Leadership & Organizational Behavior

Measuring the impact of political risk on investment projects is one of the most vexing issues in international business. One popular approach is to assume that the sovereign yield spread captures political risk and to augment the project discount rate by this spread. We show that this approach is flawed. While the sovereign spread is influenced by political risk, it also reflects other risks that are likely included in the valuation analysis — leading to the double counting of risks.

Past research encourages expatriates to immerse themselves in the host culture, avoiding reminders of their home culture. We counter that, for expatriates still struggling to adjust, home culture stimuli might prime a sense of relational security, emboldening them to reach out to locals and hence boost cultural adjustment. In Study 1, American exchange students in Hong Kong felt more adjusted to Hong Kong after incidental exposure to iconic American practices (vs. Chinese or neutral), an effect partially mediated by relational security and not by other exchange student concerns.

The current research examined whether cross-national variation in egalitarianism predicts talent levels and organizational performance. We propose that national variation in egalitarianism predicts country-level talent because egalitarianism influences policymaking at the institutional level and everyday social interactions at the psychological level. We compared the relative impact of institutional and psychological measures of equality using the context of international performance in the most popular worldwide sport: football (soccer).

This paper integrates social norm constructs from different disciplines into an integrated model. Norms exist in the objective social environment in the form of behavioral regularities, patterns of sanctioning, and institutionalized practices and rules. They exist subjectively in perceived descriptive norms, perceived injunctive norms, and personal norms. We also distil and delineate three classic theories of why people adhere to norms: internalization, social identity, and rational choice.

This paper provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Central and Eastern European (CEE) equity markets from the mid-1990s until now. Using firm-level data and custom-made indices and indicators, we show that (1) there is considerable heterogeneity in the degree, dynamics, and determinants of market development across the different markets, (2) that especially the smaller markets still offer diversification benefits to global investors, and (3) that there are substantial premiums associated with investing in small, value, low volatility and illiquid CEE stocks.

Philosophers and psychologists have long been interested in identifying factors that influence moral judgment. The current analysis compares the literatures on moral psychology and decision-making under uncertainty to propose that utilitarian choices are driven by the same forces that lead to risky choices.

The current research integrates perspectives on gendered race and person-position fit to introduce the concept of a <em>gender profile</em>. We propose that both the "gender" of a person's biological sex and the "gender" of a person's race (Asians are perceived as feminine and Blacks as masculine) help comprise an individual's gender profile — the overall femininity or masculinity associated with their demographic characteristics. We also propose that occupational positions have gender profiles.

The current research examines how power affects performance in pressure-filled contexts. We present low-power-threat and high-power-lift effects, whereby performance in high-stakes situations suffers or is enhanced depending on one's power; that is, the power inherent to a situational role can produce effects similar to stereotype threat and lift. Three negotiations experiments demonstrate that role-based power affects outcomes but only when the negotiation is diagnostic of ability and, therefore, pressure-filled.

Eight studies explored the antecedents and consequences of whether people locate their sense of self in the brain or the heart. In Studies 1a–f, participants' self-construals consistently influenced the location of the self: The general preference for locating the self in the brain rather than the heart was enhanced among men, Americans, and participants primed with an independent self-construal, but diminished among women, Indians, and participants primed with an interdependent self-construal.