• Read more about The referral penalty: Decreased perceptions of merit undermine helping behavior towards referred employees

Employee referrals are commonly used by organizations due to their numerous benefits. However, it remains unclear how organizational incumbents, who are uninvolved in the hiring process, perceive and react to referral beneficiaries. Although traditional views suggest that the presence of a referral signals merit, incumbents’ perceptions may differ.

• Read more about Should I Stand Up for My Mistreated Colleague? When and Why High-Status Team Members Stand Up for Their Coworkers  

Supervisory mistreatment has adverse consequences for its victims. Coworkers, as observers, can shape victims’ experiences by standing up for them. Yet doing so entails the risk of supervisory retaliation. High-status coworkers should be well-positioned to stand up for victims as they have greater social capital at work. However, such retaliation risks may loom large for them because they are highly motivated to protect what they have. Thus, prior research reports both positive and negative links between status markers and various forms of standing up.

• Read more about Does earnings management matter for strategy research?

Strategic management research often uses accounting data, despite well-known concerns that earnings management could obscure the link between actual and measured performance. We apply methods from the econometric literature on bunching to estimate that around 15 percent of firm-year observations in Compustat manipulate accounting earnings to achieve profitability.

• Read more about Breaking ceilings: Debate training promotes leadership emergence by increasing assertiveness.

To date, little is known about what interventions can help individuals attain leadership roles in organizations. To address this knowledge gap, we integrate insights from the communication and leadership literatures to test debate training as a novel intervention for leadership emergence.

• Read more about Status-Amplified Deterrence: Paul Manafort’s Prosecution Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act

Social control agents often struggle to deter organizational deviance. We propose a theory of “status-amplified deterrence” wherein enforcement’s deterrent effects are amplified when carried out against high-status organizational actors. First, this enforcement is interpreted as willingness and ability for far-reaching enforcement. Next, amplified deterrence occurs as these episodes become widely known through (1) extensive media coverage and (2) the marketing efforts of third-party compliance advisors. We examine this theory in the context of the U.S.