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It takes three types of thinking to be smart

Katelynn C Hipolito — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:07:24 +0000

It takes three types of thinking to be smart Katelynn C Hipolito Tue, 02/10/2026 - 14:07

Balancing and combining different kinds of intelligence may be even more important than how much you know, or how you think.

Do you know what it means to be smart? It’s a more complicated question than it may seem. There are several ways to think about intelligence—as the well-known “book-vs.-street smart” binary illustrates. By most people’s definition, a truly smart person would be someone who not only thinks well but is also able to translate thought into concrete steps toward positive and practical goals. Balancing and combining different kinds of intelligence may be even more important than how much you know, or how you think.

Matthew A. Cronin. Photo by Hannah Patterson/Costello College of Business.

In a recently published technical note, Matthew A. Cronin, professor of management at Costello College of Business at 91��, and his co-author Lillien M. Ellis of the University of Virginia, deconstruct intelligence into three modalities, which they label the Scientist, the Artist and the Judge (or “SAJ,” pronounced “sage”).

As Cronin says, the Scientist is about “logic and evidence…how we know stuff.” The Artist stands for imagination, the ability to conceive possibilities outside what we are given. The Judge is responsible for weighing the morality, appropriateness, etc. of an action or direction.

Cronin contends that we all have a Scientist, Artist and Judge in our minds, but they are often out of balance. “Most people have one of the three that they like the most, and they have that guy command everybody else. And that’s when you have problems,” he says.

As an example, Cronin’s technical note cites Judge-heavy cybersecurity protocols—they valued security but did not account for how memory worked—that forced users to create passwords that were impossible to remember. People wrote them down near their computers, defeating the whole purpose of security. Adding the Scientist and Artist into the mix resulted in innovation, e.g. long passphrases that more easily stick in the mind without needing to be noted down.

“AI can tell you whatever you want to know. But that doesn’t guarantee it’s correct—that’s the Scientist. It doesn’t tell you what you should do—that’s the Judge. And it will predict only from the most likely outcomes—definitely not the Artist.”

— Matthew A. Cronin, professor of management at Costello College of Business at 91��

According to the SAJ framework, the Artist-Scientist pairing produces discoveries about the world, by relating novel information or situations to what is already known. Collaboration between Artist and Judge is required to formulate a vision, or an imagined realization of desires or ideals deemed worth pursuing. The Scientist and Judge can work together to build skill, or the productive application of knowledge toward a chosen objective.

“You cycle through these roles,” Cronin says. “We can start with what we want, which is the Judge, and how things work, which is the Scientist—but that’s likely only to maximize what we’re already doing. So we have to find a vision that might be better, but we’re almost certainly not going to be able to get that to work without some discovery.”

Building upon Cronin’s 2018 book (co-authored by Jeffrey Loewenstein) The Craft of Creativity, the SAJ framework formalizes how creativity (the Artist) works alongside other cognitive tools to help us think, work, and live better. “People think of creativity as this magical ability. No, it’s a skill that can be developed. If you can think about a subject, you can think creatively about it,” Cronin says.

By extension, there’s hope for anyone striving to achieve intellectual balance by strengthening their Scientist, Artist, or Judge—whichever might be a bit undernourished. “Step one is just to make people aware,” Cronin says. “They think either thinking is one undifferentiated blob, or the three are totally remote and separated from one another.”

The SAJ framework can also be an active tool for structuring decision-making in a balanced way. “If I have an idea for the way things could be, I know that I need to also know how they actually work…And when you encounter unbalanced thinking, like a bureaucrat who lacks the imagination (i.e. Artist) to conceive that there may be other ways to deal with a situation, you can remind that person how everything we now take for granted was once thought impossible.”

Cronin has been teaching the SAJ framework in his management courses for more than five years, and he feels it will only grow more impactful as AI challenges organizations to define the value-add that human minds can bring to a problem set.

“AI can tell you whatever you want to know,” he says. “But that doesn’t guarantee it’s correct—that’s the Scientist. It doesn’t tell you what you should do—that’s the Judge. And it will predict only from the most likely outcomes—definitely not the Artist.”

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Study: Left-handed CEOs are more innovative

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 02:32:28 +0000

Study: Left-handed CEOs are more innovative Jennifer Anzaldi Tue, 04/29/2025 - 22:32

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June Woo Park

Q: What do Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common (besides the obvious)?
A: All three belong to a community comprising about 10 percent of the population—the community of the left-handed.

And they’re far from the only business luminaries who are members. Steve Forbes, Oprah Winfrey, and Lou Gerstner (of IBM fame) are left-handed, as were John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Ratan Tata.

