Meaning and willingness to pay: the role of expectation disconfirmation

PurposePursuit of meaning is at the heart of much of organizational life. It has implications for how different organizational stakeholders associate value to various organizational initiatives. Research on meaning has generally shown that effort increases meaning and favorable valuation of and willingness to pay for economic activities by organizational stakeholders. The authors build on and advance this research by offering theory and experimental evidence showing that effort, particularly at high levels, results in enhanced meaning and favorable valuation when effort does not threaten the focal stakeholders' resources through expectation disconfirmation.Design/methodology/approachThree experimental studies are designed and conducted in this research. In one study, the authors replicate prior research findings that establish labor generally increases meaning and favorable valuation. In the two subsequent studies, the authors test the proposed hypothesis in this research and check for robustness of the empirical analysis.FindingsThe authors find that any internalized threat to the focal stakeholder's resources coupled with a high exertion of effort decreases, rather than increases, meaning and favorable valuation of and willingness to pay for economic activities.Originality/valueThe theory and empirical evidence in this research advance the understanding of how organizational stakeholders may associate effort-induced meaning with various economic activities in counter-intuitive ways. The findings also highlight the importance of recognizing and shaping the expectations of organizational stakeholders in influencing willingness to pay in organizational settings.

Remembering Materiality: A Material–Relational Approach to Organizational Memory

In this paper, we develop a material–relational approach to understanding organizational memory. We focus on the inherent materiality of mnemonic devices—material artifacts that anchor shared memories of the past. Mnemonic devices work to constitute social groups of organizational stakeholders bound together by mutual affinities to these devices, known as mnemonic communities. While we know that the materiality of mnemonic devices represents information about the past that is interpreted by members of the mnemonic community as a narrative that is important in the present, our approach focuses on how engagement with the material aspects of mnemonic devices can create relationships of affinity among people remembering together. To develop our conceptualization, we first apply insights from the literature on materiality and its emphasis on how materiality is the basis for non-verbal and relational communication. From this, we theorize four material attributes that affect how mnemonic devices constitute relational connections that create embodied, cartographic, and temporal boundaries for organizational mnemonic communities. We then conceptualize how these distinct material attributes accumulate, intersect, and interact with each other and with the narrative representations of mnemonic devices and how in turn these interactions may bind stakeholders together. By emphasizing the material–relational aspect of mnemonic devices, our paper theorizes a broader and potentially more powerful set of affinities between stakeholders and organizations and, on this basis, enhances extant research by articulating different paths to the emergence of mnemonic communities.

Input from multiple stakeholder levels prioritizes targets for improving implementation of an exercise intervention for rural women cancer survivors

Background Although evidence-based interventions for increasing exercise among cancer survivors (CSs) exist, little is known about factors (e.g., implementation facilitators) that increase effectiveness and reach of such interventions, especially in rural settings. Such factors can be used to design implementation strategies. Hence, our study purpose was to (1) obtain multilevel perspectives on improving participation in and implementation of a multicomponent exercise behavior change intervention for rural women CSs and (2) identify factors important for understanding the context using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) for comparison across three levels (CSs, potential interventionists, community/organizational stakeholders). Methods We conducted three nominal group technique meetings with rural women CSs, three with community/organizational stakeholders, and one with potential interventionists. During each meeting, participants were asked to respond silently to one question asking what would make a multicomponent exercise intervention doable from intervention participation (CSs) or implementation (potential interventionists, stakeholders) perspectives. Responses were shared, discussed to clarify meaning, and prioritized by group vote. Data was deductively coded using CFIR. Results Mean age of CSs (n = 19) was 61.8 ± 11.1 years, community stakeholders (n = 16) was 45.9 ± 8.1 years, and potential interventionists (n = 7) was 41.7 ± 15.2 years. There was considerable consensus among CSs, potential interventionists, and stakeholders in terms of CFIR domains and constructs, e.g., “Design quality and packaging” (Innovation Characteristics), “Patients needs and resources” (Outer Setting), “Available resources” (Inner Setting), and “Engaging” (Process). However, participant-specific CFIR domains and constructs were also observed, e.g., CSs endorsed “Knowledge and beliefs about the intervention,” “Individual stage of change,” and “Self-efficacy” (Characteristics of Individuals); potential interventionists valued “Tension for change” (Inner Setting) and “Innovation participants” and “Key stakeholder” (Process); stakeholders emphasized “Goals and feedback” and “Network and communication” (Inner Setting), and “Planning” (Process). How the three participant levels conceptualized the CFIR constructs demonstrated both similarities and differences. Conclusions Multilevel input yielded diversity in type, relative priority, and conceptualization of implementation facilitators suggesting foci for future implementation strategy development and testing. Findings also reinforced the importance of multilevel implementation strategies for increasing exercise in an underserved, at-risk population.

How Dutch and Italian women’s networks mobilize affect to foster transformative change towards gender equality

This article contributes to the debate about the role of affect in transformative change towards gender equality, by comparing the building of affect in two recently founded women’s networks in Italian and Dutch universities. By conceptualizing networking as a social and cultural practice that organizes a collective body through the building of affect between specific groups of organizational stakeholders, we reveal the emotional, dynamic and context-dependent character of transformative change. We found that similar women’s networks build affect with organizational stakeholders in different ways, shaping boundaries of different collective bodies through emotions and adapting to the cultural meaning attributed to earlier actions. By bridging bottom-up and top-down approaches to gender equality and tailoring the building of affect to the local context they potentially contribute to transformational change towards gender equality.

