SPEAKER

Prof. Myeong-Gu Seo
Professor of Management and Organization
Robert H Smith School of Business
University of Maryland

ABSTRACT

As the majority of workplaces are characterized by hierarchical structures, one of the paramount managerial challenges is understanding and mitigating the dysfunctional aspects of hierarchy to fully unlock its potential for enhancing functionality. Drawing on the social functions of emotion theory, we posit that hierarchy contains hidden emotional-based mechanisms that amplify its dysfunctionality: hierarchical structures induce unpleasant affect and emotional regulation in the form of surface acting, leading to increased emotional exhaustion and reduced proactive contributions among members. These emotional tolls of hierarchy operationalize above and over individuals’ positions within the hierarchy. We examine our theory with four comprehensive studies across various organizational contexts by analyzing data from a multi-national archival context (the World Values Survey) (Study 1), a large Latin American company (Study 2), full-time professionals in US-based organizations (Study 3), and a controlled immersive in-person laboratory experiment (Study 4). Furthermore, our findings demonstrate that introducing an authentic affective climate can effectively mitigate the negative emotional consequences of hierarchical structures. This research advances our theoretical understanding of the interplay between hierarchy and emotion in organizations and provides practical insights for creating healthier, more resilient organizational structures. By doing so, organizations can address the inherent emotion-related challenges of hierarchical structures, thereby enhancing overall well-being and productivity.

SPEAKER

Prof. Christian Zehnder
Professor
University of Lausanne

ABSTRACT

Past research has established that charismatic leadership tactics can be a powerful motivator. In some settings, the increase in work output induced by a charismatic speech is comparable in size to the positive effect of high-powered financial incentives. But what about settings in which incentives backfire? In a between-subject laboratory experiment, we set up a real-effort work environment in which participants can execute a task in two ways: they can either “work hard” so that each produced unit creates a sizable benefit for the principal, or they can “take shortcuts”, which takes much less effort but also substantially reduces the benefit of a produced unit for the principal. When compensation is a fixed wage and the motivation speech is “standard”, we observe that participants mostly focus on the socially optimal, hard version of the task, but the general effort level is not particularly high. Exposing participants to financial incentives motivates participants to raise the overall effort level substantially, but the revenue created for the principal decreases drastically. This counterproductive effect of performance pay is caused by the workers’ decision to concentrate almost exclusively on the inefficient, easy version of the task when incentivized. Combining the fixed wage with a charismatic motivation speech, in contrast, increases both the overall effort level and the revenue for the principal. The positive effect on the effort level is smaller than the one of incentives, but the charismatic speech induces workers to focus on the difficult version of the task. A combination of incentives and a charismatic speech leads to similar outcomes as using incentives alone. These results establish novel insights: On one hand, we show that charisma can be an effective motivation tool even in situations where incentives fail. On the other hand, however, charisma does not shield participants from the corrupting effects of incentives when the two tools are combined in our setting.

SPEAKER

Dr. Eileen Y. Suh
Postdoctoral scholar
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

ABSTRACT

Scholarship regarding occupational gender segregation has almost exclusively focused on women’s experiences (e.g., as targets of discrimination in masculine domains), yet understanding factors that perpetuate men’s underrepresentation in traditionally feminine occupations is equally important. We examine a consequential dynamic early in the job search process in which individuals come to learn that an occupation that fits them is perceived as feminine versus masculine. Our research develops and tests the prediction that the femininity or masculinity of occupations will exert a stronger impact on men’s (versus women’s) interest in them, such that men will be less interested in gender-atypical occupations than women. Across five studies (N = 4,479), we consistently observed robust evidence for this prediction among diverse samples, including high school students (Study 1), unemployed job seekers (Study 2), US adults (Study 3), and undergraduates (Study 4), and using experimental and archival methods. We observed this asymmetry after controlling for alternative accounts related to economic factors (e.g., expected salary), suggesting that they alone cannot fully explain men’s lack of interest in feminine occupations, as previously discussed in the literature. Further, we consistently observed that men, compared to women, show heightened sensitivity to gender-based occupational status, and this greater sensitivity explains men’s (versus women’s) reduced interest in gender-atypical occupations. Though past scholarship suggests that increasing pay is key to stoking men’s interest in feminine occupations, our research suggests that targeting men’s underlying psychological concern—sensitivity to gender-based occupational status—may be an underappreciated pathway to reducing gender segregation.

