This dissertation examines how and when, both powerfulness and powerlessness, can each lead to corrupt behavior. The first half of this dissertation (Chapters 2 to 5) focuses on the link between power and corrupt behavior. Building on previous work that expansive posture induces a state of power, four studies tested whether expansive posture incidentally imposed by our environment lead to increases in dishonest behavior. Chapters 2 to 4 present three experiments, which found that powerful individuals were more likely to steal money, cheat on a test, and commit traffic violations in a driving simulation. Results suggested that participants' self-reported sense of power mediated the link between postural expansiveness and dishonesty. In an observational field study, Chapter 5 revealed that automobiles with more expansive driver's seats were more likely to be illegally parked on New York City streets. The second part of the dissertation examines if powerlessness can lead to corrupt behavior. Chapters 6 to 10 present a new theoretical model that comprehensively integrates theories on power and regulatory focus. This model reveals that both powerfulness and powerlessness can each lead to corrupt behavior, but through different routes. Three experiments in Chapters 7 to 9 found that prevention-powerlessness and promotion-powerfulness produce more corrupt behavior than promotion-powerlessness and prevention-powerfulness, as evident in individuals' tendency to exploit others, aggression, and dishonest behavior. I also found evidence for the affective manifestations that accompany these effects. Indeed, a meta-analysis on the data suggests that prevention-powerlessness and promotion-powerfulness significantly produced more corrupt behavior than prevention-powerfulness and promotion-powerlessness. These findings have important theoretical implications for power and regulatory focus, and explicate how powerlessness can lead to taking action and even corruption.

This study proposed a moderated mediation model where social identity complexity was hypothesized to predict endorsement of identity safety behaviors intended to mitigate social identity threat for women in a male-dominated work context. Male awareness of systemic social identity threats for women was examined as a potential mediator of the proposed relationship between social identity complexity and identity safety endorsement. Finally, psychosocial safety climate was hypothesized to moderate the relationship between sensitivity to women's identity threat and identity safety endorsement. More than 400 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) male professors completed an online questionnaire measuring the study constructs. Ordinary least squares regression and bootstrapping methods were used to test the study hypotheses. Results showed that certain dimensions of social identity complexity predicted identity safety endorsement. While male sensitivity to women's identity threat predicted a particular type of identity safety endorsement, there was no support for the construct as a mediator. There was also no support found for psychosocial safety climate as a moderator in this study. Supplemental findings revealed that having academic tenure and increased contact with women colleagues positively predicted endorsement of identity safety. Theoretical implications, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed.

This is the story of the slow evolution of Goldman Sachs - addressing why and how the firm changed from an ethical standard to a legal one as it grew to be a leading global corporation. In What Happened to Goldman Sachs, Steven G. Mandis uncovers the forces behind what he calls Goldman's "organizational drift." Drawing from his firsthand experience; sociological research; analysis of SEC, congressional, and other filings; and a wide array of interviews with former clients, detractors, and current and former partners, Mandis uncovers the pressures that forced Goldman to slowly drift away form the very principles on which its reputation was built. Mandis evaluates what made Goldman Sachs so successful in the first place, how it responded to pressures to grow, why it moved away from the values and partnership culture that sustained it for so many years, what forces accelerated this drift, and why insiders can't - or won't - recognize this crucial change. Combining insightful analysis with engaging storytelling, Mandis has written an insider's history that offers invaluable perspectives to business leaders interested in understanding and managing organizational drift in their own firms.

One of the least understood aspects of knowledge management in organizational research and the sociology of innovation is to explain how new technology paradigms facilitate the creation and adoption of new regimes and business practice of innovation by old firms. When innovation regimes are started up by cohesive communities of collaborators, born-online and born-global, the relationship is even less understood. My research explores how some of the largest fashion-technology start-ups on the Internet create and spread new technology and practice in digital marketing and e-commerce to vertically integrated, transnational fashion industry leaders. I bridge innovation and economic sociology with international business and strategic management to explain how Ron Burt's "good ideas" are actually generated and meaningfully reapplied by emerging new entrants in the organizational practice of established incumbent fashion firms from Europe and the US. The fashion industry is an extreme case-study offering an ideal context to investigate these emergent processes, revealing the dynamic relationship between innovation and change. The research posits that executives in established organizations in this context can manage the tension between challenge and opportunity of adopting disruptive practice by learning to manage collaboratively the parts of their value chains that are most affected by the entrepreneurial creativity of new peers.

