Organizations that are becoming more diverse and relying on teams to achieve performance outcomes often employ organizational interventions to deliver these outcomes. Although some negative or null side effects have been demonstrated related to these interventions, we argue that many positive side effects are often not captured or are disregarded and warrant further attention. Using examples from the training literature, we provide evidence for positive side effects of organizational interventions. We also identify lapses in the field’s approach to the measurement of the effects of organizational interventions and how this prevents our attempts to improve these interventions to create better and more holistic outcomes for employees and organizations. We suggest opportunities to improve interventions that can be applied in our diverse workplaces.

This study presents a cross-temporal comparison of managerial ethics in China and the US. Although it is well established that cross-cultural differences exist in business ethics and that culture and values in a society may evolve over time, little attention has been paid to the longitudinal changes in such cross-cultural differences that might have occurred over time. Building on three different perspectives on values evolution, namely, convergence, divergence, and crossvergence, we investigate whether and how cross-cultural differences in managerial ethical decision-making and the associated moral philosophy have changed in China and the US over the decade between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s. Our analysis reveals that the difference in Chinese and American managers' ethical decision-making evolved in many different directions over the decade, lending support to the crossvergence perspective. Interestingly, however, we discover that the divergence outlook prevails when it comes to the moral philosophies behind their decision-making. These findings provide critical insights into cross-cultural as well cross-temporal evolution in business ethics in a world of increasing cross-cultural and multicultural interactions.

Pay inequality remains a pervasive problem within the workforce. However, it can be challenging for even well-meaning and responsible organizations to effectively assess which jobs should be considered equivalent and paid the same based on both legal criteria (which have shifted over time and differ across specific statutes and jurisdictions) and scientific evidence (which continues to amass). This paper intends to initiate a solution-focused discussion on how organizations can proactively categorize jobs so that pay decisions that are made about men and women are both legally defensible and fair. We propose that integrating the job analysis/job classification literature and the pay discrimination literature (e.g., legal opinions given by courts) will inform this discussion. We first review federal and state legislation and court opinions that have set legal standards for identifying pay discrimination. We then review the relevance of job analysis/job classification for systematically defining and categorizing jobs, highlighting the legal issues that should be but (to the best of our knowledge) have not been considered when undertaking such processes. Our intention is for this article to spark dialogue among researchers and practitioners regarding the identification of methods with which organizations can strive to meet equal pay standards and goals, applying both legal and scientific perspectives.

Drawing on examples from published research, the authors offer a perspective on the side effects that are associated with organizational interventions. This perspective is framed in the context of the many hard-won positive influences that industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists have had on individuals, groups, organizations, and social institutions over the last century. With a few exceptions, we argue that side effects tend to receive less attention from I-O psychology researchers and practitioners than they deserve. A systematic approach to studying, monitoring, and advertising side effects is needed to better understand their causes, consequences, and the contexts in which they are most likely to emerge. The purpose of this piece is to stimulate conversations within the field about the phenomenon of side effects as well as what might be done to improve our science and practice in this domain.

Despite the growing popularity and marketing of pulse surveys, there is little research concerning this practice. To this end, this practice forum reports the results of a four-wave pulse survey that was conducted in a health care organization. Pulse surveys provided reliable estimates of overall engagement, but scores remained stable across 8 months. Practically no differences in group scores or trends could be found despite high participation (≍ 50%). Item responses displayed little differences between groups, ICC(1) ranging from .03 to .18, and poor discriminant validity. Based on these results, pulse surveys may be adequate for estimating overall employee sentiment but not useful for detecting change over time or differences between groups. These limitations should be considered when designing or implementing pulse surveys.

In the 1950s, part-time work gradually became an element of labor policy to activate women to participate in the labor market that could be transferred from one country to another. Support of part-time employment in the Dutch labor market, however, was initially not endorsed as a solution to the problem of low female labor force participation but was the outcome of a more complex set of deliberations, in which the moral economy of employers’ organizations conflicted with broader demands for increased productivity. The article contrasts the initial concerns of Dutch employers about increasing women’s labor force participation with the country’s later international role in advocating part-time work for married women on an international scale. The Netherlands thereby serves as a case study of how employers’ organizations instrumentalized part-time employment for their own moral economy based in the breadwinner ideology.

Drawing from the theory of territorial behavior, this article predicts the explanatory role of silence behavior in the relationship between knowledge hiding and hider's innovative behavior in Chinese organizations, and the potential of Zhongyong thinking in mitigating the detrimental effect of knowledge hiding. Results derived from a time-lagged and multi-source survey support our hypotheses. Specifically, knowledge hiding is negatively associated with the innovative behavior of the hider. Silence behavior mediates the relationship between knowledge hiding and innovative behavior. Meanwhile, Zhongyong thinking moderates the positive relationship between knowledge hiding and silence behavior, as well as the indirect relationship between knowledge hiding and innovative behavior through silence behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed based on these findings.

The majority of supervisor organizational embodiment (SOE) research has focused on its role as an important boundary condition in the context of leadership and management studies. In a multi-source field study, we seek to extend this research stream by examining an antecedent and outcome of SOE. Specifically, we leverage social cognitive theory to develop and test a trickle-down model of organizational embodiment across three organizational levels (i.e., upper-level managers, middle-level supervisors, and lower-level employees). Subsequently, we propose and demonstrate that manager organizational embodiment (MOE) trickles down and positively impacts SOE. In turn, SOE trickles down and positively impacts employee organizational embodiment. Furthermore, supervisor neuroticism strengthens the relationship between MOE and SOE when supervisor neuroticism is relatively high compared to relatively low. The findings provide evidence for a trickle-down model of organizational embodiment. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future research are discussed.