Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Who has power, who is affected by power, and how power is acquired and exercised provide the foundation for understanding human relations. Indeed, to truly understand the dynamics of any organization or firm requires knowing where power resides and where influence flows. The dispersion of power within and between organizations can emerge from formal systems or through the process of informal interaction and is typically conveyed through organizational charts or network maps.

It is widely accepted that entrepreneurial creation affects destruction, as new and better organizations, technologies and transactions replace old ones. This phenomenon is labeled creative destruction, but it might more accurately be called destructive creation, given the driving role of creation in the process. We reverse the typical causal ordering, and ask whether destruction may drive creation. We argue that economic systems may get stuck in suboptimal equilibria due to path dependence, and that destruction may sweep away this inertia, and open the way for entrepreneurship.

Power and choice represent two fundamental forces that govern human behavior. Scholars have largely treated power as an interpersonal construct involving control over other individuals, whereas choice has largely been treated as an intrapersonal construct that concerns the ability to select a preferred course of action. Although these constructs have historically been studied separately, we propose that they share a common foundation — that both are rooted in an individual's sense of personal control.

Theories of visionary leadership propose that groups bestow leadership on exceptional group members. In contrast, social identity perspectives claim that leadership arises, in part, from a person's ability to be seen as representative of the group. Integrating these perspectives, the authors propose that effective leaders often share group members' perspectives concerning the present, yet offer a unique and compelling vision for the group's future.

The ability of humans to display bodily expressions that contradict mental states is an important developmental adaptation. The authors propose that mind-body dissonance, which occurs when bodily displayed expressions contradict mentally experienced states, signals that the environment is unusual and that boundaries of cognitive categories should be expanded to embrace atypical exemplars. Four experiments found that mind-body dissonance increases a sense of incoherence and leads to category expansion.

Research examining both the organizing and activating effects of testosterone in one-shot bargaining contexts has been vexed by inconsistencies. Some research finds that high-testosterone men are more likely to reject unfair offers in an ultimatum game and exogenous administration of testosterone to men leads to less generous offers. In contrast, other research finds that higher prenatal exposure to testosterone predicts more generous dictator game offers and administering testosterone to women leads to more generous ultimatum game offers.

What are the respective roles of the public and private sectors in drug development?

We propose that hierarchy is such a prevalent form of social organization because it is functionally adaptive and enhances a group's chances of survival and success. We identify five ways in which hierarchy facilitates organizational success. Hierarchy (a) creates a psychologically rewarding environment; (b) motivates performance through hierarchy-related incentives; (c) capitalizes on the complementary psychological effects of having versus lacking power; (d) supports division of labor, and, as a result, coordination; and (e) reduces conflict and enhances voluntary cooperation.

Social power, alcohol intoxication, and anonymity all have strong influences on human cognition and behavior. However, the social consequences of each of these conditions can be diverse, sometimes producing prosocial outcomes and other times enabling antisocial behavior. We present a general model of disinhibition to explain how these seemingly contradictory effects emerge from a single underlying mechanism: The decreased salience of competing response options prevents activation of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS).