91����

On the morning of Wednesday, October 26th, 91���� professor Suzanne C. de Janasz conducted her first-ever negotiations workshop for female high school students at McLean High School in Northern Virginia. An enthusiastic audience of about 100 young women came to hear de Janasz explain why negotiation is important for women of all ages and walks of life, and how to build negotiating skills for the future. De Janasz, an organizational researcher who holds a joint appointment in the School of Business and the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, says there is a pervasive cultural bias against women who ask for what they deserve. The negative labelling begins in childhood, with terms such as “bossy” being applied to more assertive girls.

Today's workforce might best be described in terms of tumult: Great Resignation, Great Retirement, Great Reshuffle, etc. In this "new normal," managers must learn to navigate a state of continual transition in their teams and organizations, while keeping up with day-to-day demands. Likewise, 91���� School of Business Management Professors Sarah Wittman and Kevin Rockmann believe that it is time for scholars to change the way they think about role transitions to better align their theories with our increasingly uncertain world.

We’ve all become familiar with the pandemic-related reasons behind the upheaval in the labor market, as well as the standard-issue solutions like trying to infuse work with purpose or offering employees remote working. While these are practical suggestions, they have not restored stability to the workforce. It is our contention that any broad-brush advice for retaining employees in the current environment will be insufficient. Whether managers like it or not, employees will demand sensitivity and adjustment to their psychological needs as individuals.

Hierarchy has its upsides and downsides. A pyramidical power structure works well for day-to-day decision making. But as the distance between the base and the tip of the pyramid increases, tensions between organizational tiers can create obstacles to reform. It’s a matter of “the unconscious dynamics of humans in groups and systems” rather than a deliberate response, says Renee Rinehart Kathawalla, a postdoctoral research fellow of management at Mason.

91���� professor Sarah Wittman said the usual offboarding process is rote: effectively a checklist, and it doesn't need to be.

Einav Hart, an assistant professor of management at 91����’s School of Business, shows the economic implications of negotiators’ relationships, and how these economic implications affect how people negotiate. Her recent paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (co-authored with Maurice Schweitzer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) introduces the construct “ERRO” (the Economic Relevance of negotiators’ Relational Outcomes) to shed light on when negotiators should consider their future relationships.

Victoria Grady, associate professor of management and program director of the Masters of Science in Management at Mason, has a new book, Stuck: How to WIN at Work by Understanding LOSS, which is the result of years of research and writing with her co-author Patrick McCreesh, an adjunct management professor at Mason. Stuck plumbs an area of psychology known as attachment theory, first developed in the mid-20th century by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst.

Recent research from Heather Vough, associate professor of management at Mason, argues that gaffes have potential negative consequences that go far beyond an awkward or uncomfortable moment.

This paper offers a case study of the Honey Bee Initiative (HBI) from 91����’s School of Business. 

When newcomers enter teams, they seek out identity resources from team incumbents to help their socialization. In turn, team incumbents offer identity resources to newcomers to support incumbents’ existing held team identities. Based on theories of identity and socialization, the authors of this paper make a case for the identity partnership, a relationship in which identity resources are exchanged between an incumbent team member and a team newcomer.