Leadership & Organizational Behavior

The psychological research is clear: bad events affect us much more powerfully than good events. So it stands to reason that burdens weigh more heavily upon our decision processes than do benefits. Negotiations that center around burdens can pose psychological hazards for negotiators — contentiousness, clouded judgment, suspicion, and a diminished understanding of their own interests. The result? A smaller pie of resources, for one thing. Here is a guide to help you avert the dangers.

The better able you are to "get inside the head" of your opponent, the better your negotiated outcomes are likely to be. But very few of us are born with the ability to take on the perspective of others effectively. Fortunately, this skill can be learned. The authors of this article show you how to use perspective taking — the active consideration and appreciation of another person's viewpoint, role, and underlying motivations — to understand your counterpart better and improve the quality of your deals.

We present a model of how culture affects both the conceptualizations and behavioral consequences of power, focusing in particular on how culture moderates the previously demonstrated positive relationship between power and assertive action. Western cultures tend to be characterized by independence, whereas individuals in East Asian cultures tend to think of themselves as interdependent. As a result, power is conceptualized around influence and entitlement in the West, and Westerners behave assertively to satisfy oneself.

The provision of choice is one of the most common vehicles through which managers empower employees in organizations. Although past psychological and organizational research persuasively suggests that choice confers personal agency, and is thus intrinsically motivating, emerging research indicates that there could be potential pitfalls. In this chapter, we examine the various factors that could influence the effects of choice. Specifically, we examine individual-level factors such as the chooser's socioeconomic status and cultural background.

The current research investigates whether observers blame leaders for organizational accidents even when these managers are known to be causally uninvolved. Past research finds that the public blames managers for organizational harm if the managers are perceived to have personally played a causal role. The present research argues that East Asian perceivers, who are culturally oriented to focus on the causal influence of groups [Menon, T., Morris, M. W., Chiu, C., & Hong, Y. (1999). Culture and the construal of agency: Attribution to individual versus group dispositions.

Membership in certain intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), such as the World Trade Organization, has long been argued to stimulate trade. Yet, evidence linking IGOs to trade is mixed. We argue that identifying the influence of IGOs requires attention not only to the institutions IGOs enact, but to the network through which they enact them. We incorporate the full set of IGOs by using shared-IGO membership to create a network of connectivity between countries.

Under what conditions do intricate pre-planned arguments enable negotiators to dominate the conversation and ultimately the outcome? We proposed the advantage occurs when the communication media involves the expectation of rapid turn-taking, because counterparts cannot generate rebuttals in time and end up making concessions. In an experiment with a negotiation task, sellers were provided with either intricate or simple arguments to support a competitive tactic and negotiated via either a quick-tempo (Instant Messaging) or slow-tempo (E-mail) medium.

The aim of strategy is to master a market environment by understanding and anticipating the actions of other economic agents, especially competitors. A firm that has some sort of competitive advantage--privileged access to customers, for instance--will have relatively few competitors to contend with, because potential competitors without an advantage, if they have their wits about them, will stay away. Thus, competitive advantages are actually barriers to entry and vice versa. In markets that are exposed, by contrast, competition is intense.

Focusing on asset returns governed by a factor structure, the APT is a one-period model, in which preclusion of arbitrage over static portfolios of these assets leads to a linear relation between the expected return and its covariance with the factors. The APT, however, does not preclude arbitrage over dynamic portfolios. Consequently, applying the model to evaluate managed portfolios is contradictory to the no-arbitrage spirit of the model.