Competition and cooperation with conspecifics affect the costs and benefits of group living and the evolution of social organization and mating systems. Understanding the role of competition - specifically intrasexual competition - in determining reproductive success thus informs models explaining the diverse types of social organization seen across animal species. The research presented in this dissertation combines molecular, demographic, and social behavior data to explore patterns of reproduction in a population of blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni) in western Kenya. Blue monkeys typically live in one-male/multi-female groups and resident males are presumed to have a reproductive advantage over non-resident "bachelors." I used fecal samples from 60 resident and bachelor males and 126 offspring born in 8 study groups over a 10-year period to quantify resident siring success. Residents sired at most 61% of offspring conceived in their groups, a percentage that is less than most other mammals living in one-male groups and may be linked to blue monkeys' unusually dynamic social organization. In the study population, some groups in some years experience influxes of competitor males; these influxes are most likely to occur in years when many females are mating simultaneously. I found a significant and negative effect of female reproductive synchrony and the number of male competitors on resident siring success. These results suggest that it is difficult for a resident male to defend access to multiple sexually receptive females, which may be further complicated by the presence of many competitors trying to steal matings. Resident male blue monkeys lost a substantial proportion of reproduction (39% of infants sired) to outside males, which challenges the presumed reproductive advantage of residency. Even though rival males are, by definition, less often nearby in one-male groups than in multi-male groups, they pose a competitive threat to resident male blue monkeys. I used the paternity assignments to identify the factors affecting the siring success of extra-group males, including resident males in adjacent groups and bachelors. When a resident male was unable to monopolize reproduction in his own group, resident males in adjacent groups tended to be more likely to sire offspring than bachelors. Neither bachelor dominance rank nor time spent in a group was a significant predictor of siring success, suggesting that bachelor siring success may reflect a highly opportunistic mating tactic, which succeeds in a visually opaque habitat where estrous females, who mate rarely, are often widely dispersed. Comparing the success of alternative reproductive tactics provides a more complete understanding of the evolution of mating systems. I used rates of resident and bachelor siring success and home range overlap to compute the number of years the hypothetical average bachelor would have to pursue the bachelor tactic to sire as many offspring as the hypothetical average resident during one or two periods of tenure. In most cases, a bachelor would not live long enough to match resident siring success. If, however, a bachelor was able to reproduce at the average rate in the average number of groups for several years, he may be able to sire as many offspring as a resident male with a short period of residency, especially if that resident was in a small group. These results suggest that the resident male tactic may not always result in the highest reproductive success. The calculation used here is a simple way to estimate and compare the success of alternative reproductive tactics, which is important for understanding the evolution of social organization and mating systems. This study calls for future research that tracks individual males over the course of their lifetimes to determine how often males switch between residency and bachelorhood, to estimate the length of male reproductive lifespans, and thus to assess variance in lifetime reproductive success. Female blue monkeys face competition with other group members for access to food resources, and such competition may affect fitness. I tested the effect of two indicators of within-group competition - group size and dominance rank - on the probability that a female conceived. The probability of conception was highest for females in medium-sized groups containing about 31 individuals, suggesting the existence of an optimal group size. This optimal size may occur if individuals in small groups do not obtain the full benefits of group living, including decreased predation risk and increased foraging success, and individuals in large groups have lower quality diets or face time constraints that reduce their nutrient intake. Dominance rank had no effect on the probability of conception, which may reflect the use of behavioral tactics like spreading out during feeding and readily switching food resources to minimize within-group contest competition. A relaxed dominance hierarchy may promote group cohesion and increase success in between-group contest competition. These results emphasize the potential disconnect between behavioral proxies and reproduction; specifically, the existence of a dominance hierarchy and the absence of a relationship between group size and travel distance were not good indicators of the effect of rank and of group size on reproduction. When possible, researchers should examine the effects of rank and group size on measures of reproduction directly. The results of this dissertation emphasize the value of long-term studies of individually-identified subjects when investigating patterns of reproduction in long-lived animals. My findings indicate that intrasexual competition affects reproduction in both sexes and suggests that individuals use behavioral tactics, such as participating in multi-male influxes or using flexible feeding behavior, to maximize their reproductive success in the face of competition.