Of course, this could be a mere coincidence—but perhaps not. The popular belief that left-handers think more creatively—and hence may enjoy an innovative edge in business—has been supported by cognitive neuroscience research, which shows that the left hand is controlled by the brain’s right hemisphere, a region closely associated with creative thinking. However, conflicting findings and limited research evidence prevent broad conclusions about the correlation between creativity and handedness, let alone its potential implications for business leadership.

A forthcoming research publication by Long Chen and June Woo Park, two accounting professors at the Costello College of Business at 91��, constitutes the first rigorous scholarly investigation into whether—and how—handedness plays a role in business innovation.

June Woo Park and Long Chen

The paper was co-authored by Albert Tsang of Southern University of Science and Technology and Xiaofang Xu of Beijing Technology and Business University.

The researchers searched Google for photos and videos of S&P 500 CEOs engaged in activities like writing, throwing, drawing, and eating to determine their dominant hand, if wasn’t already disclosed in published sources. “We looked at pictures of them on the golf course to see how they held their clubs,” Park explains. “We also noted which wrist they wore their watch on; left-handed people often wear it on the right.” When in doubt, they followed up with calls or emails to the respective companies. All in all, they were able to identify the handedness of 1,008 CEOs across 472 companies: 91.4 percent were right-handed, 7.9 percent left-handed, and 0.7 percent mixed.

The researchers then looked at the numbers of patents and citations received by the firms from 1992 to 2015. They controlled for firm and industry characteristics, as well as other personal traits known to affect CEO innovativeness (such as age, education, risk preference shaped by experience, birth order, and founder status).

In addition, they performed several follow-up tests, including one focused on a narrow subset of firms that unexpectedly switched from a right-handed CEO to a left-handed one due to unforeseeable circumstances such as death or illness.

Every variation of the study produced essentially the same result: Firms led by left-handed CEOs demonstrate significantly higher innovative output. The differences were qualitative as well as quantitative. Patents under left-handed leadership were more likely to represent something new under the sun, rather than a spin-off from established technology.

The researchers hypothesized that the left-handers’ creative orientation would impact the way they ran their firms, including hiring decisions. Indeed, they found that companies applied for more H-1B and STEM visas when left-handers were at the helm. This emphasis on talent acquisition was not only a key indicator of innovation commitment, but may have also contributed to the firms’ creative advantage.

“We find that left-handed CEOs are more likely to hire immigrant inventors in STEM fields, and are also more likely to be inventors themselves,” Chen says. “These findings strengthen our argument by highlighting specific ways in which left-handed CEOs may directly enhance firm innovation.”

Still, piling up patents doesn’t automatically produce outcomes that will make customers and shareholders happy. Ultimately, firm performance is what matters in evaluating business success. As additional analyses in the study suggest, firms led by left-handers had higher return on assets and stronger buy-and-hold returns than peers with a right-handed leader.

“They outperformed their counterparts,” Park summarizes. “Investors are drawn to innovative firms, and left-handedness is one of the factors investors could use in their stock-picking.”

Yet innovative success is complex and multifaceted. Left-handedness is only one potentially meaningful trait among many—a lot more are yet to be explored.

“Our results are based on a large sample. But investors should not assume a CEO that is not left-handed lacks innovative potential,” Chen says.

For their ongoing and future research projects, Chen and Park are looking beyond left-handedness to explore other deeply personal CEO traits that may have business implications.

“We find it fascinating to draw on insights from disciplines outside accounting and finance,” Chen says. “CEO decisions may be shaped by factors like family experiences, genetics, academic background, career paths, and more—really, the full range of experiences that makes them who they are. Understanding that can help market participants better interpret and predict CEOs’ decision-making.”

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The work-from-home blues have a secret source: nostalgia

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:25:23 +0000

The work-from-home blues have a secret source: nostalgia Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 09/19/2024 - 10:25

For at least two years, CEOs have been trying to bring employees back to the office, citing remote work’s supposed negative effects on productivity, morale, and creative collaboration. Managers, we’re told, are having a hard time monitoring and motivating dispersed teams. But what if bringing employees back to the office won’t put the genie back in the bottle?

Kevin Rockmann, professor of management at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at 91��, argues that the furor over remote work masks deeper cultural issues at play in many organizations. This cultural malaise has employees pining for an imagined past where they felt grounded and connected with their colleagues. In short, remote workers aren’t unmanageable—they’re suffering from pangs of nostalgia.

