Academy of Management Insights

Today is the 15th anniversary of the release of Avatar! How Avatar Reduced Novelty to Boost Creativity: https://lnkd.in/gmU7CDgf The visually stunning alien world of Pandora and its inhabitants helped make #Avatar the highest-grossing movie of all time. Despite all its accolades for #creativity, part of the film’s success was due to reining in creativity, according to an Academy of Management Review article by Joshua Katz of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Lillien M. Ellis of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Values Play A Vital Role In Making Business Friendships https://lnkd.in/emcJ3tQD Shared values loom large in establishing business #friendships, but have little or no influence on whether those ties endure, according to an Academy of Management Discoveries article. For the past 15 years, Paul Ingram of Columbia University has been working with value structures and devised a workshop process that allows people to identify which #values matter most to them, and to recognize interdependencies among their values. Many students keep their structures in their wallets, on a “value card.” “Years later, people still carry their value cards with them. They send me pictures of themselves in a café in Paris with their values cards,” he said. Ingram and coauthor Yoonjin Choi of William & Mary University took a deep dive into how shared values affect work #relationships. Shared values are a source of interpersonal chemistry because they mean that people are striving for the same things at work and in life. That’s why shared values are also important in building #teams that are committed to their mission. “Business friendships explain who gets promoted, how you get paid, whether you’re good at executing your work,” Ingram said. “If you express your values, you build a bridge that is the foundation of the relationship.”

Women’s Career Self-Help Books: Pros and Cons https://lnkd.in/epYC-exA The market for self-help books aimed at women who want to climb the career ladder is booming. But is it making a difference? “Popular literature for women in business raises consciousness and encourages them to take action to advance their careers,” said Isabel Metz of the University of Melbourne. “The big question is: Can individual action stimulate career opportunities for women?” More than 3,500 books are available in English via Amazon in the “women and business” category, including Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 bestseller Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. Metz and coauthor Savita Kumra of the American University of Sharjah examined women’s career self-help books dating back to 1967 in their Academy of Management Perspectives article. Metz and Kumra found three distinct trends: ► Fix the woman (1967–1976), when females were encouraged to build their human capital through #training, #education, tenure, and experience. ► Fix the organization (1977–1996), when organizations sought to help women through such initiatives as #mentoring programs. ► Fix the environment (1997–2016), a period when government and institutions introduced #gender quotas and raised awareness of #GenderInequality in the workplace.

AOM scholars research findings related to #gender: https://lnkd.in/eVc9y8db

psychedelics in the C-suite

Two Factors Make New CEOs More Prone to Getting Fired https://lnkd.in/g8r7wBcs New #CEOs are more vulnerable to being #fired when their predecessors stay on as board chair without a clear plan for departure—or the stock market reacts negatively to the appointment, according to an Academy of Management Journal article. But new CEOs can improve their odds of survival through social skills, especially by publicly praising their predecessors and promoting their own abilities, according to the article, by Xiwei Yi of Peking University, and Yan Anthea Zhang and Duane Windsor, both of Rice University.

Promote #Talent to Gain Talent https://lnkd.in/eC-qe6C2 Some managers avoid promoting stars on their #teams because they fear being unable to replace them. Not only are they hurting the stars and their organizations, but they’re also hurting themselves, according to an Academy of Management Journal article. “Managers often want to hold on to their high performers, but we find that those who help their people advance to new jobs inside the company get more applications from employees across the firm when they’re hiring for open roles,” said coauthor Kathryn Dlugos, HR analytics senior advisor at The Cigna Group. “Talent hoarding is a key problem in almost all organizations,” said coauthor JR Keller of Cornell University. “A recent LinkedIn report said that 75% of organizations now consider this one of their key talent issues. And over half of managers admit to hoarding talent. So that number is probably much higher. The problem is threefold for organizations: ► "One is that the main reason that people leave organizations is that they can’t advance their #careers. So when managers do hoard talent, those people are likely to leave the organization because they don’t see a path to advance within the company. You can lose really good people because you’re holding on to them. ► "The second is that you can have all this amazing #HumanCapital in your organization, but it’s not matched to where it can be most productive. The optimal allocation of human capital to tasks and roles in an organization just doesn’t happen. ► "And number three is the rest of the workforce sees this. And they’re more likely to look outside for opportunities as well.”

When Loving Work Becomes a Moral Burden https://lnkd.in/esSUgynS In individualistic cultures, such as the United States, the Netherlands, and Canada, for example, loving your job is often seen as a litmus test for being a good worker. An Academy of Management Review article refers to this dynamic as the moralization of #IntrinsicMotivation — working because it’s inherently enjoyable, rather than for rewards like pay or prestige. While there are many benefits of being intrinsically motivated, feeling morally obligated to love your job can have downsides. Coauthors: Mijeong Kwon of the University of Colorado Denver Business School and Laura Sonday of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Contradictions at Work? Adopt a “Paradox Mindset” https://lnkd.in/eZEViJi9 Ella Miron-Spektor of INSEAD | Amy Ingram of Clemson University | Josh Keller of UNSW | Wendy K. Smith of the University of Delaware | Marianne Lewis of the University of Cincinnati