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Brett Josephson’s GovCon research honored with coveted award

Nilesh Patel — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 18:40:36 +0000

Brett Josephson’s GovCon research honored with coveted award Nilesh Patel Mon, 06/16/2025 - 14:40

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Brett Josephson

The American Marketing Association (AMA) has awarded the prestigious Louis W. Stern Award for 2025 to a paper co-authored by Brett Josephson, associate dean for Executive Education at �鶹��Ƶ and associate professor of marketing at the Costello College of Business.

The award’s namesake, Louis W. Stern, is the John D. Gray Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, best known for his influential work on marketing channels.

Josephson describes Stern as “one of the founding godfathers of marketing, especially on the interorganizational side, involving B-to-B channels and distribution.” Appropriately, the Louis W. Stern Award is given annually by the AMA’s Interorganizational Special Interest Group, in recognition of “a published article that has made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of interorganizational marketing and channels of distribution.”

The winning paper, “Uncle Sam Rising: Performance Implications of Business-to-Government Relationships,” was published in Journal of Marketing in 2019. Josephson’s co-authors were Ju-yeon Lee of Iowa State University, and Babu John Mariadoss and Jean L. Johnson of Washington State University-Pullman.

The paper proceeded from Josephson’s observation that “the notion of the government as a customer — not just any customer, but the largest, most impactful customer in the world — had been left out of the business scholarship consensus.”

To fill the knowledge gap, the researchers conducted in-depth interviews with sector experts, who highlighted the additional transaction costs inherent in the B2G (business to government) space. “The interviewees were saying that government contracting had all these idiosyncratic costs, and it was really hard to diversify away from government contracting,” Josephson says. “If you wanted to be in this space, you had to be all in.”

By the same token, companies were rewarded for upping their commitment to government clients. Comparing firm value metrics to actual government contracts, the researchers found that the more a company’s portfolio was weighted toward B2G, the more market benefits it enjoyed.

However, there can be risks associated with deepening involvement in government contracting. Because federal agency budgets are linked to political priorities, they can change quickly and unpredictably. Josephson and his co-authors discovered that companies could hedge against that risk by catering to a greater number of government clients. Those with a more concentrated B2G portfolio faced higher risks when taking on more government contracting, but saw higher gains in firm value on the whole.

The dynamics of the B2G sector lend themselves to increasing specialization, Josephson says. “Just because you have knowledge of a customer, there’s no guarantee you know how to translate that to someone else, and if anything, it can become a detriment because you don’t know how to speak that customer’s language.”

With the government contracting ecosystem adjusting to rapidly shifting political winds, Josephson’s findings may be even more relevant today than they were in 2019. The risks Josephson describes in his paper are hitting close to home for contractors with deep ties to civilian agencies, while military contractors may be basking in a proposed trillion-dollar budget for the Department of Defense.

Nevertheless, Josephson does not expect to see serious attrition in the B2G ecosystem anytime soon. “Even with cuts and uncertainty and ambiguity, the federal government is still the largest customer in the world, hands down.”

The Louis W. Stern Award stands as gratifying proof of the paper’s ongoing impact and influence. “Past winners include not only some of my academic advisors, but also many other people who have made major contributions to marketing scholarship,” Josephson says. “So it’s pretty awesome, even just to be on that list.”

The award will be granted at the AMA’s annual summer conference in Chicago.

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The work-from-home blues have a secret source: nostalgia

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:25:23 +0000

The work-from-home blues have a secret source: nostalgia Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 09/19/2024 - 10:25

For at least two years, CEOs have been trying to bring employees back to the office, citing remote work’s supposed negative effects on productivity, morale, and creative collaboration. Managers, we’re told, are having a hard time monitoring and motivating dispersed teams. But what if bringing employees back to the office won’t put the genie back in the bottle?

Kevin Rockmann, professor of management at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at �鶹��Ƶ, argues that the furor over remote work masks deeper cultural issues at play in many organizations. This cultural malaise has employees pining for an imagined past where they felt grounded and connected with their colleagues. In short, remote workers aren’t unmanageable—they’re suffering from pangs of nostalgia.

Kevin Rockmann

Rockmann’s recently published research paper in Journal of Management (co-authored by Jessica Methot of Rutgers University and Emily Rosado-Solomon of Babson University) documents the results of surveys conducted during the height of Covid (September 2020). The thrice-daily surveys were delivered over a two-week period to 110 full-time professionals. Respondents were asked to report on their feelings of nostalgia, as well as emotional coping strategies, task performance, and counterproductive work behaviors (e.g. withholding support from colleagues and stealing time from their employer).

The overwhelming majority of participants (98 out of 110) admitted to experiencing nostalgia for life before Covid. And these feelings could have either positive or negative outcomes, depending on how the respondents dealt with them. Rockmann points to two pathways that showed up across the surveys as a whole, which he labels “approach” and “avoid.”

