Innovation in top management teams: Minority dissent,transformational leadership,and radical innovations

Research among lower level teams suggests that minority dissent stimulates team innovation. We consider the role of CEO transformational leadership in the dissent–innovation relation and study this in Top Management Teams (TMTs). We propose that transformational leaders create a psychologically safe team climate, in which dissenting opinions are used effectively to create radical innovations. Members of 36 TMTs (N = 196) completed a questionnaire to assess minority dissent, transformational leadership, and participative safety. CEOs provided data about the innovations implemented by the team. Results showed that minority dissent was positively related to the number of innovations implemented by TMTs. However, only under high levels of transformational leadership were these innovations radical. It was further found that transformational leadership had this effect because it was positively associated with participative safety. These results indicate that minorities stimulate innovativeness and that through transformational leadership CEOs can create a climate in which minority input is transformed into radical innovations. Implications for TMT performance and team innovation are discussed.     

CB1 cannabinoid receptors modulate kinase and phosphatase activity during extinction of conditioned fear in mice

Cannabinoid receptors type 1 (CB1) play a central role in both short-term and long-term extinction of auditory-cued fear memory. The molecular mechanisms underlying this function remain to be clarified. Several studies indicated extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs), the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase with its downstream effector AKT, and the phosphatase calcineurin as potential molecular substrates of extinction behavior. To test the involvement of these kinase and phosphatase activities in CB1-dependent extinction of conditioned fear behavior, conditioned CB1-deficient mice (CB1(-/-)) and wild-type littermates (CB1(+/+)) were sacrificed 30 min after recall of fear memory, and activation of ERKs, AKT, and calcineurin was examined by Western blot analysis in different brain regions. As compared with CB1(+/+), the nonreinforced tone presentation 24 h after auditory-cued fear conditioning led to lower levels of phosphorylated ERKs and/or calcineurin in the basolateral amygdala complex, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal hippocampus, and ventral hippocampus of CB1(-/-). In contrast, higher levels of phosphorylated p44 ERK and calcineurin were observed in the central nucleus of the amygdala of CB1(-/-). Phosphorylation of AKT was more pronounced in the basolateral amygdala complex and the dorsal hippocampus of CB1(-/-). We propose that the endogenous cannabinoid system modulates extinction of aversive memories, at least in part via regulation of the activity of kinases and phosphatases in a brain structure-dependent manner.     

Rational self-interest and other orientation in organizational behavior: a critical appraisal and extension of Meglino and Korsgaard (2004)

B. M. Meglino and M. A. Korsgaard (2004). argued that rational self-interest varies across individuals and negatively relates to other orientation (OO). OO moderates effects of job characteristics on attitudes, motivation, and helping. Viewing organizations as social dilemmas in which employees face a mixture of competitive and cooperative incentives, the author argues in this article that strength of self-interest links to self-concern (SC), which should be distinguished from OO. SC and OO are orthogonal and unipolar. Implications are that some propositions by Meglino and Korsgaard need to be rewritten in terms of SC or OO, and that SC is predicted to moderate effects of self-related variables (e.g., job characteristics), whereas OO might moderate effects of social variables (e.g., team climate) on satisfaction, motivation, and helping. This also implies that when both SC and OO are strong (weak), individual- and group-level constructs are both (in)valid predictors of satisfaction, motivation, and helping.     

Supplication and appeasement in conflict and negotiation: The interpersonal effects of disappointment, worry, guilt, and regret

This study examined the social effects of emotions related to supplication and appeasement in conflict and negotiation. In a computer-simulated negotiation, participants in Experiment 1 were confronted with a disappointed or worried opponent (supplication), with a guilty or regretful opponent (appeasement), or with a nonemotional opponent (control). Compared with controls, participants conceded more when the other experienced supplication emotions and conceded less when the other experienced appeasement emotions (especially guilt). Experiment 2 replicated the effects of disappointment and guilt and showed that they are moderated by the perceiver's dispositional trust: Negotiators high in trust conceded more to a disappointed counterpart than to a happy one, but those with low trust were unaffected. In Experiment 3, trust was manipulated through information about the other's personality (cooperative vs. competitive), and a similar moderation was obtained.     