Values, Other-Interest, and Ethical Behavior: The Critical Role of Moral Emotions

Organizations and their agents regularly face ethical challenges as the interests of various constituents compete and conflict. The theory of other-orientation provides a useful framework for understanding how other concerns and modes of reasoning combined to produce different mindsets for approaching ethical challenges. To optimize outcomes across parties, individuals can engage in complex rational reasoning that addresses the interests of the self as well as others, a mindset referred to as collective rationality. But collective rationality is as difficult to sustain as it is cognitively taxing. Thus, individuals are apt to simplify their approach to complex conflicts of interest. One simplifying strategy is to reduce the relevant outcome set by focusing on self-interests to the neglect of other-interest. This approach, referred to as a rational self-interest mindset, is self-serving and can lead to actions that are deemed unethical. At the other extreme, individuals can abandon rational judgment in favor of choices based on heuristics, such as moral values that specify a given mode of prosocial behavior. Because this mindset, referred to as other-oriented, obviates consideration of outcome for the self and other, it can result in choices that harm the self as well as other possible organizational stakeholders. This raises the question: how does one maintain an other-interested focus while engaging in rational reasoning? The resolution of this question rests in the arousal of moral emotions. Moral emotions signal to the individual the opportunity to express, or the need to uphold, moral values. Given that moral values direct behavior that benefits others or society, they offset the tendency to focus on self-interest. At extreme levels of arousal, however, moral emotions may overwhelm cognitive resources and thus influence individuals to engage in heuristic rather than rational reasoning. The effect of moral emotions is bounded by attendant emotions, as individuals are likely to experience multiple hedonic and moral emotions in the same situation. Deontic justice predicts that the arousal of moral emotions will lead individuals to retaliate in response to injustice, regardless of whether they experience personal benefit. However, evidence suggests that individuals may instead engage in self-protecting behavior, such as withdrawal, or self-serving behaviors, such as the contagion of unjust behavior. These alternative responses may be due to strong hedonic emotions, such as fear or schadenfreude, the pleasure derived from others’ misfortunes, overpowering one’s moral emotions. Future research regarding the arousal levels of moral emotions and the complex interplay of emotions in the decision-making process may provide beneficial insight into managing the competing interests of organizational stakeholders.

The Importance of Testing Sets of Clinical Alarm Sounds and Navigating Tradeoffs to Translate Research Findings into Implementation

Despite noticeable efforts over the last 30 years to try and resolve the clinical alarm problem, the utilization of opinion-based and nonscientific alarm interventions has resulted in ineffective solutions. The field of human factors offers many insights to permanently solving the burdens of this problem, however often times the field’s direct applications are not salient or tangible enough to organizational stakeholders. This has resulted in a utilization deficit of human factors principles in practice today. In order to progress the level of impact human factors has on the clinical alarm problem for the future, this paper discusses how a human factors team tested science-based clinical alarm solutions within a multidisciplinary medical center, and then navigated tradeoffs in order to implement these solutions into practice.

The Role of Proactiveness as a Mediatore Between Organizational-Stakeholders Relationship and Smes Performance

This study examines the mediating role of proactiveness between organizational-stakeholders relationship and performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Cluster sampling method and questionnaire were used to collect data from 150 SMEs in Tehran. SmartPLS 3.0 was utilized to analyze the measurement and structural model. The survey outcomes revealed that organizational-stakeholders relationship had an indirect effect on performance through proactiveness. The results also indicated a positive links for organizational-stakeholders relationship and proactiveness. This research is one of the few attempts that have addressed the importance of proactiveness as the key mechanisms to transform the advantages of organization-stakeholder relationship to enhance performance.Scope: This research is beneficial for entrepreneurs who wish to learn about the specific resources significant for venture growth, to devise effective strategies to expand their relationship with stakeholders. It can be concluded that accessing the full range of resources via stakeholders is the key success factor for proactivness and firm performance.

Brothels as Hidden Organizations

This chapter examines the nature of the revelation-concealment dialectic faced by the brothels as these organizations work to strategically build visibility despite external pressures to keep them hidden and internal desires to protect the privacy of certain organizational stakeholders. Additionally, in instances of organizational visibility, the authors examine brothels’ strategies for managing core-stigma while attempting to project a socially-acceptable public image. Brothels address this revelation-concealment dialectic by adopting stigma-management strategies of distancing themselves from identities they perceive as socially undesirable and aligning themselves with non-stigmatized industry practices. At the same time, the brothels construct selectively-permeable organizational boundaries through the invitation of controlled outsider boundary-crossings and through the promotion of their own community-engagement efforts. These results extend research on hidden organizations to consider the particular image-management challenges faced by shadowed organizations.

Strategic Communication in Crisis

When faced with crises, organizational leaders must identify, prioritize, and communicate with organizational stakeholders. Increasingly, organizational leaders find themselves responding to crises made by persons that represent or are associated with the organization in some way. However, most case studies of image repair campaigns focus on the individual that has transgressed rather than on the often-simultaneous campaigns undertaken by the organizations with which they are associated. To study these issues more closely, this chapter uses The Ohio State University's (OSU's) tattoos for memorabilia scandal as exemplar and offers meaningful insight and pragmatic considerations for practitioners dealing with similar situational constraints.