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Firms often need to acquire external financial resources to maintain and develop their business. To attract these resources, firms employ various substantive and rhetorical signals, such as publishing press releases, showcasing prototypes of new products, and hiring renowned managers. However, despite the relevance of signals, we still know little about how they interact—whether they strengthen, weaken, or neutralize one another—in attracting resources. Traditional signaling theory downplays the importance of rhetoric while management research acknowledges its relevance, creating a disconnect between these two camps and a shortcoming that deserves further investigation. To address this shortcoming, we advance the concept of signal portfolios. Signal portfolios may combine rhetorical signals with substantive signals. We employ this concept to explain how the interaction of the two affects financial resource acquisition in high-noise environments—settings where firms send multiple signals simultaneously. Based on longitudinal data on crowdfunding, an exemplary high-noise environment, we find that rhetorical signals complement substantive signals in certain situations and, thus, strengthen their impact on a firm's financial resource acquisition. Contrary to our expectations, however, we find that under specific conditions, rhetorical signals may also weaken the impact of substantive signals. Our research has implications for signaling theory, crowdfunding research, and management practice. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1195 .

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between team political skill, i.e., the mean level of political skill among team members, and team performance. Specifically, it proposes that the link between team political skill and team performance is ambiguous and contingent upon a common professional background as well as collective team commitment within the team.Design/methodology/approachData from 45 service teams with 295 team members and their supervisors were analyzed. Hypotheses were tested using OLS regression.FindingsThe results show that a common professional background and collective team commitment serve as crucial contingencies for the relationship between team political skill and team performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis study complements previous individual-level research demonstrating a positive relation between political skill and relevant outcomes by highlighting that the link between team political skill and team performance is ambiguous and contingent upon other team characteristics.Practical implicationsTo enhance team performance, managers should carefully consider the interplay between team political skill and other team characteristics when making staffing decisions.Originality/valueThe study highlights the relation of political skill with team performance and points to a potential downside of political skill in organizations.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between team political skill, i.e., the mean level of political skill among team members, and team performance. Specifically, it proposes that the link between team political skill and team performance is ambiguous and contingent upon a common professional background as well as collective team commitment within the team. Design/methodology/approach - Data from 45 service teams with 295 team members and their supervisors were analyzed. Hypotheses were tested using OLS regression. Findings - The results show that a common professional background and collective team commitment serve as crucial contingencies for the relationship between team political skill and team performance. Research limitations/implications - This study complements previous individual-level research demonstrating a positive relation between political skill and relevant outcomes by highlighting that the link between team political skill and team performance is ambiguous and contingent upon other team characteristics. Practical implications - To enhance team performance, managers should carefully consider the interplay between team political skill and other team characteristics when making staffing decisions. Originality/value - The study highlights the relation of political skill with team performance and points to a potential downside of political skill in organizations.

Whether, and to what extent, employees learn from their failure experiences remains an unresolved issue for practitioners and scholars alike. On the one hand, failure provides individuals with opportunities for learning, whereas on the other hand, failure can also trigger defensive reactions that stifle learning. The present study expands experiential learning theories by incorporating the social context, thus offering a more comprehensive understanding of employee learning from failure. Specifically, we propose that team contexts that are psychologically safe and exhibit a well-developed transactive memory system provide important socioemotional and informational resources, enabling individual employees to seize the learning opportunities inherent in failure. Analysis of archival data on individual failure and subsequent performance in the domain of workplace creativity from 218 employees working in 42 teams supports our hypotheses. Employees are more likely to learn from their failure experiences if they work in teams with medium-to-high levels of psychological safety. Under these conditions, individual learning from failure is further stimulated by a well-developed transactive memory system. Our results also demonstrate the behavioral pathway linking failure experiences to subsequent outcomes. Interview data from 28 employees further illustrate the processes underlying these findings.

Entrepreneurs need to mobilize funds, but they do so under considerable uncertainty about resource holders' preferences, leading often to fundraising attempts that perform below entrepreneurs' aspirations. Past research has offered contrasting theorizing and evidence for why entrepreneurs then make changes to their product offering during such attempts as well as for why entrepreneurs refrain from taking such action. This paper develops and tests behavioral theory to reconcile this tension, explicating when and why entrepreneurs change their product offering during underperforming fundraising attempts. Specifically, we argue that entrepreneurs draw on three sources of information that are inherent to fundraising attempts and that inform the extent of their actions to change their product offering: the degree to which they perform below their own fundraising aspirations, the degree to which they fall below peer fundraising performance, and the time that remains until the deadline for the fundraising attempt. Longitudinal data on 576 fundraising campaigns (6,758 observations) published on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter support our theory. By developing novel behavioral theory on when and why entrepreneurs take action during resource mobilization, we offer contributions to research on entrepreneurial resource mobilization, the crowdfunding literature, and the Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Funding: This work was supported by KölnAlumni. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.13803 .