Using an experimental approach, this study shows that the effect of financial performance on tone is weaker in firms led by a more narcissistic chief executive officer (CEO) because narcissistic CEOs inflate the tone relatively more when reporting worse results. This suggests that factoring CEO narcissism into the assessment of the tone of financial disclosures is especially relevant in situations in which firms report negative financial information. Our findings demonstrate that the impact of CEO narcissism may not only exert a direct influence on firm-level outcomes, such as the tone of financial disclosures, but it could also moderate the influence of other factors.

Today’s organizations have come to view and to use workplace teams as information processors, making the ability to manage knowledge and expertise an essential pre-requisite for effective group decisions. Consequently, an important mandate for leaders of information processing groups is to determine an approach that most benefits the group. This paper addresses this critical area by focusing on the structural and social factors affecting leaders’ behavior when guiding group decisions. Specifically, the research considers the effects of power distribution (i.e., location of expertise) on leaders’ choice to contribute their own unique knowledge or to integrate others’ information. The paper proposes that leaders do not always serve as information integrators, but may instead compete with their team members by focusing on their own position rather than promoting consideration of others’ knowledge. In addition, leaders’ perceptions of threat may mediate this result. Data from two experimental studies support these hypotheses.

Today’s organizations have come to view and to use workplace teams as information processors, making the ability to manage knowledge and expertise an essential pre-requisite for effective group decisions. Consequently, an important mandate for leaders of information processing groups is to determine an approach that most benefits the group. This paper addresses this critical area by focusing on the structural and social factors affecting leaders’ behavior when guiding group decisions. Specifically, the research considers the effects of power distribution (i.e., location of expertise) on leaders’ choice to contribute their own unique knowledge or to integrate others’ information. The paper proposes that leaders do not always serve as information integrators, but may instead compete with their team members by focusing on their own position rather than promoting consideration of others’ knowledge. In addition, leaders’ perceptions of threat may mediate this result. Data from two experimental studies support these hypotheses.

To perform well over time, teams must balance competing needs—the need to make quality decisions and the need to coordinate action. However, these elements are paradoxically related because the processes that improve one can inhibit the other. The present article examines the role of task accomplishment phases as moderating the value of cognitive structure on teams’ performance trajectory and end-state performance. Using student teams engaged in a business simulation, we find that heterogeneous task cognition is beneficial in the strategizing phase, but that this effect reverses during the implementation–adjustment phase when homogeneous task cognition becomes more useful. In addition, we examine action processes as a substitute for homogeneous task cognition during implementation–adjustment and propose that teams can overcome suboptimal cognitive configurations. We discuss the implications of our research in terms of what is important for team performance.

Organizations often address agency concerns through reward systems such as goal setting and monetary incentives, and while these are important mechanisms for increasing and aligning employee effort, they can lead to undesirable or unethical behaviors. In this article, we explore the interactive effects of goals and pay structures on the amount of dishonesty that occurs in managerial reporting. Using a simulation replicating the cost reporting decisions made by managers, we find that having cost goals decreases dishonesty when managers are paid a flat wage and increases dishonesty when managers are paid a bonus for hitting certain targets. We also observe a “slippery step” effect, wherein dishonest behavior becomes increasingly worse once managers have crossed a certain threshold of dishonesty. This research helps disentangle the effects of goals and monetary incentives and identifies an important boundary condition to warnings about the dangers of goal setting in organizations.

To perform well over time teams must balance competing needs — the need for quality decisions and the need to coordinate action. However, these elements are paradoxically related because the processes that increase one can inhibit the other. The present article examines the role of team developmental phases as moderating the value of cognitive structures on performance trajectories and end-state performance. Using a longitudinal sample of student teams engaged in a business simulation course, we find that diverse cognitions are beneficial early on, in the strategizing phase; but that this effect reverses in the implementation phase, when homogeneous cognitions become more useful. In addition, we explore the implications of having certain patterns of cognition across phases. We discuss the practical takeaways of our research in terms of what is important for long-term performance.

Today's human resource management community has a strong interest in the issue of how HR practice is implemented by managers and leaders in the workplace. In this article, we investigate how one specific practice, leaders' public recognition of a job well done (i.e., credit allocation), impacts employee turnover. Based on expectancy violations, psychological contracts, and turnover research, we predicted that subordinates would be more likely to leave an organization if their leader took credit for their work, but only if the credit taking violated subordinates' expectations. In a field survey of organizational employees, we found that the effects of credit taking on turnover were negated when subordinates' expectations and leaders' credit allocation behavior were aligned. However, when leaders' credit behavior came as a surprise, participants responded negatively when expectations were not met and positively when expectations were exceeded. We discuss the implications of these results for both theory and practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

When can status peersgroup members at the same status level whose relationship can often be characterized by competition and rivalryexperience more harmony than discord? In the current article, we focus on different behavioral styles and status level as joint predictors of interaction among status peers. Specifically, we posit and find that group members' responses to varying behavioral styles exhibited by their status peers shape important group outcomes (i.e., the desire to continue working together and influence accepted from the peer), with the greatest sensitivity to peer behaviors enacted at the highest status levels. Implications for theories of status and influence in groups are discussed.

We examine the effects of conflict and conflict asymmetry on creativity in interdisciplinary teams. Testing our hypotheses on teams working on graduate-level nanobiotechnology projects, we found task conflict to have a positive relationship with creativity whereas relationship conflict had a negative relationship with creativity. Our results also revealed that relationship conflict asymmetry had a positive effect on creativity. Examining the two components of creativity separately, we found that relationship conflict asymmetry explained variance in the novelty component, whereas task conflict, team size, and functional diversity explained variance in the usefulness component.