Kevin Rockmann

Rockmann’s recently published research paper in Journal of Management (co-authored by Jessica Methot of Rutgers University and Emily Rosado-Solomon of Babson University) documents the results of surveys conducted during the height of Covid (September 2020). The thrice-daily surveys were delivered over a two-week period to 110 full-time professionals. Respondents were asked to report on their feelings of nostalgia, as well as emotional coping strategies, task performance, and counterproductive work behaviors (e.g. withholding support from colleagues and stealing time from their employer).

The overwhelming majority of participants (98 out of 110) admitted to experiencing nostalgia for life before Covid. And these feelings could have either positive or negative outcomes, depending on how the respondents dealt with them. Rockmann points to two pathways that showed up across the surveys as a whole, which he labels “approach” and “avoid.”

One way respondents reacted to nostalgia was to use so-called “cognitive change” strategies, which help regulate emotions through shifts in perspective. For example, someone feeling sad about being trapped at home during the pandemic could think to themselves, “It could be so much worse. At least I don’t have Covid like so many others.” These strategies seemed to evoke empathetic responses, leading the survey participants to reach out to colleagues to check in or offer assistance.

Equally prevalent in Rockmann’s results, however, was a much darker pathway. Instead of reaching out to others in response to nostalgia, respondents tended to turn inward in an attempt to minimize the emotional discomfort. Psychological researchers call this sort of reaction “attentional deployment.” “It’s a defense mechanism whereby you don’t feel you have the means to really connect with others, so you leverage your attention away from the source of pain,” Rockmann explains. This pathway led to incidents of “acting out”—the above-mentioned counterproductive work behaviors.

Rockmann says these Covid-era findings remain relevant for at least two reasons. First, survey respondents’ written comments sound like they could have been written yesterday, rather than four years ago. Common nostalgic themes revolved around co-workers, the structure of co-located work, etc.—all oft-heard plaints of remote workers in 2024. Second, the normalization of remote work well predated Covid—as Rockmann’s past research on the topic has documented. Covid accelerated an inevitable transition that was already well underway. Therefore, workers of a certain age would likely be feeling some nostalgia, even if there had never been a Covid pandemic.

“While return-to-office may make sense for some companies, I would emphasize that nostalgia cannot be fixed that way. Nostalgia is about longing for the past—or, more accurately, longing for a return to how we remember the past, usually through rose-colored lenses.”

How can organizations help employees conquer nostalgia, or at least encourage healthier ways of coping with nostalgia? The obvious answer might be what CEOs are trying to do—end remote work altogether. “While return-to-office may make sense for some companies, I would emphasize that nostalgia cannot be fixed that way. Nostalgia is about longing for the past—or, more accurately, longing for a return to how we remember the past, usually through rose-colored lenses,” Rockmann says.

Any political demagogue will tell you that people are most susceptible to nostalgia when they feel isolated and afraid. The fact that nostalgia is so widespread in today’s workplace would seem to confirm Rockmann’s past research showing how organizational cultures fail to promote positive relationships among employees.

Combating the nostalgia epidemic will require a cultural reset for many organizations. “Managers will need to engage much more closely with employees, asking sensitive questions (e.g. “What do you miss about working here before Covid?”) and co-creating individualized solutions to help employees fully adjust to the major changes in their working environment,” Rockmann says.

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When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 14:42:32 +0000

When expressing gratitude, it’s all in the timing Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 09/04/2024 - 10:42

Thanks so much for reading this article all the way to the end! No, that wasn’t an editorial error. It’s a savvy managerial motivation strategy lurking somewhere in almost every employee’s inbox or Slack channel.

Mandy O’Neill, an associate professor of management at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at 91��, has discovered a potential new addition to the annals of managerial motivation techniques: anticipatory gratitude.

Mandy O'Neill

We all know that thanking people for a job well-done, or a much-needed favor, is an effective form of positive reinforcement. Psychology researchers classify gratitude as a “socially engaging emotion” that promotes prosocial behavior and strong interpersonal relationships. In the course of exploring how employees cope with high-stress or frustrating work situations, O’Neill and her co-author Hooria Jazaieri of Santa Clara University discovered an interesting wrinkle in what we thought we knew about this popular emotion: Gratitude can be used as a form of emotion regulation and, when expressed ahead of time instead of after the fact, can produce that extra “oomph” when it comes to employee resilience and persistence.

Their paper is in press at Academy of Management Discoveries.

