How do organizations create an environment to motivate their employees to be healthy, productive, and competent decision makers? My dissertation identifies the underlying factors that could prevent organizations from achieving their goals, and takes on three research projects to address such barriers to successful organizational functioning. To provide a theoretical foundation for my research, I bring together conceptual and methodological streams from various disciplines including organizational behavior, behavioral decision research, and cognitive and affective psychology. I then employ multiple methods, including laboratory experiments involving psychophysiology as well as field research.
Three essays compose this dissertation. My first essay examines the role of emotion-regulation processes in moral decision making. That is, emotion-regulation strategies (concealing and rethinking emotions) influence the decision maker’s preference for utilitarian choice. Using a process-dissociation approach, I also show emotion regulation selectively reduces deontological inclinations, leading to greater preference for utilitarian decisions. My second essay utilizes data from a large-scale field data as well as data from laboratory and online labor market. This research shows how seemingly irrelevant, uncontrollable factors—such as rain—may influence employee productivity by eliminating potential cognitive distractions. My third essay focuses on an intervention designed to invoke individuals’ psychosocial resources. Using a method called the Reflected Best-Self Exercise, I empirically test a set of hypotheses at the individual and team level. This research demonstrates that this intervention not only has positive health and stress-buffering effects, but also has implications for individual-level creativity, team-level functioning and performance.
Across three essays, I argue that organizational performance should be understood in terms of the functioning of individual employees and teams. Thus, my work lays groundwork for organizational leaders to counteract the three barriers to organizational functioning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:harvard.edu/oai:dash.harvard.edu:1/14226103 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Creators | Lee, Jooa |
| Contributors | Bazerman, Max, Zeckhauser, Richard |
| Publisher | Harvard University |
| Source Sets | Harvard University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | embargoed |
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