SPEAKER

Ms. Xing WANG
PhD Candidate in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources
Department of Managerial Studies
University of Illinois Chicago

ABSTRACT

Seeking help from followers is a common leadership practice that confers instrumental benefits to leaders. However, a systematic understanding of its potential downsides and the critical contingencies is largely lacking. Integrating attribution theory with the social cost perspective of help-seeking, we incorporate employee attributions into our model of leader help-seeking to shed light on when this practice may backfire. Moreover, we link leader help-seeking to employee negative gossip through the mediating role of perceived leader effectiveness to explicate the social and reputational costs of leader help-seeking. In Study 1, we collect qualitative data and identify three distinct attributions that employees make for leader help-seeking: leader overwhelming workload attributions, leader ineptitude attributions, and employee competence attributions. In Study 2, we conduct a time-separated field study to test our research model. The results support our hypotheses that employees’ reactions to leader help-seeking are contingent upon their attributions. Leader overwhelming workload attributions buffer the negative impact of leader help-seeking on employees’ perceptions of leader effectiveness, whereas leader ineptitude attributions accentuate the negative relationship between leader help-seeking and perceived leader effectiveness. Furthermore, perceived leader effectiveness is negatively associated with negative gossip targeted toward leaders. The theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.

SPEAKER

Dr. Katherine Qianwen SUN
Postdoctoral Scholar
Anderson School of Business
University of California

ABSTRACT

This research investigates the interpersonal dilemmas East Asian international students face when sharing personal hobbies in U.S. professional contexts. While self-disclosure is a cornerstone of social connection in American settings, East Asian students often hesitate to reveal culturally distinctive interests, fearing miscommunication or social costs. Across four studies, I examine both the psychological barriers to hobby disclosure and the relational consequences of different disclosure strategies. In Study 1, East Asian students preferred to share culturally familiar hobbies but reported feeling less authentic when doing so compared to disclosing culturally distinctive hobbies. Study 2 shows that students disclosing culturally unfamiliar hobbies were perceived as more authentic and human than those sharing familiar or vague responses. Study 3 (currently running) aims to further demonstrate that rich culturalidentity expression—embedding personal meaning and cultural depth in a disclosure—amplifies these positive effects. Study 4 (planned), a chatbot-based interaction paired with a behavioral game, aims to replicate these findings in a more ecologically valid setting. Together, these results reveal the “hidden cost of playing it safe”: although East Asian students strategically favor safe disclosures, authentic sharing—particularly of culturally rich hobbies—fosters greater inclusion and connection, benefiting both individuals and organizations.

SPEAKER

Dr. Ke WANG
Postdoctoral Fellow
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia

ABSTRACT

There is an urgent need for scalable interventions to support workers’ emotional well-being, particularly for workers in under-resourced settings who experience high stress and limited access to mental health resources. One promising approach is enhancing workers’ emotion regulation skills. Although previous literature suggests promise, the long-term effectiveness of this approach is unknown. The present study evaluated a scalable intervention that taught reappraisal—an emotion regulation strategy that alters how individuals interpret challenging situations. We tested this intervention nationwide among low- and middle-income workers (e.g., drivers, teachers, food service workers) in early education, one of the most stressful and underresourced sectors in the United States. Study 1 (n = 1,967), a pre-registered field survey, found positive correlations among reappraisal use, emotional well-being, and job performance. Study 2, a pre-registered longitudinal field experiment (n = 2,488 after exclusion), found lasting improvements in some emotional well-being and workplace outcomes (e.g., job performance, quit intentions) from the reappraisal intervention (vs. active control) six months later. These studies provide the first evidence of reappraisal’s durable effects over time in the workplace, establishing it as a scalable and enduring strategy for improving worker well-being and performance across diverse occupational settings.

SPEAKER

Ms. Yifei Wu
PhD Candidate in Strategy Unit
Harvard Business School

ABSTRACT

Revenue-based financing (RBF) has recently emerged in the digital age as an innovative approach to fund entrepreneurial firms underserved by traditional finance. Yet little is known about how RBF performs in practice. Using proprietary data from MicroConnect – a pioneering RBF startup that invests in growth-oriented consumer-sector brands and chains in China – I examine the impact of RBF contracts on firm and investment outcomes. I find that the RBF investor faces significant challenges in recovering returns, with visible post-investment revenue declining significantly in the early stage of implementation. This puzzle motivates a deeper investigation into moral hazard behaviors induced by RBF contracts. Combining modeling with empirical analysis, I identify revenue hiding and brands’ strategic resource reallocation as key mechanisms. These findings have important implications both for the RBF investor—a startup carrying a value-creating model— and for entrepreneurial firms in search of alternative growth capital.

