Leadership & Organizational Behavior

We estimate the elasticity of exports to credit using matched customs and firm-level bank credit data from Peru. To account for non-credit determinants of exports, we compare changes in exports of the same product and to the same destination byfirms borrowing from banks differentially affected by capital-flow reversals during the 2008 financial crisis. We find that credit shocks affect the intensive margin of exports, but have no significant impact on entry or exit of firms to new product and destination markets.

This article considers the social and psychological functions that norm-based thinking and behavior provide for the individual and the collectivity. We differentiate between two types of reference groups that provide norms: peer groups versus aspirational groups. We integrate functionalist accounts by distinguishing the functions served by the norms of different reference groups, different degrees of norm moralization, and different directions of responses to norm activation.

Past research indicates that foreign experience helps problem solving because the experience of adapting ones lifestyle imparts cognitive flexibility. We propose that an independent process involves studying cultural traditions and systems, which imparts foreign concepts that enable unconventional solutions. If so, advantages on unconventionality problems should be associated with experiences studying of another culture, such as typically occurs in study-abroad programs.

We review limitations of the traditional paradigm for cultural research and propose an alternative framework, polyculturalism. Polyculturalism assumes that individuals' relationships to cultures are not categorical but rather are partial and plural; it also assumes that cultural traditions are not independent, sui generis lineages but rather are interacting systems. Individuals take influences from multiple cultures and thereby become conduits through which cultures can affect each other.

Music has long been suggested to be a way to make people feel powerful. The current research investigated whether music can evoke a sense of power and produce power-related cognition and behavior. Initial pretests identified musical selections that generated subjective feelings of power. Experiment 1 found that music pretested to be powerful implicitly activated the construct of power in listeners. Experiments 2–4 demonstrated that power-inducing music produced three known important downstream consequences of power: abstract thinking, illusory control, and moving first.

At some point, every company makes a mistake that requires an apology — to an individual; a group of customers, employees, or business partners; or the public at large. And more often than not, companies and their leaders fail to apologize effectively, if at all, which can severely damage their reputations and their relationships with stakeholders. Companies need clearer guidelines for determining whether a mistake merits an apology and, when it does, for crafting and delivering an effective message.

We examine the relationship between the organization of a multi-divisional firm and its ability to adapt production decisions to changes in the environment. We show that even if lower-level managers have superior information about local conditions, and incentive conflicts are negligible, a centralized organization can be better at adapting to local information than a decentralized one. As a result, and in contrast to what is commonly argued, an increase in product market competition that makes adaptation more important can favor centralization rather than decentralization.

Having a well-defined hierarchy can contribute to organizational effectiveness: it helps people know who does what, when and how, and promotes efficient interactions by setting clear expectations for the behaviors of people of different ranks. This is especially true when people feel under threat, helping to restore a sense of order and control. However, sometimes hierarchy can hurt as much as it helps. In complex, dynamic situations, leaders need access to the most complete and varied information to make the best decisions.

The construct of power is part of the structural foundation of social psychology. Two of social psychology's most seminal works — Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963) and Zimbardo's prison experiment (Zimbardo, 1973, 1974) — involved differences in power. In more recent years, the contemporary landscape of social psychology continues to feature power prominently.