditions and processes that shape voluntary workplace green behaviour in organizational settings by asking why some employees voluntarily engage in green behaviour at work. The researchers employed a multilevel model of motivation in work groups and a functionalist perspective of citizenship and socially responsible behaviours [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Does it pay to be ethical? Yes, according to Elina Riivari and Anna-Maija Lämsä, who examined the relationship between ethical organisational culture and organisational innovativeness. They conducted a quantitative empirical survey of a 719 respondents from all levels of three Finnish organisations, both general staff and managers, from both private and public sectors. Results show that organisations’ ethical culture is associated with organisational innovativeness, and [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Do different leadership paradigms affect employee engagement? Yes, according to Tanyu Zhang and his ISL colleagues, who investigated whether the direct supervisor’s leadership style affects employee engagement. Leadership style was assessed using Avery’s classical, transactional, visionary, and organic leadership paradigms as the theoretical framework, thereby expanding the scope of styles typically studied. Data from 432 sales assistants in Sydney, Australia, showed that visionary and organic [...]