The researchers stumbled upon the power of anticipatory gratitude while researching organizational culture and change within the intensive care units of a leading U.S. hospital. It’s difficult to imagine a more gut-wrenching, high-stakes work environment: The ICU units in question receive what one employee called “the sickest of the sickest” from throughout the region. To decompress and process their emotions after especially difficult shifts, employees routinely emailed the group using an internal listserv. O’Neill and Jazaieri were forwarded four years’ worth of messages, which they analyzed with the help of direct experience gained from extensive site visits to the hospital.

In addition to writing heartfelt outpourings of post facto gratitude, ICU colleagues thanked one another for rising to occasions that had not yet occurred. Some of these emails were pre-emptively apologetic (“I may have to take a day or two off from time to time…Thank you for your patience and understanding”). Others seemed to function as pep talks, inspiring teams to keep up the good work (“Thank you…for bringing your a-game to work every day”).

As O’Neill describes it, “The ‘thanks in advance’ phenomenon involves an awareness that you’re going to be annoyed or upset by what I’m asking you to do, so I infuse you with the positivity of that feeling you get when someone expresses gratitude to you. Think about it as an emotional buffer. It helps with the inevitable distress of the task that’s going to happen later. It makes those negative emotions less salient, less powerful, and less insidious.”

The researchers launched several follow-up studies to learn more about the effects of anticipatory gratitude. They chose a context—Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) gig-work platform—that was in many ways the polar opposite of the ICU. “You go from the ultimate interdependent work environment to the ultimate transactional work environment,” O’Neill explains.

“The ‘thanks in advance’ phenomenon involves an awareness that you’re going to be annoyed or upset by what I’m asking you to do, so I infuse you with the positivity of that feeling you get when someone expresses gratitude to you. Think about it as an emotional buffer."

The MTurk workers were assigned to solve extremely difficult puzzles. After completing the paid task, they received negative feedback about their performance and were offered the opportunity to do additional puzzles without being paid. MTurkers who had seen a message of gratitude before the main task voluntarily took on significantly more unpaid work than those who received a similar message after the paid exercise.

“What’s so compelling and surprising for us is that anyone who does work with experienced online gig worker populations knows it’s nearly impossible to induce workers to go beyond their assignment, even by 30 extra seconds, which is about what we were asking for,” O’Neill says.

Questionnaires administered during the study revealed that anticipatory gratitude enhanced feelings of communal self-worth, which contributed to the participant’s resilience, that is, their ability to “bounce back” after the initial failure. In a third study, the researchers found anticipatory gratitude was better than a related positive affect—anticipatory hope—at motivating MTurkers to persevere at (i.e., spend more time on) a different set of challenging puzzles.

At this point, the potential for managerial manipulation should be crystal clear. Indeed, it was evident even to some of the gig workers, who wrote private messages such as, “It may be partial trickery for academic purposes but it was still nice to hear.”

"Gratitude can’t be a substitute for fair pay and decent work conditions...But our findings are clear: anticipatory gratitude works; it is effective.”

For O’Neill, these findings show that gratitude is more complicated than we previously thought. “This paper is one of the very few to show that gratitude isn’t always authentic and prosocial. It can be used strategically, especially for managers,” she says.

Sincerity and strategy are not mutually exclusive. Empathic managers whose feelings of gratitude are so strong that they have to be expressed beforehand could still be taking advantage of the “thanks in advance” phenomenon.

“In all organizations, you need people to stick with difficult or thankless or boring tasks. The challenge, of course, is how to do so ethically. Gratitude can’t be a substitute for fair pay and decent work conditions, for example. But our findings are clear: anticipatory gratitude works; it is effective,” O’Neill says.

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Scared to negotiate job offers? Do it anyway. Here’s why.

Jennifer Anzaldi — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:17:48 +0000

Scared to negotiate job offers? Do it anyway. Here’s why. Jennifer Anzaldi Tue, 07/16/2024 - 10:17

Getting a job offer can be a joyful experience. Often, however, the elation quickly gives way to a state of anxiety, as candidates agonize over whether to accept the terms on the table, or negotiate for better ones. After all, it’s commonly believed that job candidates who negotiate, risk losing the opportunity.

Einav Hart

Einav Hart, assistant professor of management at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at 91��, challenges that assumption in a recent research paper for Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Her findings suggest that the expected worst-case scenario—having a job offer rescinded—may be a much more remote possibility than most job candidates believe.

The paper was co-authored by Julia Bear of Stony Brook University and Zhiying (Bella) Ren of University of Pennsylvania.