One way respondents reacted to nostalgia was to use so-called “cognitive change” strategies, which help regulate emotions through shifts in perspective. For example, someone feeling sad about being trapped at home during the pandemic could think to themselves, “It could be so much worse. At least I don’t have Covid like so many others.” These strategies seemed to evoke empathetic responses, leading the survey participants to reach out to colleagues to check in or offer assistance.

Equally prevalent in Rockmann’s results, however, was a much darker pathway. Instead of reaching out to others in response to nostalgia, respondents tended to turn inward in an attempt to minimize the emotional discomfort. Psychological researchers call this sort of reaction “attentional deployment.” “It’s a defense mechanism whereby you don’t feel you have the means to really connect with others, so you leverage your attention away from the source of pain,” Rockmann explains. This pathway led to incidents of “acting out”—the above-mentioned counterproductive work behaviors.

Rockmann says these Covid-era findings remain relevant for at least two reasons. First, survey respondents’ written comments sound like they could have been written yesterday, rather than four years ago. Common nostalgic themes revolved around co-workers, the structure of co-located work, etc.—all oft-heard plaints of remote workers in 2024. Second, the normalization of remote work well predated Covid—as Rockmann’s past research on the topic has documented. Covid accelerated an inevitable transition that was already well underway. Therefore, workers of a certain age would likely be feeling some nostalgia, even if there had never been a Covid pandemic.

“While return-to-office may make sense for some companies, I would emphasize that nostalgia cannot be fixed that way. Nostalgia is about longing for the past—or, more accurately, longing for a return to how we remember the past, usually through rose-colored lenses.”

How can organizations help employees conquer nostalgia, or at least encourage healthier ways of coping with nostalgia? The obvious answer might be what CEOs are trying to do—end remote work altogether. “While return-to-office may make sense for some companies, I would emphasize that nostalgia cannot be fixed that way. Nostalgia is about longing for the past—or, more accurately, longing for a return to how we remember the past, usually through rose-colored lenses,” Rockmann says.

Any political demagogue will tell you that people are most susceptible to nostalgia when they feel isolated and afraid. The fact that nostalgia is so widespread in today’s workplace would seem to confirm Rockmann’s past research showing how organizational cultures fail to promote positive relationships among employees.

Combating the nostalgia epidemic will require a cultural reset for many organizations. “Managers will need to engage much more closely with employees, asking sensitive questions (e.g. “What do you miss about working here before Covid?”) and co-creating individualized solutions to help employees fully adjust to the major changes in their working environment,” Rockmann says.

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Defuse anger in the workplace with humor, �鶹��Ƶ expert says

Colleen Rich — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 15:10:05 +0000

Defuse anger in the workplace with humor, �鶹��Ƶ expert says Colleen Rich Fri, 04/28/2023 - 11:10

Whether it is pressing deadlines, overwork, or employees feeling they are not being supported, anger in a work environment can be unavoidable. Over time, the anger and frustration can compound, causing anger to spread through the entire team or organization, creating what �鶹��Ƶ expert Mandy O’Neill calls a “culture of anger.”

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In her research, O’Neill, an associate professor of management at �鶹��Ƶ’s School of Business, found that a culture of anger not only leads to problems for individuals, such as increased alcohol consumption, work-family conflict, and high-risk behaviors, but it also presents problems for teams as a whole.

In a study of a large retail organization, O’Neill found that employee anger stemmed from a culture in which employees did not feel supported by their managers, leading to more employee absences and higher turnover. Additionally, individual high-risk behaviors can lead to a decrease in workplace safety as a whole, including safety violations, accidents, and injuries.

Mandy O'Neill. Photo by Creative Services

Recognizing a culture of anger

O’Neill explains that when dealing with anger in a team environment, whether it’s a workplace, group project, or sports team, it’s important to draw a line between a team experiencing occasional anger and a team defined by a culture of anger.

“All emotions have a social functional purpose,” said O’Neill. “Anger can serve important purposes around, for example, moral outrage against social injustice, or action tendencies that cause a person to rise up against obstacles thrown in their way.”

However, in a culture of anger, “it's not just one incident, one time that made everybody angry. Rather, it's when anger is kind of everybody’s default emotion,” O’Neill said.

Dos and don’ts

O’Neill highlights two common methods of fighting anger that can actually make matters worse. “Emotion suppression, which is essentially to put the lid on an emotion and not let it be expressed, is very destructive,” said O’Neill. “Even if you think you're not expressing [anger], it leaks out in ways that you may not necessarily be aware of or able to control.”

Additionally, O’Neill found that allowing members of a team to vent their anger without restraint can serve to intensify the anger. Paradoxically, venting can reactivate and spread anger rather than resolving or calming the feeling.

So, what can be done to help improve an angry team culture?

