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New Concepts andTheories in Organizational Behavior. Jason D. Shaw Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota. AMJ ’s Mission.
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New Concepts andTheories in Organizational Behavior Jason D. Shaw Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota
AMJ’s Mission • Authors should strive to produce original, insightful, interesting, important, and theoretically bold research. Demonstration of a significant “value-added” contribution to the field’s understanding of an issue or topic is crucial to acceptance for publication.
Example: Is this Topic Important? Agree-ableness Conscientiousness Compliance Ethical Behavior
When is a Topic Insightful? Performance + + - Situational Ruthlessness +
Advancing New Concepts and Theories • Choose an important topic • More than a nuanced or semantic gap--change the scholarly conversation • Choose an interesting topic • Examine relationships or phenomena where the end isn’t obvious or predictable • Make it insightful • Expand the scope of your model to include relevant mediators and complementary variables
Advancing New Concepts and Theories:Three additional examples • Change the focus or orientation when looking at an issue: • Example: Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) • Typically viewed either as just a “behavior” or from the recipient perspective • New idea: Consider the actor’s viewpoint • Result: Many viewed OCB as “part of the job” • The new concept of “role definitions”
Advancing New Concepts and Theories:Three additional examples • Consider the “bad” of a normatively “good” concept in the literature (or the “good” of a “bad” concept): • Positive affect leads to negative outcomes (Ganster et al., 1998) • If you’re an abusive boss, it’s actually worse if do a few good things (Duffy et al., 2002) • Substantial HRM investments are surprisingly good at retaining poor performers (Shaw et al., 2009)
Advancing New Concepts and Theories:Three additional examples • Challenge a finding by suggesting different causal pathways • Example: Individualists/collectivists react differently to “being envied” by their colleagues (Duffy et al., 2011) • Being envied . . . • activates a “an axis of competition” among individualists • activates a “an axis of fear” among collectivists
Advancing New Concepts and Theories:Conclusions • Three ideas with particular relevance to the AMJ Special Research forum: • In eastern contexts: • How does the viewpoint (e.g., actor or recipient) change what we think about a concept? • Are certain presumed relationships different? • How are the causal pathways different from West to East?