Talk 1: A Compensatory Ethics Perspective on Status-Claiming and Unethical Behaviors
Abstract:
The majority of workplace status research has focused on the sources of status and the consequences of possessing high or low status, as well as the effectiveness of status claiming for status obtainment. Scholars, however, have remained silent about actors’ psychological and behavioral reactions to their own status-claiming behaviors. Integrating the dominance-prestige model of status with moral licensing and moral cleansing theories, we posit that dominance-oriented and prestige-oriented status behaviors have contrasting effects on unethical behaviors via moral credits and moral credentials. Across two multi-wave studies, we found that prestige (dominance) status behaviors promote (prevent) subsequent unethical behaviors in the short run, due to increased (decreased) moral credits and credentials. Moreover, instrumental climate enhances the moral licensing effects, but weakens the moral cleansing effects. This study breaks new ground in status research by revealing the unintended dark side of prestige status behaviors and the unexpected bright side of dominance status behaviors.
Speaker: Professor Xinxin Li
Xinxin Li is an Associate Professor of Management in the Antai College of Economics and Management at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She received her PhD in Organizational Behavior from the National University of Singapore and her bachelor’s degree in Management from the Renmin University of China. Her research interests include behavioral ethics, workplace mistreatment, organizational justice, emotions, and work-family issues. Her research appears in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, and Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
Talk 2: Design Thinking as a Team Development Intervention: Examining Its Impact on Performance and Team Emergent States Through a Quasi-Experimental Field Study
Abstract:
Design thinking (DT) has become widely adopted in many organizations as a structured approach to creative problem-solving based on experimentation and reflective practice. Yet, it remains unclear whether, how and when DT as a team development intervention impacts team performance or whether it is more effective than other, more conventional team development interventions. Building on and extending experiential learning theory, we propose that: (a) interventions more thoroughly grounded on the elements of experiential learning theory (such as DT) have more robust effects on performance relative to those placing less of an emphasis on these processes (e.g., after-action review [AAR] and team-building [TB]), with (b) these effects at least partially explained through the impact of these processes on team emergent states, and (c) most robust among teams engaged in more complex tasks. Results from a multi-wave, quasi-experimental field study of teams in a manufacturing company indicate that when pitted against these alternative interventions, DT is associated with a greater improvement in team performance, with this effect partially explained by a more robust change (relative to that of AAR and TB) in both team learning climate and transactive memory system (TMS). Additionally, team task complexity strengthened the indirect effect of design thinking (relative to AAR and TB) on team efficiency improvement, moderating the effect of DT on the change in team-learning climate. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Speaker: Professor Jingqiu Chen
Jingqiu Chen is full professor of management in Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. She received her doctoral degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Peking University, China. She worked as a visiting scholar at the Risk Management Center at the Wharton School of Business in 2011, and Fulbright research scholar in Department of Psychology, George Mason University from 2016 to 2017. She gives a variety of courses, including organizational behavior, conflict management and survey research. Her research interest focuses on employee turnover, team intervention and psychological well-being. Her research appears in journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Business Ethics, etc.