Through interviewing emergency responders at fire stations in the southeastern United States, O’Neill found that the most effective teams were those who supplemented feelings of anger with joviality.

“Expression of joviality and humor is a way of channeling anger in ways that actually can promote group bonding,” said O’Neill.

She also found that companionate love, "the connection felt between people whose lives are closely intertwined,” also helps fight anger. Affection and caring, for example, creates a sense of familiarity between members of a team that helps to resolve issues, and can make a jovial culture easier to foster as members of the team know how and when to use humor without going too far.

O’Neill believes that introducing joviality and companionate love to a team can help team members work with anger to turn it into a positive, productive emotion. “Anger paired with positive emotions lends itself to a very different scenario than if you have anger without these emotions,” she said.

O'Neill is actively engaged in organizational research, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods to the study of employees and organizational units. She has worked with organizations across a wide range of industries including health care, technology, emergency services, and retail.

To reach Mandy O’Neill directly, contact her at ooneill@gmu.edu.

For more information, contact Benjamin Kessler at bkessler@gmu.edu.

�鶹��Ƶ �鶹��Ƶ

�鶹��Ƶ is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., �鶹��Ƶ enrolls nearly 40,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. �鶹��Ƶ has grown rapidly over the last half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity, and commitment to accessibility. In 2023, the university launched �鶹��Ƶ Now: Power the Possible, a $1 billion comprehensive campaign to support student success, research, innovation, community, and sustainability. Learn more at www.gmu.edu.

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The motivational magic of workplace pairings

Marianne Klinker — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 11:05:39 +0000

The motivational magic of workplace pairings Marianne Klinker Tue, 12/13/2022 - 06:05

Managers often struggle to motivate their teams, but that could be because they’re looking in the wrong place. Shora Moteabbed, an assistant professor in the Business Foundations area, believes that how employees relate to one another on a one-to-one basis is key to understanding – and influencing – workplace behavior.

Much to the chagrin of most managers, the complexity of human psychology does not cease when employees enter the office or log onto Zoom. In fact, complexity seems to be baked into our personality structure. In a widely cited paper, social psychologists Marilynn Brewer and Wendy Gardner theorized not one but three dimensions of identity: individual (who we innately feel we are), relational (how we perceive ourselves as part of a dyad, i.e., in relation to a specific person) and collective (the sense of self we derive from being part of a larger group).

Shora Moteabbed

Shora Moteabbed, an assistant professor in the business foundations area at �鶹��Ƶ School of Business, argues that academics and management thinkers alike have put most of their attention on the individual and collective levels, neglecting the centrality of dyadic partnerships as a motivating force in organizations. Her interest in relational identity runs throughout her work to date as an educator and scholar.

As a PhD candidate at ESSEC Business School in France, Moteabbed saw that many organizations were adding women directors to their board in order to display commitment to gender equality, thereby attracting and retaining highly valuable women talent. However, research by Moteabbed and Junko Takagi of ESSEC (published as a book chapter by Routledge in 2012) suggests that the mere presence of more women directors is not an effective enough motivator, in and of itself. The imaginative relationship lower-ranking women will form with a newly added female director makes a big difference.

The researchers concluded that executive women directors, i.e., those that rise from the ranks to gain admittance to the corporate boardroom, make a stronger symbolic impression on the rest of the organization than non-executive directors. Lower-ranking women are more likely to adopt executive directors as role models because they have more in common with those directors and encounter them more frequently. Therefore, the appointment of a female executive director conceivably would affect beliefs and behavior more than that of a non-executive director, and would be more conducive to the development of a talent pipeline of women leaders.

“These topics—corporate governance, diversity and leadership, etc.—are highly relevant to courses taught in the business foundations area,” Moteabbed says. “The knowledge informed by research can enrich class discussions and learning outcomes of the courses.”

In and out of the classroom, Moteabbed’s work explores how relational identity can help motivate a mutually supportive team culture. When we strongly identify with a colleague, we are more likely to want to help them. But the reasons we identify with others, as well as whom we choose to latch onto, are rooted in the aforementioned tripartite model of the self.

In an ongoing research project (co-authored by Danielle Cooper and Sherry M.B. Thatcher), Moteabbed finds that people with a more individualistic orientation bond with others whom they feel can help them achieve their instrumental goals; i.e., experts and high achievers. Relationally-oriented people seek out close connections with others, thus are more likely to identify and help others with whom they feel most connected. Those with a strong collective orientation will identify based on perceived similarity with another individual, so they can lessen any anxieties about not fitting in.

