Papers/Projects

Whether it’s leaders in academia (i.e., professors) or organizations (e.g., mid-level leaders and CEOs), our research uses mixed methods from scraping archival data, to qualitative interviews, to randomized field experiments to understand the psychological underpinnings and behavioral effects of leadership.

Evaluating Leaders

Fix the Game–Not the Dame: Gender Equity in Leadership by Design

Gender biases tend to disadvantage female leaders (vs. men), while bias trainings often do not transfer from the classroom to the board room or even increase negative reactions to female leaders. However, leaders may not only be viewed as representatives of their gender, but also as representatives of their teams. Thus, to override these pervasive and pernicious biases by design, we measured followers’ reactions to male and female leaders whom we randomly assigned to lead male-majority or gender-balanced teams. Findings indicate that by making the local context within which leaders are perceived more gender-balanced, we may also restore gender equity in leadership evaluations. See here for the published paper in Journal of Business Ethics.

Networking Among Leaders

Playing the Game Relieves “More of the Same”?

Traditional models of leadership development and networking continue the cycle of promotion for more traditional leaders. To reduce problematic homogeneity, increase valuable diversity, and ensure a more sustainable future, this project examines non-traditional paths toward non-traditional leadership. Stay tuned here for project and paper updates.

Leadership-Followership

Help When Leaders Need Somebody? Follower Reactions to Leader Work-Family Conflict

Perceptions of others’ work-family conflict (WFC) have typically been studied as a top-down phenomenon, revealing negative career consequences for followers with higher WFC–particularly women. However, we know less about how those lower in organizational hierarchies (e.g., followers) notice and behave in response to leaders’ WFC–particularly male leaders. We propose that followers perceive leaders’ WFC and respond to it prosocially with extra effort to help leaders at work. Results from a field study and two experiments generally supported our predictions. This research highlights a new behavioral bonus wherein leaders’ ostensibly negative state–WFC–elicits positive behavioral effects in the form of extra effort from followers and lower-level evaluators. See here for the published paper in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings.

Does it Pay to be Sarcastic?

Leaders often engage in costly, self-interested behaviors when they have the power and discretion to do so. Because followers are well-positioned to reduce these behaviors, I test how a specific follower communication—sarcasm expression—affects a particularly costly behavior: leader overpay. As expected, across 3 behavioral experiments, results show that follower sarcasm reduced leader overpay (vs. the control/no humor and vs. non-sarcastic humor), especially for leaders with weak moral identity, but the field study revealed that sarcasm only increased leader accountability when it was publicly (vs. privately) enacted. While talk is cheap, these results show that follower sarcasm can also be valuable, because it reduces leaders’ overpay by increasing accountability. See here for the paper in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Friend or Fiend? Disentangling Humor’s Effects on Hierarchies

Humor research in organizations focuses on leaders’ humor, but we know far less about followers’ humor. Here, we review and synthesize the scattered work on this “upward humor,” offering a novel framing of it as a strategy for followers to deal with hierarchies. We propose a continuum of upward humor from stabilizing (i.e., a friend who uses upward humor to reinforce hierarchies, make hierarchies more bearable or stable) to destabilizing (i.e., a fiend who uses upward humor to question or reshape existing hierarchies) depending on perceived intent (i.e., from benevolent to malicious, respectively) and outline key factors that shape these interpretations. We close with novel questions and methods for future research such as power plays, multi-modal data, and human-robot interactions. For the full-text publication in this special issue of Current Opinion in Psychology on workplace humor, click here.

Leadership Across Cultures

Humor and its Effects for Leaders in the East and in the West

It is ever more important for the increasingly boundary-less leaders of global businesses to take caution when using humor in mixed cultural company or in an entirely different culture. Although humor is often touted as reliable tool for effective leadership, various cultural forces–three of which we review here–may meaningfully alter employees’ humor appreciation and the effects of leaders’ humor. Overall, humor can be an effective tool for a global leader if a leader possesses cultural intelligence and uses humor under the right contexts, with the right followers, and at the right time. For the full-text publication, click here.

Academic Leaders

Women’s Representation in Management Science: 33 Years across 4 Levels

We curated an archival dataset tracking women’s representation over time and across these four levels (i.e., 21,510 authors and 4,173 leaders) with 51,360 data entries for the authors and 320,545 for the leaders. Overall, women’s representation increased over time, which was explained by simple time trend effects. Only 32 of 135 editors were women (i.e., 23.7 %), and the share of women associate editors showed particularly drastic fluctuations. We did not observe a “leaky pipeline” except from the associate editor to editor step, as well as notable fluctuations—particularly after new editor appointments—and between journals. We discuss the influential roles editors and publishers have on women’s representation in academic publishing and science more broadly as well as implications for future research and policy. See this new work published in The Leadership Quarterly here.

