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This study proposes and tests a process model linking deep-level team composition and innovation. Two cognitive styles, sequential thinking and connective thinking, are the deep-level team attributes hypothesized to affect team innovation. Psychological safety and cooperative learning are hypothesized to link cognitive styles and innovation at the team level. Findings from a sample of 83 natural innovation teams with dual-source data indicate that sequential thinking contributes to decreases in team innovation by inhibiting psychological safety, while connective thinking helps improve team innovation through increased cooperative learning. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Increasing diversity in the workforce has several sources: (a) the changing demographic structure of the U.S., (b) the increased importance of globalization to profits and long term survival in many companies, and (c) changes in the structure of how work gets done. People bring with them into organizations the patterns of behavior and thinking, the networks, the social pressures, the habits, and strategies of action that they learned before joining the organization. Further, people are shaped by the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of others in regard to them. Although many organizations in the past have tried to homogenize behavior and attitudes by developing their own organizational cultures, the reality in most organizations is the existence of distinct subcultures and microcultures, as each group tries to find its own place, often in competition with others. This volume of the Sociology of Work addresses a number of issues that are brought to the fore because of diversity in the workforce: the structure, impact, and mechanisms of social networks; the policies and political dynamics around trying to redistribute benefits among social groups; issues regarding work and family, especially for professional workers in male dominated jobs; and the link between diversity in the workforce and broader issues of inequality. This set of papers address many of the emerging empirical and theoretical work in the study of diversity in the workforce and create an agenda for future work in the area.

AbstractResearch QuestionWhether and how women directors influence firms' engagement in socially responsible business practices and social reputation among diverse stakeholders is unclear due to conflicting empirical evidence, the lack of a coherent theory linking these variables, and inattention to the national contexts in which these relationships occurs.Research FindingsResults from our meta‐analysis of 87 independent samples suggest that, while generally positive, the female board representation–social performance relationship is even more positive in national contexts when boards may be more motivated to draw on the resources that women directors bring to a board (i.e., among firms operating in countries with stronger shareholder protections) and in contexts where intra‐board power distribution may be more balanced (i.e., in countries with higher gender parity).Theoretical ImplicationsFuture studies should more attentively examine how firms' institutional contexts enhance or mitigate the relationship between women's representation on boards and corporate social performance. Our findings also highlight the need for a comprehensive understanding of the social performance‐related knowledge, perspectives, and values that men and women bring to boards.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur results suggest that, to enhance any benefits of diversity for corporate social performance, efforts be directed at holding boards more accountable toward diverse stakeholders and improving the status of women in society and in the workforce.

Given the growing corporate social responsibility (CSR) pressures to increase board gender diversity and the scrutiny afforded to firms that fail to appoint female directors, one may expect shareholders to vote with greater support for women (than for men) nominated to boards. However, diversity management research suggests that pressures to improve female representation in organizations and in leadership roles may also backfire. We propose a threat-contingency model of shareholder dissent against female director candidates to explain when shareholders will be more or less likely to dissent against female (relative to male) directors. Specifically, we advance CSR legitimacy threats and agency threats as conditions contextualizing shareholder dissent against female director candidates. Using a sample of 50,202 director elections at 1,104 public firms from 2003 to 2015, we find that female directors receive less dissent from shareholders; further, low female board representation intensifies this leniency as CSR legitimacy threats become more salient. However, when firm-related agency threats occur (e.g., firm underperformance and media controversies), shareholders' leniency toward female director candidates dissipates, and when directors themselves present agency threats (e.g., director attendance problems and nonindependence), shareholders evaluate female directors more harshly than male directors. Underlining the relevance of our theory, our supplementary analyses show that shareholder dissent increases the probability of director turnover. These findings contribute to theory and research on women on boards, firm responses to institutional pressures, and shareholder dissent.

Organizations increasingly rely on virtual teams to access geographically dispersed expertise. Yet, team dispersion introduces challenges to team communication that may negatively influence team performance. Using a sample of 53 innovation teams representing a variety of geographic dispersion configurations from completely collocated to highly dispersed, we examined the moderating role of transformational leadership on the relationship between team dispersion, team communication, and team performance. Our findings suggest that while transformational leadership is effective in reducing the negative effects of dispersion in collocated teams or ones with low levels of geographic dispersion, it is less effective helping improve the performance of highly dispersed teams. This effect may be due to a transformational leader's difficulty in facilitating team communication in highly dispersed teams, where his or her influence might actually have counterproductive effects. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, future research, and practice.

