Existing work on newcomer adjustment and socialization typically assumes that selected employees are the first choice for a role or job. However, this is not always the case. To address this oversight, we introduce and examine the phenomenon of alternate choices: Employees who are selected for a role but perceive or discover that they were not the first choice. Drawing on social identity theory, we contend that alternate choices seek less feedback directly from others due to experiencing less social integration and examine whether leader inclusion offsets these effects. Our studies cycling between experimental and field survey designs support the proposed theory. Taken together, we illuminate how selection processes and decisions made before role entry can impact employees’ subsequent work experiences and behavior after they enter the role, providing insights for theory and research on socialization, feedback seeking, and inclusion at work.

Read the paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology

Read a summary of the paper in the Harvard Business Review

Existing theory and research has documented the benefits of facing high expectations and the perils of encountering low expectations. This paper examines the performance effects of underdog expectations, defined as individuals’ perceptions that others view them as unlikely to succeed. Integrating theory and research on self-enhancement with psychological reactance, I predict that underdog expectations have the potential to boost performance through the desire to prove others wrong when others’ credibility is in question. Studies 1 and 2 provide support for the positive relationship between underdog expectations and performance. Study 3 reveals support for the positive effect of underdog expectations on performance through the desire to prove others wrong. Study 4 demonstrates that these effects depend on the perceived credibility of observers: when observers’ expectations are seen as more credible, underdog expectations undermine performance (consistent with the Golem effect and self-fulfilling prophecy), but when observers’ expectations are viewed as less credible, underdog expectations boost performance (demonstrating the underdog effect). My theory and results challenge the assumption that perceiving low expectations from others is always detrimental, and offer meaningful insights into why and when underdog expectations increase versus inhibit performance.

Read the paper in the Academy of Management Journal

Read a summary of the paper in the Harvard Business Review

Although considerable theory and research indicates that prior experiences of discrimination hinder individuals, it remains unclear what individuals can do to offset these repercussions in the context of their work and career. We introduce two distinct types of self-narratives—underdog and favorite—and test whether these types of personal stories shape the effects of prior experiences of discrimination on performance efficacy, which in turn impact performance. Across two time-lagged experiments with job seekers in both field and online settings, we theorize and find that underdog narratives are more effective than favorite narratives at moderating the effects of prior experiences of discrimination on performance through performance efficacy. Our results present new insights for theory and research on expectations, self-narratives, and resilience in the face of discrimination and adversity.

Read the paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Read a summary of the research in Wharton Magazine

Cover-ups of unethical actions are undesirable and often costly. However, existing theory is unclear on when and why some cover-ups are punished less severely by in-group third parties compared to out-group third parties. Drawing on theories of attribution and social identity, we theorize that the punishment of cover-ups by in- and out-group third parties depends on the type of cover-up: specifically, whether individuals conceal their own unethical transgressions (personal cover-ups) or the unethical transgressions of another individual (relational cover-ups). By highlighting this distinction, we hypothesize and find across three studies that in-group third parties punish relational—but not personal—cover-ups less severely than out-group third parties. Moreover, we theorize and find support for the mediating role of perceptions of group loyalty. Our theory and results reveal the ways in which different forms of cover-ups can escape severe punishment, and offer important theoretical contributions for research on unethical behavior, social identity, and loyalty.

Read the paper in the Academy of Management Journal

Punishments are not always administered immediately after a crime is committed. Although scholars and researchers claim that third parties should normatively enact punishments proportionate to a given crime, we contend that third parties punish transgressors more severely when there is a time delay between a transgressor’s crime and when they face punishment for it. We theorize that this occurs because of a perception of unfairness, whereby third parties view the process that led to time delays as unfair. We tested our theory across eight studies, including two archival data sets of 160,772 punishment decisions and six experiments (five preregistered) across 6,029 adult participants. Our results suggest that as time delays lengthen, third parties punish transgressors more severely because of increased perceived unfairness. Importantly, perceived unfairness explained this relationship beyond other alternative mechanisms. We explore potential boundary conditions for this relationship and discuss the implications of our findings.