The researchers conducted seven studies involving more than 3,000 participants. To start with, they surveyed job candidates, hiring managers, and experienced professionals. These surveys showed that job candidates thought it highly likely that negotiating would lose them the job offer, while managers took a more flexible view. The hiring managers reported extending an average of 26.9 job offers during their careers, only 1.73 of which were withdrawn after a candidate negotiated.

In subsequent studies using in-person and online negotiations, Hart and her co-authors found that even taking on an imaginary role changes how one views the negotiation and its risks. They randomly assigned participants to play either a “job candidate” or a “hiring manager,” with real money at stake based on any agreed-upon job offer.

The researchers found that two psychological mechanisms were particularly relevant to explain job candidates’ exaggerated risk estimation: zero-sum perceptions, or the idea that parties in a negotiation are fighting over a fixed and finite resource, and power perceptions, i.e., how much candidates felt they had the ability to influence the hiring manager. Moreover, because of their concern about losing the deal, nearly half the candidates chose to accept the offer as is and not to negotiate.

All else being equal, candidates tended to take a much more competitive (i.e., zero-sum) view of negotiations and a less optimistic view of their power than did the “managers.” This may help explain why so many of us shy away from bargaining for better job offers, to our own detriment.

Hart says that “negotiating is not just zero-sum. Besides negotiating salary, maybe you care more about teleworking than a small signing bonus. The hiring manager might really appreciate the savings and be flexible about how often you come into the office. Thus, this negotiation (and many others) can have a win-win, mutually beneficial solution.”

Indeed, candidates primed to consider negotiation as a potential win-win interaction (as opposed to zero-sum) were less likely to fear losing the deal entirely, and by extension to forgo negotiations. Likewise, candidates primed to have higher power perception were less concerned about jeopardizing a deal and less likely to forgo negotiation. However, even with low zero-sum or power perceptions, candidates still overestimated their risk of losing the deal.

“Besides negotiating salary, maybe you care more about teleworking than a small signing bonus. The hiring manager might really appreciate the savings and be flexible about how often you come into the office. Thus, this negotiation (and many others) can have a win-win, mutually beneficial solution.” —Einav Hart

At the same time, Hart’s prior work suggests that negotiation is a decision that should be made carefully by each party. A previous paper introduced the concept of “Economic Relevance of Relational Outcomes” (ERRO), which points to the fact that there is often a long-term financial advantage in preserving strong relationships, over and above incremental gains to be won in any one negotiation.

Hart says, “Consider negotiating for a babysitter’s rate. What use is negotiating for a great deal on the rate if the babysitter feels bullied in the negotiation and is not excited to take care of your kids?”

Negotiating a job offer is tough and there is a legitimate risk that negotiating can jeopardize the deal. However, Hart’s research suggests that job candidates overestimate this risk and can often obtain better outcomes through negotiating a job offer—at least if they preserve a good relationship.

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Women’s empowerment in the workplace starts with smarter networking

ckearney — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 17:13:51 +0000

Women’s empowerment in the workplace starts with smarter networking ckearney Mon, 03/11/2024 - 13:13

Women’s History Month offers a chance to examine the gender leadership gap. According to a 2022 World Economic Forum report, just 31% of global leadership roles are held by women.

Sarah Wittman. Photo provided

Networking is one effective way to bridge the gap, but research shows that women are at an unfair disadvantage in this area. Sarah Wittman, an assistant professor of management at Costello College of Business at 91��, unpacks this complex problem and proposes some potential research-based solutions.

Why is it important for women to network as much—and as strategically—as men?

To rise to the top, you have to be known and known of. You have to have social capital—and a social network that makes a difference. Of course, nobody likes to be thought of as “that person”: the person who uses other people for their own advancement. Yet research suggests that in professional networks women are less likely than men to network instrumentally, accumulate instrumental ties and, thus, less likely to have within their networks the powerful people who can help them advance and get things done. Over time, women’s network deficits accumulate: especially in an age of online social media including LinkedIn, if you didn’t connect with colleagues in your last job, you likely aren’t connecting this job. And those people are the ones who know you and could help you land your next job.

What, then, can women do to build useful career networks?

One piece of advice is, of course, to change your mentality—so that networking becomes relationship-building not just contact-accumulation. That fits better with what is expected of women and is less likely to receive backlash. Where networking is “just” relationship-building, it becomes less intimidating and, quite frankly, less grossly utilitarian. Especially when you’re not needing anything now, you can creatively focus on what you might give. Rather than thinking about the resources you might need, think about what resources you might represent for others. The universe repays, and having established contacts when you do need to leverage them is invaluable.