Conflict's consequences: effects of social motives on postnegotiation creative and convergent group functioning and performance

Two studies tested the effects of social motives during negotiation on postnegotiation group performance. In both experiments, a prosocial or a proself motivation was induced, and participants negotiated in 3-person groups about a joint market. In Experiment 1, groups subsequently performed an advertisement task. Consistent with the authors' predictions, results showed that proself groups performed worse on the convergent aspects of this task but better on the divergent aspects than prosocial groups. In Experiment 2, the authors manipulated social motive and negotiation (negotiation vs. no negotiation), and groups performed a creativity task (requiring divergent performance) or a planning task (requiring convergent performance). Proself groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than prosocial groups on the creativity task, whereas prosocial groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than proself groups on the planning task, and these effects only occurred when the task was preceded by group negotiation.     

Quality of phonological representations, verbal learning, and phoneme awareness in dyslexic and normal readers

This study of dyslexia was concerned with the quality of phonological representations of lexical items. It extended the studies of verbal learning in dyslexia from learning new vocabulary items (pseudo-names) to the learning of more well-specified variants of known words. The participants were 19 dyslexic adolescents in grades 4 to 6 and 19 younger normal readers in grade 2 matched on single word decoding. The dyslexics were significantly outperformed by the reading-age controls in non-word reading and in phoneme awareness. The dyslexics also took longer time to learn to associate a set of pseudo-names with pictures of persons although the dyslexics learned to associate familiar names with pictures as quickly as the controls did. The acquisition of new phonological representations of words was studied in an imitation task with maximally distinct pronunciations of long, familiar words. The dyslexics gained less than the controls in this task. They also gained less on one measure taken from a phoneme substitution task with the same words as in the distinctness task. The results are interpreted in the light of the hypothesis that poorly specified phonological representations may be an underlying problem in dyslexia.     

Paternal care in the social and diurnal striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio): laboratory and field evidence

Paternal care is rare in mammals, occurring mainly in carnivores and neotropical primates, in which the difficulties of long generation time and large individuals lead to small sample sizes. Here, the authors show that paternal care can be easily studied in the four-striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio) because (a) captive males show all the patterns of parental care as do females, with the obvious exception of nursing; (b) in the field, wild males act amicably toward juveniles and retrieve pups experimentally presented to them; (c) the striped mouse facilitates experimental approaches in captivity because it has a short generation period and can be kept in large numbers; and (d) the striped mouse is diurnal, not only making observations in captivity easier but also enabling direct observations in the field.     

Organizational Mediators Siding With or Against the Powerful Party?1

Instead of being impartial, a mediator may side with one party as a function of the disputants' power differences, the mediator's legitimacy judgments, or the disputants' capacity to sanction the mediator. According to the power balancing theory, a mediator sides with the party that has a power disadvantage vis-à-vis the other party. The theory on siding postulates that the mediator sides with the party having more legitimate claims and/or more sanction capacity. A questionnaire study showed that organizational mediators side with the less powerful rather than the more powerful party, especially when this weaker party has equal rather than less capacity to sanction the mediator. Thus, the tendency to balance power is moderated by the mediator's self-interest. Additionally, mediators tend to favor the party they see as more legitimate.     

Effects of gain—loss frames on satisfaction with self–other outcome-differences

This research concerned satisfaction with outcome-differences (advantageous inequity, equity, or disadvantageous inequity) as a function of the individual's gain or loss frame, other's gain or loss frame, the cooperative or noncooperative nature of the relationship, and their interactions. After reading a scenario, subjects rated on a satisfaction-dissatisfaction scale a series of outcome-pairs providing themselves and another party with outcomes. Consistent with Equity Theory, results showed that gain framed individuals found equity more pleasing than advantageous inequity, which in turn was preferred over disadvantageous inequity, but only when the decision making context was coopera- tive rather than noncooperative. In a noncooperative context, gain framed individuals were as pleased with equity as with advantageous inequity. Contrary to Equity Theory, but consistent with Prospect Theory, loss framed individuals were relatively insensitive to outcome-differences and the nature of the relationship. Results finally suggested that advantageous inequity was preferred less when the other party had a loss rather than gain frame, albeit only under cooperative circumstances.