First Look

Abstract—We examine how unfavorable social comparisons differentially spur employees of varying hierarchical levels to engage in deception. Drawing on literatures in social psychology and workplace self-esteem, we theorize that negative comparisons with peers could cause either junior or senior employees to seek to improve reported relative performance measures via deception. In a first study, we use deceptive self-downloads on SSRN, the leading working paper repository in the social sciences, to show that employees higher in a hierarchy are more likely to engage in deception, particularly when the employee has enjoyed a high level of past success. In a second study, we confirm this finding in two scenario-based experiments. Our results suggest that longer-tenured and more successful employees face a greater loss of self-esteem from negative social comparisons and are more likely to engage in deception in response to reported performance that is lower than that of peers.

Publisher's link: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/SSRN%20-%20Org%20Sci%20Rewrite%20for%20ssrn_b75b2c22-40f6-430f-be8f-9797e71fe2ea.pdf

Abstract—General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional explanation for this decline-namely high legacy labor and health care costs-is seriously incomplete and that GM's share collapsed for many of the same reasons that many of the other highly successful American firms of the 50s, 60s, and 70s were forced from the market, including a failure to understand the nature of the competition they faced and an inability to respond effectively once they did. We focus particularly on the problems GM encountered in developing the relational contracts essential to modern design and manufacturing. We discuss a number of possible causes for these difficulties, including GM's historical practice of treating both its suppliers and its blue collar workforce as homogeneous, interchangeable entities as well as its view that expertise could be partitioned so that there was minimal overlap of knowledge amongst functions or levels in the organizational hierarchy and decisions could be made using well-defined financial criteria. We suggest that this dynamic may have important implications for our understanding of the role of management in the modern, knowledge-based firm, and for the potential revival of manufacturing in the United States.

Publisher's link: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/download.aspx?name=14-062.pdf

Abstract—While services already dominate economic activity in all major economies in the world, there has been curiously little investigation into many aspects of service management. For example, while product design and development have received a great deal of attention, the subject of service design has not been very visible in the research literature. There are many individual designers and design firms famous for their contributions to product design, but the same cannot be said for services. Undoubtedly many examples of outstanding service design exist, and we will mention some later in this work. But recognition of service design as a discipline, as a management function, or a job description still seems to be rare.

Publisher's link: http://www.springer.com/new+%26+forthcoming+titles+%28default%29/book/978-3-319-04288-6

Abstract—The author has come to a conclusion that may surprise you: trying to apply management practices uniformly across geographies is a fool's errand. Best practices simply don't travel well across borders. That's because conditions not just of economic development but of institutional maturity, educational norms, language, and culture vary enormously from place to place. Students of managerial practice once thought that their technical knowledge of best manufacturing practices (to take one example) was sufficiently developed that processes simply needed to be tweaked to fit local conditions. More often, it turns out, they have to be reworked quite radically-not because the technology is wrong but because everything around it changes how it will work. There's nothing wrong with the tools we have at our disposal, but their application requires contextual intelligence: the ability to understand the limits of our knowledge and to adapt that knowledge to a context different from the one in which it was acquired. Until we can better develop and apply contextual intelligence, failure rates for cross-border businesses will remain high, what we learn from experiments unfolding around the world will remain limited, and the promise of healthy growth in all parts of the world will remain unfulfilled.

Publisher's link: http://hbr.org/2014/09/contextual-intelligence/ar/1

Abstract—Although linked, researchers have long distinguished appetitive from consummatory phases of reward processing. Recent improvements in the spatial and temporal resolution of neuroimaging techniques have allowed researchers to separately visualize different stages of reward processing in humans. These techniques have revealed that evolutionarily conserved circuits related to affect generate distinguishable appetitive and consummatory signals, and that these signals can be used to predict choice and subsequent consumption. Review of the literature surprisingly suggests that appetitive rather than consummatory activity may best predict future choice and consumption. These findings imply that distinguishing appetite from consumption may improve predictions of future choice and illuminate neural components that support the process of decision making.

Publisher's link: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/interdisciplinary-science-consumption

Abstract—Language pervades every aspect of organizational life. Yet leaders of global organizations-where unrestricted multilingualism can create friction-often pay too little attention to it in their approach to talent management. By managing language carefully, firms can hire and develop the best employees, improve collaboration on global teams, and strengthen the company's footing in local markets. Language proficiency-either in a lingua franca, or shared language, or in a local language-does not guarantee high performance. Recruiters may favor fluency over other capabilities. They may rely on external hires with language skills rather than grooming internal candidates with the capacity and motivation to learn new languages. And leaders may give expatriate assignments not to the best candidates but to people who speak certain languages. To hire and promote the best people, firms may need to provide training to meet global and local language needs. Fluency in a language also does not equal cultural fluency. For leaders, understanding the cultural background of each team member and customers is as essential as learning to conjugate new verbs. The same can be said for employees at all levels: even when they are fluent in the lingua franca, a lack of cultural understanding can cause significant misunderstandings. To prevent such rifts, language training must include cross-cultural education.

Publisher's link: http://hbr.org/2014/09/whats-your-language-strategy/ar/1

Abstract—We study how government green procurement policies influence private-sector demand for similar products. Specifically, we measure the impact of municipal policies requiring governments to construct green buildings on private-sector adoption of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard. Using matching methods, panel data, and instrumental variables, we find that government procurement rules produce spillover effects that stimulate both private-sector adoption of the LEED standard and investments in green building expertise by local suppliers. These findings suggest that government procurement policies can accelerate the diffusion of new environmental standards, which require coordinated complementary investments by various types of private adopter.

Publisher's link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2142085

Abstract—In the first decade of consumer neuroscience, strong progress has been made in understanding how neuroscience can inform consumer decision making. Here, we sketch the development of this discipline and compare it to that of the adjacent field of neuroeconomics. We describe three new frontiers for ongoing progress at both theoretical and applied levels. First, the field will broaden its boundaries to include genetics and molecular neuroscience, each of which will provide important new insights into individual differences in decision making. Second, recent advances in computational methods will improve the accuracy and out-of-sample generalizability of predicting decisions from brain activity. Third, sophisticated meta-analyses will help consumer neuroscientists to synthesize the growing body of knowledge, providing evidence for consistency and specificity of brain activations and their reliability as measurements of consumer behavior.

Publisher's link: http://ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11002-014-9306-1?nosfx=y