The lesson for managers is that while identity partnerships are essential to team coherence and resilience, a common team affiliation is not enough to prompt a partnership. In order to foster helping behavior on the team, managers need to know the orientation of each member of their team and identify potentially compatible partners based on that. Moteabbed says, “Managers should start dialogues and conversation, understand employees’ views and how they think about things. If they have the luxury of putting certain people together, they can ask them what they care about. To motivate people, you should find out what their motivations are based on.” When assembling student teams to tackle in-class projects, she sometimes applies her own research insights, trying to achieve a balance of skill levels and orientations so that each team can be a breeding ground for relational bonds.

Prior to joining the business foundations area at the School of Business, Moteabbed completed post-doctoral work at �鶹��Ƶ. She worked closely with Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at the School of Business who has published extensively on relational identity. Rockmann and Moteabbed (along with co-authors were Danielle Cooper of University of North Texas, and Sherry M.B. Thatcher of University of South Carolina) collaborated on a 2020 theoretical paper in Academy of Management Review that looked deeper into how identity formation within dyads can be a mutually reinforcing process with major implications for collective cultures. Soon after joining a team, the paper theorizes, an employee will find an “identity partner” based on their individual need for a sense of belonging. Their choice of partner will play a role in shaping their social integration (or lack thereof) on the team.

As an illustration, imagine a new kid in school desperate to find a social foothold. Whether the kid ends up joining a clique of straight-A students or the badly behaved misfits in the back row may have major implications for their future college prospects. In the moment, however, either social affiliation will do, as long as it satisfies the pressing need for belonging. That is why conscientious parents will be curious about their children’s friends. Managers, too, should take an interest in whether new team members are bonding with “integrators” or “gremlins”–to use the researchers’ terms. Further, managers who are attentive to relational identity will accurately perceive the dangers of harboring gremlins on the team in the first place. Every dyadic relationship is an opportunity for gremlins to spread their disaffection. Therefore, managers should make extra efforts to ensure every member of the team is as well-integrated as possible.

Across critical dimensions of organizational activity, relational identity is a major motivational force. Yet it is low on the list of managerial concerns. “Managers are mainly focused on other things, the wrong things,” Moteabbed says. “They tell their teams, ‘We have these values; we should share these values’. But individuals are more influenced by other team members about what’s going on in the team. Look at what’s happening on the dyadic level; that’s where so much of the action is.”

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Envisioning a sustainability-oriented future for corporate governance

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 14:19:59 +0000

Envisioning a sustainability-oriented future for corporate governance Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 12/01/2022 - 09:19

The “G” in “ESG”, which stands for governance, comes last, but not least. In fact, corporate governance may become the most important member of the trio, as mounting ESG awareness continues to enlarge the current conception of risk management. Soon, directors of publicly traded companies may be held increasingly responsible for heading off business risks related to the “E” and the “S”, such as the societal ramifications of carbon emissions and human capital flight due to less-than-living wages.

Cases in point: Boards of directors of Facebook and other high-profile companies have been sued by shareholders for breach of DEI pledges. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has broadened its regulatory agenda to include climate change, cyber risk governance, board diversity and human capital.

Given this context of change, it was an appropriate moment for the Business for a Better World Center (B4BW) to convene an in-person Stakeholder Roundtable on the subject of Corporate Governance. The half-day event took place at Point of View International Retreat & Research Center at �鶹��Ƶ Neck in Lorton, VA on October 21.

Previous Stakeholder Roundtable events were held virtually with the stated mission of “engag[ing] tri-sector leadership, our faculty and students to ensure forward progress is made on business meeting the values and expectations of society as well as its various stakeholders and to drive stakeholder capitalism further into the mainstream.”

After encouraging opening remarks from Dean Ajay Vinzé, a keynote speech was given by Michael Sion, a partner at Bain & Company who also sits on B4BW’s Advisory Board. In his talk, Sion laid out four main stumbling blocks preventing corporate boards from pivoting from the doctrine of shareholder primacy to a more stakeholder-oriented view. Lack of information means that directors are often ill-equipped to understand trade-offs between stakeholder and business outcomes. Lack of representation results in board composition that is misaligned with the demographics – and thus the concerns – of the broader society. Lack of incentives lessens the motivation for directors to rethink how they make decisions, unless they are pressured to do so for core business reasons. Lack of transparency hinders corporate accountability for decisions incurring environmental and/or social risks.

B4BW Executive-in-Residence Rashed Hasan then described a solution that would address the aforementioned challenges. Currently in development, the Stakeholder Value Index uses a wealth of corporate data to quantify the value firms bring to their employees, communities, customer and suppliers as well as the planet, shareholders and the company itself.

Narrowing the focus to one key stakeholder – employees – Tannia Talento, regional director from the office of U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), spoke of the Senator’s efforts to advance legislation that would incentivize corporations to invest in worker training by offering a business-related tax credit. Warner also co-authored a letter to the SEC urging the agency to require labour-related corporate disclosures, including the percentage of workers classified as “independent contractors” and thus exempted from many protections.

