Subra Tangirala is Dean's Professor of Management. He teaches the leadership course in the MBA program. In his research, he explores reasons why employees often remain silent despite having information, concerns, or suggestions to share, and what organizations can do to facilitate candid exchange of ideas at the workplace.
When employees first join an organization, they bring a fresh perspective and can offer new ideas and viewpoints. But whether they feel like they can speak up – and continue to do so – often depends on the manager they are paired with, finds new research from Maryland Smith. If they don’t feel encouraged by their manager right away, many will stop trying. And that can have big implications for the organization and the manager.
When employees feel comfortable speaking up at work with new ideas or concerns, it benefits the team and the organization. But managers want employees to share those thoughts in one-on-one settings – not public meetings – because they want to save face, finds new research from Maryland Smith’s Subra Tangirala.
Women don’t speak up as much as men do in organizations because they lack confidence. But they can gain confidence to contribute more if they see women leaders speaking up first, finds new research from Maryland Smith, forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
It’s challenging to steer an organization through a crisis. And when several crises converge at once the challenge is even greater.
2020 has been a year, marked by unprecedented turmoil. Business leaders have grappled with a deadly pandemic, a sharp economic contraction, a dismantling of business norms, and a social reckoning stirred by the police killing of George Floyd.
What makes an organization truly diverse? It’s not just what can be observed at the visible level, with inclusivity of employees from varied demographics or socioeconomic backgrounds, Maryland Smith’s Subra Tangirala writes in an article that explores his recent research. True diversity also requires a meaningful exchange of divergent perspectives and ideas in the workforce.
SMITH BRAIN TRUST – Open secrets abound on Blind, a social media app that allows coworkers to hide their identities while venting in firm-specific forums. Most companies look the other way, allowing grievances to fester online. But Tesla Motors recently took a different approach, shutting down access by blocking confirmation emails that come to the Tesla domain.
Every workplace has its open secrets. Multiple people may witness incompetence, laziness, fraud, sexual harassment, alcoholism or any manner of bad behavior from the same colleague — week after week — but nobody speaks up. Research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business explains why.
Front-line workers resent managers who ignore their input. But research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business puts the blame elsewhere when ideas get stifled or punished at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy.
Some people fail to plan. Others plan the wrong way for the modern workplace. New research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business distinguishes between two daily planning techniques and determines that one drives better results in fast-paced environments with frequent interruptions.
SMITH BRAIN TRUST – In recent months, as revelations unfurled amid the #MeToo movement and as certain men were toppled from positions of power, something else was happening, too. Men were increasingly becoming reluctant to mentor women at work.