Why the Roads You (Don’t) Take Pave the Way to Success

Advice is often given to junior scholars in the field of organization science to ostensibly facilitate their career success. In this commentary, we discuss insights from 19 elite scholars (i.e., Fellows and top journal editors) about the advice they received–and, often, did not follow–throughout their careers. We highlight some of the pitfalls from the current, all-too-common, and often singular advice given to junior scholars while also adding necessary nuance to the requirements to achieve success in our field. We conclude with advice on how to give better advice, thereby more equitably encouraging a new generation of increasingly diverse researchers and future professors. See this new work published in Journal of Management here.

Leading/Leadership Teams

Fix the Game–Not the Dame: Gender Equity in Leadership by Design

Gender biases tend to disadvantage female leaders (vs. men), while bias trainings often do not transfer from the classroom to the board room or even increase negative reactions to female leaders. However, leaders may not only be viewed as representatives of their gender, but also as representatives of their teams. Thus, to override these pervasive and pernicious biases by design, we measured followers’ reactions to male and female leaders whom we randomly assigned to lead male-majority or gender-balanced teams. Findings indicate that by making the local context within which leaders are perceived more gender-balanced, we may also restore gender equity in leadership evaluations. See here for the published paper in Journal of Business Ethics.

How Men React to Women’s Presence (in Teams)

All-male or male-dominated teams continue to be the norm in many industries, in the upper echelons of many companies, and in most venture-backed startups. When women join these teams, changes in team processes and outcomes are often assumed to be due to the ostensibly unique qualities of women. This research, however, seldom explicitly examines how men change because of women's entry and how these changes might account for changes in team dynamics and outcomes. Here, we challenge and expand the narrow and untested assumption that gender-diverse teams are different because of women's ostensibly unique qualities by reviewing research that considers how men think, feel, and behave in the presence of a woman or women (rather than being primarily with other men). Because such cognitive and behavioral differences can result from physiological changes (e.g., testosterone or cortisol), we also review research that examines men's physiological changes in the presence of women. We propose that findings from this literature should inform future research examining gender diversity in teams by suggesting men can change due to the mere presence of women. See the paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology.

Top Leaders (e.g., CEOs)

Is Sustained Narcissism Unsustainable? CEO Personality, Gender, and Environmental Performance

Narcissists’ self-absorption promotes self-serving behaviors, typically at a cost for sustainable environmental outcomes. Because environmetnal sustainability actions tend to garner attention from stakeholders and the media, however, CEO narcissism may also be positively associated with CSR. We examine this effect, including if it differs for male and female CEOs. Results from a mixed methods program of research suggest the effects of narcissism on environmental sustainability are more prominent for female (vs. male) CEOs, because highly narcissistic male CEOs are more strongly affected by stakeholder and media attention. This paper was presented at the Strategic Management Society 2022 and is currently under review.

Leader Development

Critical events at critical times? A gendered identity approach on the path to (sustainable) leadership

What are critical events or shocks? How might they influence early career professionals' leadership pursuits? Do these processes differ for those who identify as men and women? What are their implications for sustainability? In this theoretical piece, Dr. Stephanie Rehbock, Ronit Kark, and I highlight how #criticalevents affect early career professionals and their #identitysalience at a critical time for gender equity and (social) sustainability more broadly, while also challenging research and practice to more carefully consider the accuracy of our science and the untapped potential of the nexus between #diversity, #leadership, and #sustainability. For more, see the article in Frontiers.

Selecting (Future) Leaders

(Don’t) Mind the Gap: Reframing Résumés Facilitates Mothers' Work Re-entry

Becoming a mother and taking care-related leaves from work contribute to economic gender inequality; unemployment gaps may function similarly and are more common now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So what can these job-seekers do? We integrate the judgment and decision-making literature to redesign résumés in a way that reduces mothers’ barriers to work re-entry. We test and replicate this intervention in a field experiment and several lab experiments. See here for the published paper in the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings and here for the final paper in Nature Human Behaviour.

Risqué Business? Humor in the Post-#MeToo Era 

#MeToo has undoubtedly triggered profound, positive effects for employees and organizations by increasing awareness of sexual harassment and empowering employees to speak up about it. However, it might have also created a backlash by making it more difficult for men and women to work with each other. Thus, we tested humor as a proactive, interpersonal intervention. In a series of experiments, results showed that a short, positive pun decreases intergroup anxiety for women, but increases it for men, when sexual harassment concerns are salient. See the paper published in Journal of Applied Psychology here.