The following speaker was Cambria Allen-Ratzlaff, managing director and head of investor strategies for JUST Capital, an independent non-profit whose rankings and indices are designed to “drive capital toward good corporate citizens.” Allen-Ratzlaff explained that JUST Capital derives its priorities by polling the American public on their priorities. Consistently, paying a fair and living wage and job creation in the U.S. come in first and second in the polls. In addition, she presented a data-driven case that fair and equitable human capital management was completely in line with business objectives. Better corporate citizens, she argued, are also better managers and can deliver higher shareholder returns on average.

Usman Ahmed, head of global public affairs and strategic research for PayPal, described how the digital-payments giant launched the Worker Financial Wellness Initiative. The purpose of the initiative was to increase workers’ Net Disposable Income (i.e. the amount left over after taxes and necessary expenses) from as low as four percent in some regions to 20 percent across the board. To achieve this, PayPal extended equity eligibility to all employees, reduced healthcare costs, reviewed and raised wages, and provided financial consulting services. Consequently, the minimum global NDI for PayPal employees reached an estimated 16 percent in 2021.

However, corporations must balance the feel-good factor and social mission of stakeholder capitalism against potential legal limitations, especially in our age of rising shareholder activism. Donald Kochan, a professor at �鶹��Ƶ’s Scalia School of Law and deputy executive director of the Law & Economics Center, cautioned the group that shareholder value maximization has been enshrined in the U.S. legal framework for corporate oversight. He zeroed in on the distinction between a “corporation”, which is owned by shareholders and holds a unique legal status, and a “business”, an entity with no prescribed ownership structure that has wider decision-making latitude. For corporations, shareholder value is the sole legally acknowledged criterion for measuring managerial performance. Adding other decision-making criteria – beneficial as they may be for society – would give shareholders actionable cause for complaint. Therefore, Kochan argued, boards of directors need to develop ways of driving business growth (and, by extension, shareholder returns) that also, as a secondary effect, benefit other stakeholders.

Other than the above-named speakers, attendees at the Roundtable included B4BW staff, �鶹��Ƶ School of Business faculty, MBA students and law students. Rounding out the proceedings, participants engaged in breakout sessions on corporate information transparency and how boards can advocate on behalf of employees.

Rashed Hasan, who leads the Stakeholder Roundtable Series, observed at the end of the day, “This is very exciting to see everyone is opening up to meet in person and now we are able to convene a small group of tri-sector leaders, our faculty and our students to engage in open and frank discussion on some of the challenging issues facing business and society.” The next Roundtable is being planned for the later part of spring 2023.

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Challenges of leading a hybrid workforce

Jennifer Anzaldi — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 14:00:58 +0000

Challenges of leading a hybrid workforce Jennifer Anzaldi Wed, 11/02/2022 - 10:00

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Brett Josephson

Brett Josephson, associate dean for executive development at �鶹��Ƶ, shares his insight on the challenges of leading a hybrid workforce.

It’s 9 am. Do you know where your team members are?

Before Covid, the answer was simple: They were – or were expected to be – in the office. The pandemic erased that certainty and accelerated the pace toward work-place flexibility. As we move forward in our post-covid work environment, employees are strongly indicating their preference for flexibility and self-determination regarding their working environment. A portion of the workforce will desire to stay at home with high flexibility, whereas others will return to the office by choice.

In my role as Associate Dean of Executive Development at �鶹��Ƶ, I’m constantly talking to business leaders about their leadership and workforce struggles, concerns, as well as wins. Since Covid, a central theme of those discussions has been the complexity of managing hybrid teams. Fortunately, as we’ve all grown accustomed to the new normal, more and more managers are discovering that hybridity offers at least as many opportunities as challenges.

In my interactions with managers, I’ve seen that successful adaptation to the new normal requires managers to be intentional, purposeful, and transparent in their actions. Here are two areas managers need to consider as they continue to lead a hybrid workforce.

How to effectively monitor outcomes rather than activity. With hybrid, it is easy for managers to feel cut off from the day-to-day activities of their teams. Back when everyone was in the office, they could easily see what employees were working on. But the activity of remote workers is beyond such moment-to-moment oversight.

To recapture a sense of control, some companies have resorted to surveillance tools that use webcams, keystroke trackers, etc. to closely monitor employee activity. Like any other kind of micromanagement, though, these technologies send a discouraging signal to employees that their organization does not trust them. In some individual cases, that mistrust may be justified, but it shouldn’t be assumed for all employees.

Instead, managers need to experiment with a range of techniques to ensure not only that productivity remains high, but also that employees have the support they need to work effectively. The ideal solution will vary from team to team but could involve a mixture of interactive online tools (e.g., Slack, Teams, Google Docs), regular Zoom check-ins and one-on-one virtual meetings, even some in-person engagements and activities. It may take some time to get the recipe right – but once you do, the result will likely be maximised transparency and trust. A win-win for managers and employees alike.

