Narratives and Work
Mindsets, lay theories, and identity at work
My research aims to advance the understanding of the ways in which individuals can alter their narratives and uncover the self-fulfilling nature of these narratives on ethical, group, and leadership outcomes in the workplace. Through my research, I have examined the lasting consequences of narratives; for instance, how self-narratives exacerbate concerns that individuals experience in the workplace (e.g., do I belong in this new team? would others view me negatively if I step up and lead?), and how narratives about employment relationship (e.g., is my employer invested in my growth and development?) enhance the employees’ experience of authenticity and job outcomes by reducing the feelings of dehumanization. Additionally, I have explored the ways in which individuals proactively use self-narratives as a cognitive strategy to make sense of their role transitions, develop themselves as leaders, and empower the collective.
Discerning saints: The moralization of intrinsic motivation and selective helping at work (Academy of Management Journal, 2023)
Intrinsic motivation has received widespread attention as a predictor of positive work outcomes, including employees’ prosocial behavior. In the current research, we offer a more nuanced view by proposing that intrinsic motivation does not uniformly increase prosocial behavior toward all others. Specifically, we argue that employees with higher intrinsic motivation are more likely to value intrinsic motivation and associate it with having higher morality (i.e., they moralize it). When employees moralize intrinsic motivation, we suggest, they perceive others with higher intrinsic motivation as being more moral and deserving of their help and thus engage in more prosocial behavior toward those others. We provide empirical support for our theoretical model across a large-scale, team-level field study in a Latin American financial institution (N = 781, k = 185) and a set of three online studies, including a pre-registered experiment (Ns = 245, 243, and 1,245), where we develop a measure of the moralization of intrinsic motivation and provide both causal and mediating evidence. Our theory and results reveal that employees with higher intrinsic motivation are more likely to moralize their own motivation and are more attuned to others’ intrinsic motivation as a signal of morality, which underlies their decision to help them selectively. This research therefore complicates our understanding of intrinsic motivation by unveiling how its moralization may at times dim the positive light of intrinsic motivation itself.
Do I dare? The psychodynamics of anticipated image risk, leader identity endorsement, and leader emergence (Academy of Management Journal, 2023)
Although organizations value leadership and express a desire for more leaders, many individuals are reticent to see themselves that way. We explore psychological factors that hinder the affirmation of a leader identity across four studies (N=1,425). We study these relationships in MBA consulting teams, military cadets in training, virtual workers, and employee-supervisor dyads. In Study 1 we find that i) anticipated image risk in leadership (i.e., individuals’ beliefs that the act of leading might harm the way that they are seen by others) decreases leader-identity affirmation and leadership and ii) lay theories about leadership ability (i.e., the belief that this ability is fixed versus malleable) moderate that relationship. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulate lay theories of leadership ability and replicate the results of Study 1. We qualitatively explore the specific image concerns associated with leading (Study 3) and develop a new measure of those specific image risks. Individuals associate being a leader with seeming bossy, unqualified, and different from one’s peers. Tested quantitatively, leader identity mediates the negative relationship between all three image concerns and supervisor-rated leadership (Study 4).
Crafting public narrative to enable collective action: A pedagogy for leadership development (Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2023)
We propose a new theory of public narrative, its practice, and its pedagogy that can prepare leaders to mobilize collective action towards tackling grand challenges and responds to the call for humanizing leadership development. We define public narrative as a process of accessing, articulating, and communicating shared values. We argue that, through crafting their public narratives, leaders can enact their moral resources to motivate others to choose collective action. By conceptualizing values as affective commitments, we propose that public narrative is constructed through the articulation of specific narrative moments (stories of hurt (why I care) and hope (why I can act)) that communicate one’s moral resources. We then argue that our pedagogy can be used in leadership development by enabling leaders to articulate a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now: the experiential communication of one’s values that have called one to leadership, of overlapping values shared by one’s constituency, and of challenges to those values that require urgent collective action. Last, we describe our core pedagogical principles and discuss the implications of our pedagogy.
Seeing oneself as a valued contributor: Social worth affirmation improves information sharing in teams (Academy of Management Journal, 2021)
Teams often fail to reach their potential because members’ concerns about being socially accepted prevent them from offering their unique perspectives to the team. Drawing on relational self and self-affirmation theory, we argue that affirmation of team members’ social worth by trusted people outside the team helps them internalize an identity as a valued contributor, thereby reducing social acceptance concerns and facilitating information sharing in teams. We devised three intervention studies to demonstrate the causal effect of social worth affirmation in teams. In Study 1, senior executive teams in which members experienced social worth affirmation performed better on a crisis simulation that required information sharing in teams (compared to control teams). In Study 2, with U.S. military cadets, we examined social acceptance concerns as a mechanism by which social worth affirmation influences information sharing. In Study 3, we showed that social worth affirmation improves virtual teams’ ability to share information by exchanging unique information cues. Our results suggest that affirmation of the social worth of team members through their personal relationships broadens their sense of self, thereby reducing their social concerns about being accepted by other members. This, in turn, leads to better information sharing in teams.
Between home and work: Commuting as an opportunity for role transitions (Organization Science, 2021)
Across the globe, the average commute is 38 minutes each way, and it is well known that lengthy commutes have negative effects on employees’ well-being and job-related outcomes. Despite the importance of commuting in the employees’ everyday life, very little is known about offsetting such negative effects of lengthy commutes. Integrating theories of self-control and boundary work in psychological and organizational sciences, we argue that engaging in future-oriented thinking about specific work goals while commuting, what we call work-related prospection, positively influences job satisfaction because it facilitates employees’ transition into their work role. Across two field studies and one field experiment, we find that employees higher in trait self-control are less likely to experience negative effects of lengthy commutes because they use their commuting time to engage in work-related prospection. In a field experiment, employees asked to engage in work-related prospection during commuting reported higher levels of job satisfaction in comparison to multiple control groups. Although commuting is typically seen as the least desirable part of an employee’s day, our theory and results point to the benefits of using it as a time period to engage in work-related prospection.
Managing perceptions of distress at work: Reframing distress as passion (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2016)
Expressing distress at work can have negative consequences for employees: observers perceive employees who express distress as less competent than employees who do not. Across five experiments, we explore how reframing a socially inappropriate emotional expression (distress) by publicly attributing it to an appropriate source (passion) can shape perceptions of, and decisions about, the person who expressed emotion. In Studies 1a-c, participants viewed individuals who reframed distress as passion as more competent than those who attributed distress to emotionality or made no attribution. In Studies 2a-b, reframing emotion as passion shifted interpersonal decision-making: participants were more likely to hire job candidates and choose collaborators who reframed their distress as passion com- pared to those who did not. Expresser gender did not moderate these effects. Results suggest that in cases when distress expressions cannot or should not be suppressed, reframing distress as passion can improve observers’ impressions of the expresser.
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