We attempt to resolve the seemingly contradictory findings that leaders in teams sometimes advance team outcomes and in other instances thwart performance. In two experiments, we examined the information sharing patterns of team leaders and their impact on decision quality. Contrary to previous research, we found that leaders did not always serve as information integrators, but instead sometimes competed with their team members by advocating for their own position rather than promoting consideration of others’ knowledge. Moreover, the power configuration of the team (i.e., centralized in one individual or distributed across multiple individuals) affected the extent to which leaders took on an integrating or self-advocacy role. Finally, our results show that teams with centralized power performed worse than teams with distributed power, and this difference is attributable to leaders’ enhanced contribution of their own knowledge. We discuss the implications of our findings for leveraging team members’ specialized knowledge.

Purpose– This paper aims to examine how participation in varsity athletics during college affects career success in the first decade after graduation. The paper predicted that student-athletes would develop greater mentoring skills and emotional intelligence, leading to higher starting salaries as they enter the professional workforce and faster rates of salary growth as their careers progress.Design/methodology/approach– Cross-sectional nationwide survey study.Findings– The paper finds that former collegiate athletes score higher on measures of mentoring and emotional intelligence and have higher salaries through the first ten years of their careers than their non-athlete counterparts. The paper also finds that there are significant interaction effects for gender, such that male athletes score higher than male non-athletes on measures of mentoring and emotional intelligence, while female athletes score the same as non-athletes on these measures. Gender also impacted salary differences, such that at the start of their careers, female student-athletes enjoyed a significant salary boost relative to male athletes and both male and female non-athletes, but saw this advantage decrease within five years and disappear altogether by the time they had worked ten years.Originality/value– This study highlights the ways in which participation in collegiate sports affects student-athletes, and how these effects differ for men and women. These findings are worthy of continued investigation and should encourage scholars to question how activities beyond the classroom might affect students' preparation for life and careers after college.

In this paper we investigate how the public recognition of a job well done (i.e., credit allocation) impacts employee turnover. Based on expectancy violations, psychological contracts, and turnover research, we predicted that subordinates would be more likely to leave an organization if their leader took credit for their work, but only if the credit-taking violated subordinates’ expectations. In a field survey of organizational employees, we found that the effects of credit taking on turnover were negated when subordinates’ expectations and leaders’ credit allocation behavior were aligned. However, when leaders’ credit behavior came as a surprise, participants responded negatively when expectations were not met and positively when expectations were exceeded. We discuss the implications of these results for both theory and practice.

This research examines how participation in varsity athletics during college affects career success in the first decade after graduation. We predicted that student-athletes would develop greater teamwork and relationship management skills, leading to higher starting salaries as they enter the professional workforce and faster rates of salary growth as their careers progress. In a cross-sectional nationwide study, we find that former collegiate athletes score higher on measures of mentoring reception, mentoring others, and emotional intelligence and have higher salaries through the first ten years of their careers than their non-athlete counterparts. We also find that there are significant interaction effects for gender, such that male athletes score higher than male non-athletes on mentoring reception, mentoring others, and emotional intelligence, while female athletes score the same as non-athletes on these measures. Gender also impacted salary differences, such that female student-athletes enjoyed a significant salary boost relative to men and female non-athletes at the start of their careers, but saw this advantage decrease within five years and disappear altogether by the time they had worked ten years. We discuss the implications of these results for both theory and practice.

In this paper we examine how the relationship between leaders' credit allocation behavior and subordinates' commitment to their leader is influenced by the fulfillment of subordinates' expectations (i.e., expecting one type of behavior and having that behavior occur). We predicted that subordinates would display less commitment to their leader when their leader took credit for the subordinates' work. However, based on expectancy violations and psychological contracts research, we also predicted that expectation fulfillment would moderate this relationship. In two experimental studies we found that the negative effects of leader credit taking on commitment to the leader were mitigated when the subordinate expected the leader to take credit. However, when subordinates expected to receive credit and did not, the negative impact of leader credit taking was enhanced. We discuss the implications of these results for both theory and practice.

New leaders face a challenging task when they take charge of their teams. They have to determine how best to guide the work process, and they must understand how their behaviors will affect the members of their team. This research examines how a newly assigned team leader's status moderates subordinates' reactions to different leadership styles to affect assessments of the leader's self-confidence and effectiveness, and how this impacts team performance. Across 2 experimental studies, results demonstrate that low-status leaders are rated as more effective when they use a directive style, whereas high-status leaders are viewed as more effective when they use a participative style, and this relationship is mediated by perceptions of self-confidence. In addition, teams whose leaders are viewed more favorably perform better on a complex group task. These findings imply that low-status individuals are able to enhance their level of personal power by drawing on whatever positional power they hold, whereas high-status individuals are better off relying solely on their personal power to influence others. This research also provides a clear demonstration that assessments of new leaders' behaviors are subject to an appraisal that is clouded by observers' status perceptions and attributions.

In this paper we report the results of two experimental studies designed to test how increases in objective power might systematically lead to decreases in self-perceptions of power, which in turn can lead to inaction. We draw upon theories of power and choice to examine these effects. We find that an increase in objective power, via increased autonomy and choice, results in decreased self-perceptions of power. Further, as the choice context requires more expertise, participants faced with making a decision feel more powerless. In addition, results demonstrate that when objective power and self-perceptions of power diverge, self-perceptions of power are a more significant predictor of action. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.