Second, make network-building easy on yourself. Just do it. LinkedIn particularly and other similar online social media are amazing tools because they are both personal and surprisingly impersonal. These days, people link with people they don’t even actually know—but perceive as working in the same industry, or in a relevant function. Linking with those possibly relevant others will not only be low risk (the “no,” if there is one, doesn’t come face-to-face), but where you engage with the platform, the professional content that you produce will allow you and your resources to become known, and known of, across your contacts’ feeds.

It’s easier to start with networks that you legitimately belong to alumni of – your high school, university, or sorority, and people who share some element of your professional past or present (ex- or present colleagues). You never know who is doing what, and how that might be related to your own career.

Unbeknownst to you, you may already have valuable social capital at your fingertips, in so-called “multiplex” ties—ones that can serve multiple ends. Do you know what your neighbors do for work? What about your children’s friends’ parents? Or your spouse’s co-workers’ spouses (or children)? But, again, the more of a decent human being you are in these relationships, the more likely they might be willing to provide professional value as well.

So the networking gap boils down to women being “too nice,” not aggressive enough to put themselves out there?

No! Scholars have written extensively on the so-called “double-bind” for women, especially those in leadership positions. Research shows that—regardless of what they do—they will be judged negatively based on warmth versus competence. Too nice? Not smart, and disrespected. Too strategic? Cold and conniving, and disliked. This goes for networking, too. Women who “reach for the top” in their networking are not seen as team players (violating feminine norms of communalism) and may suffer a status penalty versus women who have less instrumental networks. But women who don’t have those instrumental ties aren’t able to advance.

“Fixing women” is not the answer. In the C-suite, empowering words for women must be matched by action. Senior leaders must be ready to appoint capable and deserving women to positions of organizational relevance.

Closer to home, men who love women and have seen women’s challenges firsthand tend to be some of our biggest allies. CEOs with daughters, for example, are more likely to have women join their boards. Men: Understand that the women whose advancement you empower today will—en masse—be the role models that pave the way for the advancement of your own daughters, nieces, and granddaughters.

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What’s worse than a ‘toxic’ workplace? One that gaslights employees

Marianne Klinker — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 19:15:18 +0000

What’s worse than a ‘toxic’ workplace? One that gaslights employees Marianne Klinker Mon, 09/11/2023 - 15:15

When it comes to relationships between co-workers, organizations’ stated priorities must match what’s happening under the hood.

These days, we hear a lot about “toxic bosses,” “toxic companies,” and the like. It’s easy to forget that non-toxicity is not all we want from an employer. If we’re really honest, most of us want to be part of an organization where working relationships are consistently healthy and supportive. Our dream company would also be a place where advancement opportunities were available to all, not only those who regularly have lunch or go golfing with the right people.

It might not shock you to learn that few companies have fully achieved this sort of actively anti-toxic as opposed to superficially non-toxic working culture. Those that have, though, tend to be more resilient when crisis hits, according to Kevin Rockmann, professor of management at 91�� School of Business.

Kevin Rockmann

“If even one person is an isolate, that’s a problem,” Rockmann says. “That’s information you’re not benefiting from…It’s not about everybody being best friends, it’s just about having productive working relationships that are characterized by respect, so that when the [expletive] hits the fan, people are going to step up.”

In a recently published paper for Strategic Organization, Rockmann and co-author Caroline A. Bartel (of University of Texas-Austin) theorize that such working cultures require concerted and sustained attention at all organizational levels—especially the top. Unstinting focus from above spurs the creation of structures and practices for supporting positive interpersonal relationships, which the paper terms “systems for relational advocacy.”

Rockmann’s theory adopts the attention-based view of the firm as an interpretive framework for organizational activity, as opposed to its chief competitor, the resource-based view. While the latter, according to Rockmann, centers on “the resources that an organization has or can access,” the former recognizes that “Resources are important, but it’s really about how we leverage those resources. What are organizational leaders paying attention to?” His paper forms part of a special issue of Strategic Organization devoted to the attention-based view.

Outside of relational advocacy—which relatively few firms actually practice—the paper identifies two main types of relational systems, reflecting different ways senior leaders can manage their attention.

Relational antipathy describes organizations that have made a strategic decision to deprioritize relationship-building among employees. This may be because senior leaders believe that a culture of competition rather than cooperation would be better for their firm, or because the business model is thought to lend itself to more transactional relationships (e.g. gig economy start-ups). In any case, Rockmann emphasizes that relational antipathy can be a workable system, especially when characterized by fairness as opposed to exploitation.