Addressing power and politics. “Presentism” – the idea that leadership potential can be measured by the length of time one spends in the office – is still alive and well. Before the pandemic, employees who worked late also were more likely to receive personal attention from higher-ups who kept similar work habits, further increasing their opportunities for advancement. By the same token, it could be that employees who return to the office will enjoy an automatic political advantage over their remote-working colleagues.

The above-mentioned monitoring solutions would partly address this problem as well. Managers need a reliable way of measuring performance that doesn’t depend upon physical proximity. Beyond that, organizations should devise and implement proactive strategies for virtual mentoring, so that high potentials do not feel they have to choose between their career prospects and the flexibility of hybrid working. To be sure, any form of mentoring is time-consuming. But so is a preoccupation with office politics – a pre-pandemic obligation that could be lessened by virtual career development.

The politics of hybrid working can go in a different direction when all hands are urged to return to the office. Those with enough power may pull rank and refuse, creating an obvious hierarchical split– frontline staff commuting like it’s 2019, and higher-ups stubbornly staying at home. The perceived double standard could end up being a serious drain on morale. Yet another reason to embrace the new normal, rather than trying to force employees back to the office.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Business Voice.

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The secrets of embracing change in work and life

Marianne Klinker — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 18:14:02 +0000

The secrets of embracing change in work and life Marianne Klinker Wed, 09/14/2022 - 14:14

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Sarah Wittman

Kevin Rockmann

Today's workforce might best be described in terms of tumult: Great Resignation, Great Retirement, Great Reshuffle, etc. In this "new normal," managers must learn to navigate a state of continual transition in their teams and organizations, while keeping up with day-to-day demands. Likewise, �鶹��Ƶ School of Business Management Professors Sarah Wittman and Kevin Rockmann believe that it is time for scholars to change the way they think about role transitions to better align their theories with our increasingly uncertain world.

Over the last few decades, management theorists have sought to understand transitions by means of attributes such as voluntariness, social desirability, and predictability — generalizable qualities that tend to encourage binary thinking with implicit value judgments attached. While such catch-all labels theoretically make it easier to compare and contrast different types of transitions, Wittman points out that at the end of the day, they may raise more questions than answers. "Attributes are not measurable, plus they’re subjective for each person," she says. "Is accepting a promotion voluntary or involuntary? There are many situations in which it would really not be voluntary."

Sarah Wittman

Along with Mailys M. George (a faculty member at EDHEC Business School), Wittman and Rockmann authored a paper for Academy of Management Annals laying out an entirely new mental model for studying role transitions. Instead of attributes, their proposed paradigm is structured around experiences – in other words, what a role-switch looks and feels like not only for the person undergoing the transition, but for everyone indirectly affected (managers, colleagues, etc.). The experience-based approach would be open-ended enough to encompass transitions in both the professional and personal spheres – as well as addressing the impact that each sphere has on the other.

To illustrate their method in action, the paper posits a hypothetical employee named Maria who enjoys a healthy work/life balance and high productivity. Maria undergoes a role-transition as she becomes the primary caregiver for her aging father. Cataloguing the attributes of her life change would hardly do justice to its magnitude. Every area of her life would be impacted, from her ability for colleagues, friends, and relatives.

The paper’s experience-based framework defines Maria’s disruption as movement across four transition dimensions – psychological, physical, relational, and behavioral. To be sure, not all transitions are as major as Maria’s – smaller ones might not involve all four types of movement. And dramatic movement in one area can easily lead to more subtle shifts in another, as when the isolation of work-from-home causes psychological strain for employees new to remote working.

Often, movement is accomplished on some levels but not on others. Our fast-paced business world particularly neglects the psychological dimension, hurrying people between roles without allowing time and scope for proper emotional adjustment. As Wittman explained in a prior paper, this can result in "lingering identities" – the spillover of inherited ideas, habits, expectations, etc. into a new role where they may not fit. People who have made the transition physically but not psychologically will generally struggle more in their role, due to their sense of not-belonging.

In addition, the movement of individuals can set the people around them into motion, an outcome Rockmann calls "collateral transitions." For example, his prior research that predates the pandemic found that individual employees’ decisions to work remotely influenced colleagues to do likewise, as the office gradually emptied out and became a lonelier place to be.

The researchers suggest that by making these kinds of complexities (among others) more accessible to scholars, their experience-based framework helps theory keep pace with reality. It may also give managers something to consider.

"We’re pointing toward a much more human perspective, not economic rationality" says Wittman. "This is not the usual conception of a worker’s utility, as measured in salary, working conditions, etc. It’s a hidden utility. It’s taking a whole-person perspective on who is the worker at work but knowing that work is not their whole lives."