Read the paper in Psychological Science

Read a summary of the paper in Scientific American

How do creative workers make ideas perceived as tainted acceptable to others? Using a qualitative, inductive study of the emerging entomophagy market – using insects as a source of food for humans – and the Circular Economy – using waste, pollution, and other tainted resources as raw materials for new products – we introduce a new form of creativity we label dirty creativity. Our findings demonstrate that creative workers use two sets of tactics to make dirty creativity more acceptable: relocating dirt (locating the stigma within a network of common ideas) and recasting dirt as value (extolling features of dirty that redeem the value of the material). Our inductive theory reveals that creative workers champion their products by drawing attention to the dirtiness while simultaneously mitigating the ramifications of doing so. In doing so, our research advances theory and research on creativity by shifting the locus of creative work from the early stages of idea generation to the intermediate phase of idea championing and by highlighting the importance of dirty creativity and the effort needed to shape dirty creativity into acceptable designs.

Read the paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Scholars have highlighted the use of punishment as a tool to defend laws and norms, deter deviance, and restore justice in the aftermath of organizational misconduct. However, current theory and research primarily draw on a micro-oriented lens to understand how punishment occurs in response to deviant actors within organizations, neglecting macro-oriented questions of whether and how organizations are punished for their misconduct. We review sociological and macro-organizational work that suggests punitive severity can vary with three key attributes of the organization: status, reputation, and embedded ties. We then develop a mezzo-lens framework motivated at the intersection of micro- and macro-perspectives on organizational misconduct to shed light on opportunities for theoretical expansion by crossing levels of analysis.

Read the paper in Research in Organizational Behavior

Trash-talking increases the psychological stakes of competition and motivates targets to outperform their opponents. In Studies 1 and 2, participants in a competition who were targets of trash-talking outperformed participants who faced the same economic incentives, but were not targets of trash-talking. Perceptions of rivalry mediate the relationship between trash-talking and effort-based performance. In Study 3, we find that targets of trash-talking were particularly motivated to punish their opponents and see them lose. In Study 4, we identify a boundary condition, and show that trash-talking increases effort in competitive interactions, but incivility decreases effort in cooperative interactions. In Study 5, we find that targets of trash-talking were more likely to cheat in a competition than were participants who received neutral messages. In Study 6, we demonstrate that trash-talking harms performance when the performance task involves creativity. Taken together, our findings reveal that trash-talking is a common workplace behavior that can foster rivalry and motivate both constructive and destructive behavior.

Read the paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Prior research suggests that individuals react negatively when they perceive they are underpaid. Moreover, individuals frequently select pay referents who share their race and gender, suggesting that demographic similarity affects one’s knowledge of pay differences. Leveraging these insights, the authors examine whether the gender and racial composition of a work unit shapes individuals’ reactions to pay deprivation. Using field data from a large health care organization, they find that pay deprivation resulting from workers receiving less pay than their same-sex and same-race coworkers prompts a significantly stronger response than does pay deprivation arising from workers receiving less pay than their demographically dissimilar colleagues. A supplemental experiment reveals that this relationship likely results from individuals’ propensity to select same-category others as pay referents, shaping workers’ information about their colleagues’ pay. The study’s findings underscore the need to theoretically and empirically account for how demographically driven social comparison processes affect reactions to pay inequality.

Read the paper in ILR Review

Using three studies of varying methodologies designed to complement and build upon each other, we examine how supervisory ethical leadership is associated with employees’ reporting unethical conduct within the organization (i.e., internal whistle-blowing). We also examine whether the positive effect of supervisory ethical leadership is enhanced by another important social influence: coworkers’ ethical behavior. As predicted, we found that employees’ internal whistle-blowing depends on an ethical tone being set by complementary social influence sources at multiple organizational levels (both supervisory and coworker levels), leading us to conclude that “it takes a village” to support internal whistle-blowing. Also, this interactive effect was found to be mediated by a fear of retaliation in two studies but not by perceptions of futility. We conclude by identifying theoretical and practical implications of our research.

Read the paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Although initiative is thought to contribute to higher performance, researchers have called for a more comprehensive understanding of the contingencies for this relationship. Building on self-determination theory, we propose that initiative is more likely to predict performance when individuals experience autonomous and not controlled motivation. Across two studies, we find support for a hypothesized three-way interaction between initiative, autonomous motivation, and controlled motivation in predicting individual performance. In Study 1, the personal initiative reported by job applicants was most positively related to the number of job offers that they received several months later when they experienced high autonomous motivation and low controlled motivation. In Study 2, the objective initiative taken by call center employees was most positively related to the revenue that they generated in subsequent months when they reported high autonomous motivation and low controlled motivation. We discuss theoretical implications for motivation, initiative, proactivity, and performance.

Read the paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes