Leadership & Organizational Behavior

Individuals engage in status self-enhancement when they form an overly positive perception of their status in a group. We argue that status self-enhancement incurs social costs and, therefore, most individuals perceive their status accurately. In contrast, theories of positive illusions suggest status self-enhancement is beneficial for the individual and that most individuals overestimate their status. We found supportive evidence for our hypotheses in a social relations analysis of laboratory groups, an experiment that manipulated status self-enhancement, and a study of real-world groups.

Recent evidence suggests that many organizational members and leaders are seen as under- or over-assertive by colleagues, suggesting that having the "right touch" with interpersonal assertiveness is a meaningful and widespread challenge. In this article, I review emerging work on the curvilinear relation between assertiveness and effectiveness, including evidence from both qualitative descriptions of coworkers and ratings of colleagues and leaders.

Prior research shows that perceivers can judge some traits better than others in first impressions of targets. However, questions remain about which traits perceivers naturally do infer. Here, we develop an account of the "agreeableness asymmetry": although perceivers show little ability to accurately gauge target agreeableness in first impressions, we find that agreeableness is generally the most commonly-inferred disposition among the Big Five dimensions of personality (agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, and emotional stability).

The present paper seeks to explain varying levels of assertiveness in interpersonal conflict and negotiations with assertiveness expectancies, idiosyncratic predictions people make about the social and instrumental consequences of assertive behavior. This account complements motivation-based models of assertiveness and competitiveness, suggesting that individuals may possess the same social values (e.g., concern for relationships) but show dramatically different assertiveness due to different assumptions about behavioral consequences.

We are currently experiencing a major shock to the financial system, initiated by problems in the subprime mortgage market, which spread to securitization products and credit markets more generally. Banks are being asked to increase the amount of risk that they absorb (by moving off-balance sheet assets onto their balance sheets), but losses that the banks have suffered limit their capacity to absorb those risky assets.

Bekaert and Hodrick equip future business leaders with the analytical tools they need to make sound financial decisions in the face of a competitive global environment. For undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in an international finance course.

Business friendships are increasingly common. Research in organizational behavior has identified a number of benefits to career and organizational performance of these relationships. These instrumental benefits derive from the affective qualities of these relationships, through the mechanisms of trust, empathy and sympathy. Yet the combination of instrumentality and affect produces a number of difficulties for business friends.

An impressive set of scholars and practitioners bring together in this volume recent practical innovations and policy questions in the field of microfinance. The authors address integration of capital markets with microfinance, technological innovations such as the use of mobile phone technology, the consequences of gender empowerment (particularly on micro-loan borrowings), and the regulatory challenges and opportunities emerging as the landscape of microfinance dramatically evolves.