In a work-appropriate way, therefore, managers need to be at least minimally aware of what is going on in their team members’ personal lives, especially during times of transition. Returning to the paper’s hypothetical employee, the success of Maria’s transition would largely depend on her supervisor being understanding of both her family situation and its likely effects on team cohesion and productivity. Further, success depends on Maria’s supervisor making sure that others are not negatively impacted by Maria’s transition and that they understand, if not the details, the general nature of why Maria’s behavior has changed. Rockmann emphatically believes that the responsibility for maintaining open lines of communication is one-way. "To be frank, that’s the job of the manager. Enforcing policies and procedures, that’s the easy part. The more difficult part of it is helping people understand one another. That’s really difficult, to take that mind-set. Someone who’s not only interested but can actively manage the relationships in order to mitigate any potential issues."

Individuals undergoing transition can use the experience-based framework to help them anticipate challenges for themselves and others. This may also unlock buried resources of resilience. Just as the border between work and life is often more permeable than theory suggests, lessons learned from successful transitions in one sphere may be translatable to the other. Widening the frame of reference can help scholars, as well as the rest of us, learn more about how to build what Rockmann and Wittman call "transition muscle."

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Resolving the Great Resignation – One Employee at a Time

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 12:31:24 +0000

Resolving the Great Resignation – One Employee at a Time Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 09/08/2022 - 08:31

In This Story

Victoria Grady

We’ve all become familiar with the pandemic-related reasons behind the upheaval in the labor market, as well as the standard-issue solutions like trying to infuse work with purpose or offering employees remote working. While these are practical suggestions, they have not restored stability to the workforce. It is our contention that any broad-brush advice for retaining employees in the current environment will be insufficient. Whether managers like it or not, employees will demand sensitivity and adjustment to their psychological needs as individuals.

In retrospect, Covid-19 was the first major disruption to professional lifestyles since the women’s movement in the 1960s. Just as “women’s lib” triggered backlash from male leaders, the shocks wrought by Covid similarly caused ripple effects – for employees of all genders, races, and walks of life. But – and this is essential – every employee experienced the disruption differently.

The operative concept here is “psychological contract,” or the intangible compensations we derive from employment. If you have worked somewhere for any length of time, chances are you have an unwritten contract with your employer. But no two people’s contracts will look the same.

For example, remote working limited the spontaneous social encounters and standing lunch dates that fulfilled extroverted employees’ psychological needs in the “before times.” Employees who placed great stock in the prestige of their employer would have felt the loss of in-person networking events that gave them the opportunity to impress others by simply handing over a business card. When these intangible satisfactions suddenly disappeared, working life became less appealing. We see this as a main driving factor of the Great Resignation that remains largely unaddressed.

Theoretically, pre-Covid psychological contracts could be restored by pretending the pandemic never happened and requiring full-time presence at the office. However, ignoring the potential convenience and flexibility of hybrid working would place companies at a disadvantage in the war for talent. Employees do not want to choose between practicality and their own psychological needs – they want both, in harmonious balance. It falls to organizations to rewrite psychological contracts for this new era.

Since no two employees will have the same contract, revisions need to happen on an individual level between employees and managers. While this sounds like a daunting task, if you are armed with some information about psychology, it is not at all impossible.

An area of developmental psychology known as attachment theory points to the fungibility of emotionally anchoring bonds. The basic nature of our attachments, as well as our ways of maintaining them, are rooted in childhood experience and thus die hard. But the specific objects of our attachments can be switched. Victoria’s recent book Stuck: How to Win at Business by Understanding Loss explains how leaders and managers can use attachment theory to help team members weather the storm of change. Applying this logic can help repair the psychological contract.

To fill the social void at lunchtime, for example, organizations could offer an opt-in service enabling hybrid employees to arrange lunches or coffees with colleagues living in their area. The “me-time” of the commute could be restored by allowing employees to block off an hour every day for thinking and reflection. Status-oriented employees deprived of self-promotion opportunities could be given the chance to share their accomplishments internally, through corporate social networks or blog posts. These examples illustrate the general purpose, which is to find adequate analogues for pre-pandemic psychological routines and attachments.

Understanding not only what losses employees are mourning but also why opens the door to exploration. You could ask, “Assuming we can’t have an in-person all-hander this year, what else could we do that would generate excitement?” Developing an answer may take time, but starting the process of rewriting the psychological contract is meaningful. It signals sensitivity and a commitment to employees’ mental health.

Together, the information shared during psychological contract-based conversations can also help organizations work out which pre-Covid rituals should be brought back. If employees are nostalgic for in-person team meetings, it may be worth trying to resurrect them. Employees’ psychological contracts will also help you determine which in-person events justify additional expenses.

All-in-all, astute managers should sustain the conversation about psychological contracts into the “new-normal” and beyond. Regular evaluations could include check-ins to make sure needs are still being met and plan necessary adjustments. That way, employees and organizations can build mutually supportive ties capable of withstanding the next inevitable surprise.