White attitudes toward equal opportunity and affirmative action are explored through semi-structured interviews with 246 middle and working class respondents from three areas of the USA. Both working and middle class interviewees espouse a consistent and coherent view: that opportunity is widespread for anyone willing to take advantage of it, that facing adverse conditions or obstacles is not a sufficient excuse for lack of success, and that government help in the form of affirmative action gives women and/or minorities unfair advantage over men and/or whites. In the responses, however, we also find that whites apply standards to others about being the 'best person for the job' that they do not apply to themselves in their own career histories. Using the interviews with these respondents, we explore the implications of this inconsistency in how whites apply normative standards about what constitutes merit and fairness. This research helps elucidate the meaning of previous research on white racial attitudes.

This study uses qualitative interviews with 50 working and middle class African-Americans to explore how they use social capital resources from their strong and weak ties to obtain education and jobs. As expected, the strong tie relationships of middle class blacks provided college information, while the working class did not discuss such assistance. The working class respondents relied primarily on strong tie relationships for social capital resources, but this did not always improve their career trajectories. Conversely, the middle class interviewees' networks consisted of both strong and weak ties who offered social capital resources that helped with their careers. Still, while both class groups had social ties that provided information about jobs, neither group knew many people who could actually hire them. Thus, while the middle class respondents had greater access to social capital resources, their advantages were not as large as one might expect, given their class divisions.

This paper theorizes how reciprocal obligations that are inherent in social capital resource exchanges work for groups defined by gender, class and race. When one receives favors, there is generally an expectation that the favor will be returned either to the group as a whole or to the individual who extended the favor. While these ideas are discussed in the social capital literature, insufficient attention has been given to how these processes may differ for groups defined by gender, class and race and how these differences affect the groups' socioeconomic circumstances. This paper provides theoretical clarity to these issues.

Workforce diversity refers to the composition of work units in terms of the cultural or demographic characteristics that are salient and symbolically meaningful in the relationships among group members. Although generally thought of as the purview of management research, the topic of workforce diversity draws from and is relevant to research from sociology and psychology. In this review, we highlight two issues: (a) the importance of the substantial research on inequality to an adequate understanding of workforce diversity and (b) the need to link discussions of workforce diversity to the structural relationships among groups within the society. We organize the review in terms of three dimensions of the relationships among groups: power, status, and numbers (or composition). We highlight research from sociology, psychology, and management and show similarities and gaps across these fields. We also briefly discuss the outcomes of workforce diversity in the workplace.

Examines the apparent inconsistency between pervasive concern about racial relations & inequality & a lack of salience for whites, drawing on semistructured interview data from 246 whites in NJ, OH, & TN. At issue is determining why race lacks salience with whites by exploring white discourse on civil rights & equal opportunity. It is contended that claims of white commitment to color-blindness, equal opportunity, & individual achievement lead whites to frame race issues in a manner that deflects attention away from the role of power in the reproduction of inequality. These are viewed as mischaracterizations of actual white experience of privileged race & class positions. Stressing color-blindness, equal opportunity, & individual responsibility, ie, ignoring or denying the relevance of race in people's lives, allows whites to accept the premises of the civil rights movement while passively & invisibly maintaining white privilege & avoiding any racial conflict such an acknowledgement might engender. J. Zendejas

In western economies with aging populations, organizations are increasingly challenged to understand and manage employees' retirement expectations. At the same time, employees' relationships to retirement decisions and the age at which they expect to retire are likely to change as their careers unfold. This article seeks to inform the careers and management literatures on factors contributing to retirement intentions at different career stages. Using a sample of mid- and late career professionals with MBAs, we find that mid-career professionals expect to retire three years earlier than those in late career (age 62 versus age 65.) Work centrality is associated with intentions to retire later, while positive retirement attitudes and higher income are associated with intentions to retire earlier. Furthermore, the expected retirement age is more sensitive to income at mid-career (than at late career) and is more sensitive to work centrality at late career (than at mid-career). We discuss implications for careers research and for human resource management practice.