Rockmann reserves his strongest criticism for systems of relational indifference, where lip service may be paid to the importance of positive relationships (“we care about everyone!”), but senior leaders do not allocate the attention needed to create and maintain those relationships long-term.

“I was talking to an HR person at this company, who said, ‘We started this awards program to recognize employees who helped each other out.’ I asked them, ‘That’s great, so how many people are getting awards?’ They said ‘Well, no one’s been getting the awards recently. We keep forgetting to send the announcement out and the rewards behind it are pretty minimal.'”

To Rockmann, this is a quintessential example of the dangers of relational indifference because it shows how espoused good intentions become mere gaslighting without organizational follow-through. “Nobody was told that part of their job evaluation that year was to make sure they do that awards program,” he explains. “What could have been a way to bring people closer together and incentivize stronger relational connections falls by the wayside. And that weakens the organization, because relationships are how we’re going to solve crises.”

Instead of a tightly woven, resilient network of relationships, relationally indifferent organizations are susceptible to cliquishness and a social order split into in-groups and out-groups. As with any laissez-faire system, the concentration of capital—in this case, social capital—is much less democratic. This can torpedo morale throughout the organization, as mutual resentment and incomprehension sets in among outsiders and insiders.

Due to these dynamics, leaders of relationally indifferent organizations cannot necessarily trust what their own employees are telling them. “Typically, what happens is you do a survey and the people that feel like they aren’t going to be listened to don’t fill it out. And so you get results that are positive or very positive, and you think, well, our workplace is great.”

Rockmann therefore advises that leaders should “realize that they are products of the clique-ish system, so they need objective data. Be willing to listen to ombuds or consulting companies who come in to assess your workforce.”

If they find there’s a need to move from relational indifference to relational advocacy, what should leaders pay attention to first? “To me, the lowest-hanging fruit are the job descriptions. Put in the manager’s job description that part of their incentive is how well-connected their people are. Put in the employee's job description that ‘part of your job is helping other people do theirs’.

“A lot of people are not intrinsically motivated to form supportive working relationships,” Rockmann summarizes. “So if they’re not relationally motivated, you have to be explicit.”

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Strategy - Costello

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In This Story

Kevin Rockmann

Should you always negotiate? Not always, according to this Mason expert

ckearney — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 20:09:34 +0000

Should you always negotiate? Not always, according to this Mason expert ckearney Tue, 02/28/2023 - 15:09

In This Story

Einav Hart

Negotiation is a critical skillset in business and in society. Negotiation is a complicated, joint decision problem where parties can, potentially, make each other better off—but also have some competing interests. For example, you might want a higher bonus while your boss wants to keep expenses low.

Einav Hart. Photo provided

Much of the advice about how to negotiate focuses on the terms of the negotiated deal. You might think, then, that more—and more aggressive—negotiations would always lead to better outcomes. Einav Hart, assistant professor of management at 91��, suggests that our relationships and context influence how we should negotiate—and even whether it is a good idea to negotiate at all.

“The idea that we can ‘win’ a negotiation reflects a belief that we are competing and need to take as much as we can,” said Hart, “but focusing on the short-term gains might lead to worse outcomes in the long term.”

For example, negotiating aggressively with a new hire might cause them to agree to a lower salary, but it might also harm their morale, their commitment to the organization, and their work effort. As a result, your outcome—even if you saved a few thousand dollars on salary—may be worse than it would be if you had built a relationship through a more collaborative negotiation process.

Hart’s research introduces the concept of “ERRO”—the “Economic Relevance of negotiators’ Relational Outcomes”—to help us decide when and how to negotiate. These decisions should depend on how much your relationship with your negotiation counterpart matters economically.

“When you buy a barbecue grill, for instance, the price you pay may determine your economic outcome more than your relationship with the seller,” said Hart. “However, when you hire a service provider—such as a babysitter, a caterer, or a contractor—a poor relationship following the negotiation may harm the economic value you derive from the agreement, and a positive relationship might increase the economic value you derive.”

Thus, buying a grill has low ERRO, but hiring a babysitter has high ERRO.

In a low ERRO context (like that BBQ grill), aggressive or competitive negotiation tactics that sacrifice relational outcomes may work just fine. But in high ERRO contexts (think babysitter), negotiating aggressively is likely to backfire in the long term. Collaborative tactics ,such as asking questions, expressing empathy, and making concessions (or even not negotiating), may get you the best outcome overall—even if you seemingly leave some money on the table.

In most cases, Hart said, the real value of a negotiation is created after parties leave the bargaining table. Thus, the decision to enter a negotiation is a decision that should be made carefully and strategically.