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Costello Research Health & Well-being at Work

A Brain-Based Approach to Change Management

Jennifer Anzaldi — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 19:48:37 +0000

A Brain-Based Approach to Change Management Jennifer Anzaldi Thu, 03/10/2022 - 14:48

In This Story

Victoria Grady

Today’s world is changing so fast. As soon as you feel you’ve caught up, another crisis comes and knocks you for a loop. In this environment, there’s a heightened danger that we’ll fail to adapt fast enough. Inability or unwillingness to keep pace with change can leave us feeling stuck—incapable of moving forward.

Victoria Grady

If you can relate, Victoria Grady, an associate professor of management and program director of the Masters of Science in Management at �鶹��Ƶ, has some consolation for you. Stuck-ness isn’t a sign that’s something wrong with you. It’s related to how our brains are wired. The even better news? If you understand the possibilities of the brain, you can climb out of the rut and help other people, even entire organizations, do the same.

Grady’s new book, Stuck: How to WIN at Work by Understanding LOSS, is the result of years of research and writing with her co-author Patrick McCreesh, an adjunct management professor at �鶹��Ƶ. Stuck plumbs an area of psychology known as attachment theory, first developed in the mid-20^th century by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst.

In brief, attachment theory concentrates on how very young children learn to regard themselves as independent individuals, apart from but still linked to primary caregivers. It’s a slow, symbolic weaning process involving so-called “transitional objects” kids use to anchor themselves psychologically as they discover more about the world. For some kids, the transitional object of choice is a favorite blanket; for others, it’s a teddy bear. As we get older, the objects change but the mechanism formed in childhood remains essentially intact.

“This is an instinctual process,” Grady says. “You cannot make this go away. The only ones who do not have this are an extremely small percentage of the population who often struggle throughout life.”

Big organizational change—e.g., shifting to remote/in-person hybrid working, or business model transformation—inevitably disturbs employees, customers, shareholders, etc. who are attached to the status quo. Yet attachment theory is not part of the usual change management toolkit. Grady suggests that could be one reason why most change management initiatives fail to achieve their desired outcome. Stuck is a call to action for the largely process-based field of change management—the best-laid plans for organizational transformation are often thwarted by human psychology.

Although each of us may be unique in our attachments and preferred transitional objects, the ways in which we latch onto these things can be generalized into a limited number of basic categories, known as attachment styles. These styles originate from early childhood, when they are encoded into the limbic, or intuitive, system within the brain.

For organizational purposes, Grady and McCreesh have identified four attachment styles: stable, autonomous, distracted, and insecure. They write, “There is no right type of attachment style and each provides different value in different situations.”

Grady and McCreesh define the four attachment styles as follows: A stable attachment style arises from having been given a “secure base” for attachments in early childhood—e.g., attentive parents or other caregivers—and is conducive to generally positive and productive relationships in life and work. Autonomous attachment styles are the product of a childhood where one has learned to be independent emotionally—these individuals often have admirable attention spans but can struggle to connect with others. Distracted attachment styles lean toward the opposite extreme: intense dependence on the support of others and strong relational orientation. Finally, insecure attachment styles veer toward social anxiety that can lead to either hypersensitivity and burnout, or (with the help of a smart manager) unswerving organizational loyalty.

Grady has co-developed a diagnostic tool called the Attachment Styles Index (ASI) that companies can use to better understand their workforce. One of Stuck’s chapters tells how the ASI was used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the agency successfully overhauled its Flight Standards Service division. FAA change managers discerned in the data some key mismatches between team leaders’ and followers’ attachment styles, which were hindering communication and fostering mistrust. For example, stable-attachment leaders can have trouble empathizing with followers who don’t share their style of attachment. Managers who know the attachment styles of their team members can create transitional objects that provide psychological shelter through the storm of change.

Sometimes, leaders themselves can fulfill that critical transitional object function. Leaders with distracted attachment styles seem especially good at sensing the struggles of others, regardless of the individual’s respective style.

“Organizations can do better for change efforts by more effectively aligning leaders and followers based on attachment styles to create a better sense of support through change,” the authors write.

Grady says that Stuck is also pertinent for companies looking to hold onto their talent amid the Great Resignation. The pandemic played havoc with people’s workplace attachments. Using herself as an example, Grady says “The commute for me was the biggest loss. I was so used to the hour it took me to get to the office—I would think, talk, record stuff—I loved that time…We are attached to our routines. So many of my friends have lunch voids; they didn’t know how to have lunch by themselves. The organization has to respond to the changing environment.”

Managers can neither turn back time nor slow down the pace at which the world is changing. But they can work harder to understand their employees’ varied attachments and help create psychological lifelines to get people un-stuck.

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