New Concepts andTheories in Organizational Behavior

Jason D. ShawCarlson 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?

Example: Is this Topic Important?

Agree-ablenes

s

Conscientiousne

ss

Compliance

Ethical Behavio

r

When is a Topic Important?

EthicalBehavior

CitizenshipBehavior Compliance

Integrity

Conscient-iousness

Agreeable-ness

When is a Topic Important?

EthicalBehavior

CitizenshipBehavior Compliance

Integrity

Conscient-iousness

Agreeable-ness

GAP

When is a Topic Important?

EthicalBehavior

CitizenshipBehavior Compliance

Integrity

Conscient-iousness

Agreeable-ness

GAP

When is a Topic Insightful?

When is a Topic Insightful?

Situational Ruthlessnes

s

Performance

+ +

+ -

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?