Hart’s research on organizational behavior and decision making explores how people communicate about conflict and sensitive topics, and how negotiating affects people's future, post-agreement relationships and performance. Her work integrates insights from psychology, and game theory. Prior to joining Mason, Hart was a data scientist at Uber and a visiting scholar at Wharton.

To reach Einav Hart directly, contact her at ehart8@gmu.edu.

For more information, contact Benjamin Kessler at bkessler@gmu.edu.

About George Mason
91�� is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls nearly 40,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Learn more at www.gmu.edu.

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Costello College of Business

Strategy - Costello

Tip Sheet

negotiations

When It Comes to Innovation, More Is More

Jennifer Anzaldi — Mon, 02 May 2022 14:40:33 +0000

When It Comes to Innovation, More Is More Jennifer Anzaldi Mon, 05/02/2022 - 10:40

In This Story

Sharaya Jones

We tend to believe great innovations speak for themselves. Once they’ve connected with the marketplace, successful innovations acquire an aura of inevitability. It’s easy to forget that they were once only an idea on paper, competing with others for buy-in and resources.

In this earliest stage of innovation, creative proposals are judged according to their perceived novelty and usefulness. Sharaya Jones, assistant professor of marketing at Mason, has a simple yet counterintuitive rule for would-be innovators hawking their ideas: More is more.

Her recent paper in Marketing Science, co-authored by Laura J. Kornish of University of Colorado Boulder, pits verbose and detailed idea descriptions against terse ones. Over several studies, participants were shown random selections from a pool of descriptions—including short, very short, long-winded and highly specific versions of the same basic idea (all of which came from an actual crowdsourcing platform). They then scored each proposal for creativity, market uniqueness, and intent to purchase the hypothetical product. The longer and more specific they were relative to the others viewed by the participant, the higher their creativity score.

Subsequent studies revealed how this maximalist bias works. When participants were surveyed on their experience of reading the descriptions, a chain of associations surfaced between how easy it was to keep track of a description’s central concepts (which the researchers termed “fluency”), perceived complexity and the creativity score. Longer text that ventured into the weeds was harder for the reader to follow, which made it appear more complicated and thus more creative.

“When you have all these different pieces and you’re trying to fit them together, that’s basically the definition of complexity. And there’s a body of research linking complexity and novelty,” said Jones.

Remember, though, that novelty is only one of the two chief creativity criteria—the other being usefulness. When developing products and services for sale to consumers, it’s crucial to keep usefulness in mind, lest you end up with a cool innovation that has no clear practical purpose. The researchers used participants’ purchase intent as a rough indicator of perceived usefulness, as the two qualities are closely related. The correlation between length/granularity and purchase intent was slight to non-existent. Elaborate, highly specific descriptions may have been deemed more creative, but they did not induce readers to open their wallets.

“The more fluent an idea is, i.e., the easier it is to interpret, the more purchase intent increases,” explained Jones. “So that’s why there’s this balance, where novelty and usefulness are kind of at odds with each other.”

Ideally, there would be an equilibrium of novelty and usefulness criteria. But prior research finds that usefulness is often undervalued. Or, as the paper states, “Novelty is a much bigger driver of perceived creativity than usefulness is.” In Jones’s research, extreme length differences between the descriptions magnified this effect.

Therefore, one of Jones’s main takeaways is that in early-stage innovation contests, length requirements for entries should be kept within a fairly narrow range—long enough for evaluators to get the picture but not so long that innovators can start piling on the distracting detail. Indeed, in one study the length/creativity correlation disappeared when the researchers grouped the descriptions by length.

Absent a reasonable maximum length, innovators would obviously want to write more rather than less, throwing in specifics where possible. Jones suggests that the same recommendation may apply to everything from job descriptions (especially if you’re trying to attract millennials or Gen Z candidates looking for a creative workplace) to certain types of product marketing. (i.e., brand extensions where the usefulness of the item is already well-established).

The research also suggests that innovations that are mainly about usefulness—the proverbial better mousetrap—may be very marketable but still have a tough time competing with very novel concepts.” Innate pro-novelty bias can be compounded by dazzling descriptions of bright shiny objects. A good way to cut through the noise may be to augment text with visuals or even physical prototypes to render the proposal’s unique value more tangible.

“Putting a little bit more emphasis on usefulness is definitely something that organizations should be doing,” Jones said. “Figuring out other ways to convey usefulness, outside of the written description, could be very helpful, especially for marketers."

Topics

Costello Research Innovation Strategy