“I keep doing it over and over again, and there’s no sort of creative point,” says a young digital designer. “When I started, people warned me how shitty it was, and when new people start, I try to tell them too,” explains a colleague in the field. “I’ve got to quit my job. I’ve got nothing to go to, but I’ve got to quit my job because I’m creatively dying,” adds another. On the surface, members of the “creative class” rarely come across as disaffected or disassociated employees. Often lauded for their self-sufficiency, authenticity and unconventionality, creative workers are supposed to be fulfilled in their jobs and carry the promise of urban renewal and economic growth. But recent studies suggest that even the “super-creative core” of the creative class—those working at the intersections of art, design and technology—can suffer an acute form of estrangement. Alienation@work explores the experiences of creative workers in-depth to reveal an alarming trend. In a world where economic transactions disguise themselves as experiential transformations, and surplus value comes in the form of a Twitter tweet, members of the creative class are called upon to exert not just cognitive and emotional but existential labor. As a result, they often lose the ability to know just where work ends and where life begins, and struggle to separate “what I do” from “who I am.” Alienation, once the result of a psychological distancing from one’s labor, now manifests from an uncanny closeness and over-identification. Could the creative class, once the harbinger of hope, be the sign of impending disaster? Alienation@work uncovers how creative workers cope with their situation and how they manage to re-claim their creativity against the odds. Findings from 32 phenomenological interviews reveal how the rise in commodified experiences may simply serve as an index of the decline in truly shared ones, unmediated by the market, while the burgeoning “creative economy” may simply fill a void formed by the vacuum of true creativity’s absence. Alienation@work argues for a radical revision of what constitutes creative work, both to attenuate today’s form of alienation and to reclaim life from the colonizing forces of capital.

Social animals must overcome conflicts, an inherent and often detrimental consequence of gregarious life. One strategy for doing so is reconciliation, or post-conflict affiliation between former opponents. In humans and other primates, this behavior is often assumed to require a switch between opposing motivational states (e.g., anti- to pro-social). In this thesis, I argue that reconciliation is facilitated by an underlying individual tendency for movement and change between states, a motivation known as locomotion. Section one of this thesis uses a longitudinal, observational approach to establish stable individual differences in chimpanzee reconciliation while controlling for numerous relational factors known to influence the occurrence of this behavior. These individual differences are then related to several behavioral proxies of locomotion motivation. Section two of this thesis explores the relation between locomotion and conflict resolution in humans, using a range of methodological approaches and measures, including hypothetical scenarios, experimental inductions, essay studies, narrative reflections, and dyadic interactions. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of going beyond relational and other instrumental approaches to conflict resolution in order to understand more fundamental individual motivations underlying reconciliation behavior. If an individual motive to effect change and therefore resolve conflict in turn impacts one’s social relationships, it has even broader significance. Across the primate order, the influence and importance of such relationships suggest the potential role of reconciliatory motivations when it comes to individual survival, health, and overall well-being.

How do employees judge a leader who bribes foreign government officials for the market entry of the company’s products? What makes employees give biased treatment in favor of their friends at work? In my dissertation, I suggest that employees’ lay theories of agency influence their ethical judgments and choices. Lay theories of agency are general preconceptions about intentionality, capacity, and autonomy of individuals and groups. Chapter 1 reviews research on lay theories, defines lay theories of agency, and distinguishes them from related constructs. Chapter 2 develops the thesis about how employees’ lay theories of agency inform their judgments of leaders’ commitment of bribery. Study 1 found that Chinese working adults were more lenient than Americans when asked to imagine that their actual work supervisor had committed bribery and this was because of the stronger Chinese preconception of group agency. Effects of group agency primacy held even after controlling for alternative accounts such as organizational identification, power distance, paternalistic leadership, and personal relationship with the supervisor. Study 2 found that when group (versus individual) agency was experimentally primed, participants became more lenient toward a leader who commits bribery. Chapter 3 develops the thesis on how lay theories of agency influence employees’ own unethical decisions, namely, their favoritism towards friends at work. Studies 3 and 4 found that Chinese employees were more likely to show favoritism at work than Americans, and again this was mediated by their greater emphasis on group agency. Study 5 found greater favoritism both in and outside the workplace when group (versus individual) agency was experimentally primed. In each of the theses I discuss the implications to specific literatures and relevant management practices. I also propose several future research directions that could potentially address the limitations of current studies.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

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