Article Abstracts

Articles

Social Comparisons in Boundary-spanning Work: Effects of Community Outreach on Members' Organizational Identity and Identification
Caroline A. Bartel - New York University

This research investigated how experiences in a particular boundary-spanning context (community outreach) affected members' organizational identity and identification. Multimethod panel data from 219 participants showed that intergroup comparisons with clients (emphasizing differences) and intragroup comparisons with other organization members (emphasizing similarities) changed how members' construed their organization's defining qualities. Intergroup comparisons also enhanced the esteem members' derived from organizational membership, which, in turn, strengthened organizational identification. Supervisors reported higher interpersonal cooperation and work effort for members' whose organizational identification became stronger. The results reveal potential outcomes of boundary-spanning work as well as how organizational identification processes operate in everyday work contexts.

Getting to Know You: The Influence of Personality on Impressions and Performance of Demographically Different People in Organizations
Francis J. Flynn - Columbia University
Jennifer A. Chatman - University of California, Berkeley
Sandra E. Spataro - Yale University

This paper extends social categorization theory to understand how personality traits related to information sharing may correspond with positive perceptions of demographically different people, thereby enhancing their experience and performance in organizations. We tested our hypotheses in a sample of MBA candidates and a sample of financial services firm officers and found that people who were more demographically different from their coworkers engendered more negative impressions than did more similar coworkers. These impressions were more positive, however, when demographically different people were either more extraverted or higher self-monitors. Further, impressions formed of others mediated the influence of demographic differences on an individual's performance such that the negative effect of being demographically different disappeared when the relationship between impression formation and performance was considered. This suggests that demographically different people may have more control over the impressions others form of them than has been considered in previous research.

Uncertainty, Imitation, and Plant Location: Japanese Multinational Corporations, 1990-1996
Witold J. Henisz - University of Pennsylvania
Andrew Delios - National University of Singapore

In a study of a sample of 2,705 international plant location decisions by listed Japanese multinational corporations across a possible set of 155 countries in the 1990-1996 period, we use neoinstitutional theory and research on political institutions to explain organizational entry into new geographic markets. We extend neoinstitutional theory's proposition that prior decisions and actions by other organizations provide legitimization and information to a decision marked by uncertainty, showing that this effect holds when the uncertainty comes from a firm's lack of experience in a market but not when the uncertainty derives from the structure of a market's policymaking apparatus.

When Innovations Meet Institutions: Edison and the Design of the Electric Light
Andrew B. Hargadon - University of California
Davis Yellowlees - Douglas University of Florida

This paper considers the role of design, as the emergent arrangement of concrete details that embodies a new idea, in mediating between innovations and established institutional fields as entrepreneurs attempt to introduce change. Analysis of Thomas Edison's system of electric lighting offers insights into how the grounded details of an innovation's design shape its acceptance and ultimate impact. The notion of robust design is introduced to explain how Edison's design strategy enabled his organization to gain acceptance for an innovation that would ultimately displace the existing institutions of the gas industry. By examining the principles through which design allows entrepreneurs to exploit the established institutions while simultaneously retaining the flexibility to displace them, this analysis highlights the value of robust design strategies in innovation efforts, including the phonograph, the online service provider, and the digital video recorder.

Fool's Gold: Social Proof in the Initiation and Abandonment of Coverage by Wall Street Analysts
Hayagreeva Rao - Emory University
Henrich R. Greve - Norwegian School of Management
Gerald F. Davis - University of Michigan

This paper examines the dynamics of social influence in the choices of securities analysts to initiate and abandon coverage of firms listed on the NASDAQ national market. We show that social proof--using the actions of others to infer the value of a course of action--creates information cascades in which decision makers initiate coverage of a firm when peers have recently begun coverage. Analysts that initiate coverage of a firm in the wake of a cascade are particularly prone to overestimating the firm's future profitability, however, and they are subsequently more likely than other analysts to abandon coverage of the firm. We thus find evidence for a cycle of imitation-driven choice followed by disappointment and abandonment. Our account suggests that institutionalization rooted in imitation is likely to be fragile.

Images in Words: Presidential Rhetoric, Charisma, and Greatness
Cynthia G. Emrich - Purdue University
Holly H. Brower - Butler University
Jack M. Feldman - Georgia Institute of Technology
Howard Garland - University of Delaware

We analyzed two sets of U.S. presidents' speeches to determine whether their propensities to convey images in words were linked to perceptions of their charisma and greatness. As predicted, presidents who engaged in more image-based rhetoric in their inaugural addresses were rated higher in charisma (Study 1). Presidents who engaged in more image-based rhetoric in speeches that historians considered their most significant ones were rated higher in both charisma and greatness (Study 2). Together, these findings suggest that the successful articulation and enactment of a leader's vision may rest on his or her ability to paint followers a verbal picture of what can be accomplished with their help.