SPEAKER

Ms. Yanbo Song
Ph.D. Candidate in Organisational Behaviour
INSEAD

ABSTRACT

How do creators pitch unfinished ideas to attract attention and foster engagement from early users? I theorize co-creative incompleteness—a communicative stance that frames early-stage ideas or prototypes as unfinished yet promising and open to collaboration. Unlike investor-oriented entrepreneurial pitches that seek resources, participatory idea pitches invite audiences and users into development, blending emotional signals of openness and vulnerability with cognitive scaffolding for sensemaking. Drawing on Emotions-as-Social-Information (EASI) framework (Van Kleef, 2009, 2014) and sensemaking theories (Dervin, 1998; Weick, 1995), I predict that moderate positive emotion (vs. low or high) in vision communication and feedback solicitation during idea pitching maximizes attention and engagement, while linguistic clarity and informational richness generally improve early outcomes but yield weaker benefits when pitches are already highly distinctive. I test these claims in the video-game industry using manually collected 1,921 Steam Early Access releases in 2022, combining NLP of pitch texts with behavioral responses (i.e., followers, viewers, players, reviews). Results show an inverted-U for positive emotion and positive main effects of cognitive cues, with diminishing returns under high pitch distinctiveness. This study introduces co-creative incompleteness as a framework for idea communication and extends research on emotional signaling, feedback interaction, and crowd-based innovation.

SPEAKER

Mr. Trevor Spelman
Ph.D. candidate in Management & Organizations
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

ABSTRACT

Political polarization is on the rise around the world, and organizations increasingly find themselves on the front lines of managing divisions that spill into the workplace. This talk examines the interpersonal and organizational consequences of political disagreement in two parts.

Part 1 investigates ingroup dissent: Why do people self-censor political views that diverge from their group’s consensus? Across a series of experimental studies, I find that individuals consistently overestimate the social backlash they would face for expressing dissent. This miscalibration leads to unnecessary self-censorship that undermines information exchange, with implications for group learning and decision-making.

Part 2 turns to the workplace, drawing on field surveys, archival analyses, and experimental evidence to demonstrate that political conflict in the workplace is on the rise, that it contributes to employee attrition processes, and that organizations are often ill-equipped to respond to these challenges.

Together, these findings illuminate how political disagreement not only stifles communication within groups but also threatens retention and inclusion at work. More broadly, they underscore the need to understand political conflict as a pressing challenge for organizations navigating an era of deepening societal divides.

SPEAKER

Ms. Victoria Y. Zhang
PhD Candidate in Management Science: Economic Sociology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

ABSTRACT

While Black, Hispanic, and Asian individuals accounted for about 40% of the U.S. population in 2023, they only represented 23% of business owners, earning 12% of revenues. Scholars have typically explained this “racial gap” in entrepreneurial outcomes with supply-side mechanisms, such as entrepreneurs’ financial, human, or social capital. I investigate how the spatial segregation of customers affects inequality in entrepreneurial financial performance. Using Dun and Bradstreet’s ledger of credit applications, GPS data from U.S. cell phones, and credit and debit card data on establishment revenues, I identify the explanatory power of spatially segregated customers on entrepreneurs’ outcomes. Results show that lower-income customers explain about 30% of the gap between Black- and White business owners’ revenues and revenues per customer. Comparing minority and White-owners of similar fast-food establishments and using staggered COVID-19 stimulus checks, I find that minority entrepreneurs attract lower-income customers, which decreases their revenues compared to their White-owned counterparts. Accounting for differences in the income of the customers at Black-owned businesses accounts for 30% of the Black-White gap in revenues and 20% of that gap within the same franchise. This work underscores a key tension in minority entrepreneurship: in-group targeting, while necessary to attract local customers in largely segregated marketplaces, also increases resource disadvantages. Regional economic development thus aids entrepreneurs by improving the purchasing power of customers who frequent the business, augmenting claims that market failure creates barriers to entrepreneurship.