(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-30)
Gong, Qing
While diverse perspectives benefit collaborations in generating creative outcomes, people generally tend to favor and connect based on similarities. To unpack this seeming dilemma, this research examines whether, how, and when initial cues demonstrating individuals’ uniqueness, meaning rare and distinct features in a social environment, influence perceivers’ intention to collaborate with them on creative projects. Drawing from the associative-propositional evaluation (APE) theory and the signaling perspective, I propose that people are likely to gravitate towards collaborators who display cues of uniqueness in initial interactions. When seeking collaborators for creative endeavors based on limited information in early interactions, initial cues of uniqueness may trigger positive associations and thus liking for the displayer and signal creative potential, leading to perceivers’ greater creative collaboration intention. Furthermore, the perceiver’s need for uniqueness, the displayer’s competence-based status, and cultural tightness in the social environment can influence the effectiveness of cues of uniqueness. This research leverages experimental methodology to test the psychological mechanisms and examines the phenomenon using large-scale archival data of scientists’ publication and collaboration records. The experimental studies generally support the hypotheses except for the moderating effect of cultural tightness. Analyses based on the archival data yield mixed findings regarding the relationship between an initial cue of uniqueness (i.e., name uniqueness) and scientists’ likelihood of building creative collaborations. Theoretical implications on the interpersonal outcomes of uniqueness and creative collaborations and practical implications for leveraging cues of uniqueness are discussed.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-06-17)
Hogan, Toschia M.
Evolving views of followers and power in today’s increasingly complex and turbulent business environments provides a backdrop for the emergence of scholarly and industry intrigue in the role and behavior of followers. Surprisingly, although it is widely acknowledged that without followers, there is no leader and that followership shapes employee performance, empirical investigations of effective followership remains scarce. Thus, in this dissertation, I examine the nature of followership and the coinciding influence of courage in followers. Specifically, integrating the nascent followership and courage literature, I introduce a new conceptualization of courageous followership and validate a newly developed multi-dimensional measure of the construct (Study 1). In a separate study, integrating event system and trait activation theories to develop and test an interactionist model, I investigate whether perceptions of leader characteristics (i.e., resilience and relational energy) foster followership behavior (i.e., courageous followership) and followership outcomes (i.e., follower creativity). Furthermore, I hypothesize that the strength of a weak situation (i.e., disruptive event criticality) influences the relationship between leader resilience and courageous followership and more so when perceptions of leader relational energy are high. The findings of the person-event interactionist model illustrate the independent and synergistic causes of a new type of followership behavior and substantiate the effectiveness of followership in inspiring meaningful outcomes for employees. Theoretical and practical implications, along with directions for productive future followership research, are discussed.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-11)
Breidenthal, Amy
When a person introduces two people to each other who were previously unacquainted, a myriad of benefits may accrue to the newly connected individuals, their work, and their organizations. While much research investigates the outcomes of new collaborations and extending one’s own network, much less is known about the motivations and outcomes for individuals who introduce others in their social network. Creative behaviors (actions that lead to novel and useful outcomes) often take the form of uniting diverse ideas or importing material from one domain to inspire new solutions in another domain. Relatedly, making a new introduction is an act of uniting two previously unconnected people or bringing an individual from one area in the social network into another. Therefore, connecting two previously unconnected individuals may be well-informed by existing creativity theories. In this dissertation, I build off the robust creativity literature to theorize about the behavior of introducing new and useful connections between people, which, like creative behavior, may ultimately lead to creative outcomes. Specifically, I develop a multidimensional construct of employee connecting behavior, which I define as discretionary acts of introducing a professional contact (A) to a new person (B). I propose four distinct types of employee connecting behavior, create and validate new survey measures to assess these types, and propose and test a theoretical model of why employees connect others, and what impact this may have on creative outcomes.