Local Religiosity Culture and Managerial Response to Organized Labor

Based on the organizational psychology and social norms theories, we provide empirical evidence on the effect of local religiosity on insider trading activity. We find that local religiosity has a negative and statistically significant impact on insider trading activity, which is robust to alternative model specifications, selection bias, reverse causality, omitted variable bias, and measurement errors. Local religiosity negatively affects both insider purchase and sale activity, supporting the predictions of the morality and risk-aversion traits of local religiosity. However, the effect of the risk-aversion trait dominates the morality trait since the negative effect of local religiosity on insider sale transactions is higher. We also show that the level of information asymmetry, a key driver of insider trading activity, magnifies the effect of local religiosity on insider trading activity. Overall, local religiosity works as a compensatory control mechanism moderating the effect of managerial rent extraction motives on insider trading activity.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Why Do People Join Groups? Three Motivational Accounts from Social Psychology

In the 1970s, scholars in social psychology began exploring the process by which individuals attach their own identity to the groups in which they associate. This gave rise to social identity theory, which rests on the notion that, through largely unconscious cognitive processes, individuals who value and closely identify with a particular social group (e.g., familial, ethnic, religious, gender, partisan, national, etc.) will tend to take on characteristics and exhibit behaviors that are consistent with positive attributes associated with that group. Social identity theory also suggests that individuals do more than merely identify with the social groups to which they belong; they also derive comfort, security, and self-esteem from these groups. As a result, group members often engage in favoritism toward their own social group and, at times, denigration of other social groups as a way to protect or enhance their own group identity. Because individuals identify with multiple groups, the concept of salience is also crucial to our understanding of social identity theory. Specifically, individuals will seek to protect or enhance a particular group identity (through words or actions) when they perceive it to be threatened or they sense an opportunity to promote or enhance it. Given the obvious import and relevance of these dynamics to various aspects of society, research on social identity theory has grown exponentially over the past several decades, especially within the social sciences. Scholars in the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, and communication, for example, have increasingly paid attention to and incorporated social identity theory into their study of everything from how politicians communicate to how people vote to how people interact with other cultures. Notably, within the field of communication, the value of social identity theory rests with its ability to explain or predict messaging and response behaviors when a particular group identity is made salient. Thus, social identity theory is a robust theoretical framework that, in recent years, has had broad appeal and application across a number of academic disciplines. With a focus on the intersection of social identity theory and communication research, this article seeks to identify the foundational works within this area of research, recognize the primary journals in which this research can be found, discuss the key concepts and terms associated with this research, and explore how social identity theory has evolved both theoretically and empirically since its inception in the 1970s.

Recent research indicates the social norms of geographic areas where firms are headquartered have an impact on corporate decision-making. Drawing on instrumental stakeholder theory and social norm theory, we extend this line of research by examining the influence of local religiosity on corporate social responsibility (CSR). This study shows that firms headquartered in areas with a strong religious presence receive lower ratings for CSR, and the market rewards these firms for their choices. Our findings contribute to understanding factors that impact individual firm choices regarding CSR as well as demonstrating the role of religious attitudes in corporate behavior.

Party Identity and the Evaluation of Political Candidates

High-risk drinking, the consumption of 5 or more drinks on one occasion, constitutes a serious public health issue among young adults, particularly college students. In an attempt to address this issue in a cost-effective manner, many universities have implemented social marketing interventions sometimes utilizing social norm theory and in other cases using more traditional strategies. However, some practitioners, school officials, and even researchers incorrectly use the terms social marketing and social norms marketing, interchangeably. Social marketing influences health behavior through the use of marketing principles, such as the use of the 4Ps (product, price, placement, and promotion) to increase knowledge, change attitudes, and motivate individual or societal change. Conversely, social norms represents a specific theory which can be applied using social marketing principles. Social norm interventions are designed to correct peoples' misconceptions concerning the prevalence of a particular behavior. Theorists assert that by providing accurate information concerning the prevalence of the behavior of interest people will alter their behavior to fit the“norm.” Using social marketing approaches with or without social norms theory represents a promising cost-effective strategy for addressing high-risk drinking among college students. However, failing to understand and appreciate the conceptual underpinnings of how these two concepts relate to one another may result in ineffective interventions and conclusions concerning the efficacy of social marketing and/or social norms theory.

Social identity theory assumes that individuals and collectives apply identity management strategies in order to cope with threatened social identities. It is argued here that an integration of social identity theory and the authoritarian personality theory may help to investigate identity management strategies for minority and majority groups. It was intended to investigate predictors of identity management strategies applied by students at the University of Cape Town. Analyses are based on a questionnaire survey of 457 university students. Results only partially confirmed assumptions derived from social identity theory. Group identification and perceptions of legitimacy were related to the individual identity management strategy, “individualisation”, while the collective strategy “social competition” was associated with collective efficacy and authoritarianism. Perceptions of instability and authoritarianism predicted preferences for “temporal comparisons”. ‘Superordinate recategorisation’ was only very weakly predicted by group identification. The study indicated that social identity theory and the authoritarian personality theory might play different roles in preferences for identity management strategies. While social identity theory appears better in explaining individual identity management strategies, the authoritarian personality theory might be better in explaining collective strategies.

This study uses social identity theory and communication accommodation theory as lenses to examine former cancer patients’ perspectives of the “survivor” label, replacement labels for their experience, and use of survivor services. Semi-structured interviews of 43 former cancer patients offer insight into their unique cancer experiences and explain how these events influence their perceptions of the term survivor. Coders used constant comparison methods to capture six themes related to the participants’ impressions of the survivor label. When sharing perceptions of the survivor label, participants expressed language that illustrated convergence (It means everything to me), divergence (I don’t like to be called anything), convergence and divergence (Part of me is happy … Part of me is kind of aggravated), and apathy (I have no feelings toward the label). Participants also generated new labels that captured their cancer experiences and six unique themes emerged from these responses. Most of the former cancer patients were aware of survivorship programs; however, relatively few used these programs regularly and cited reasons for nonuse explained by social identity theory.

The need to fill three gaps in ethics research in a business context sparked the current study. First, the distinction between the concepts of “ethical” and “legal” needs to be incorporated into theory building and empiricism. Second, a unifying theory is needed that can explain the variables that influence managers to emphasize ethics and legality in their judgments. Third, empirical evidence is needed to confirm the predictive power of the unifying theory, the discernable influence of personal and organizational variables, and the importance of the issue to the managers in determining their emphasis on the ethical and legal values of their judgments. Focused on these needs, the current research combines social identity theory with empirical findings from business ethics research. This theory building initiative framed hypothesis-driven research to investigate the influences on managers’ emphasis on ethical and legal values in making business judgments. An empirical research study was conducted involving 252 practicing managers who judged 12 newsworthy business events. Data was collected on the managers’ individual factors, on the groups that influence their judgments, and on the importance that the managers place on ethics and legality in judging the 12 scenarios. The research findings contribute to theory development (1) By successfully utilizing a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories to understand managers’ judgments, and (2) By providing evidence on the relationships between the perceived importance of an issue and the emphases managers place on ethical and legal values in their judgments. The analysis of the data was extended to provide insights on the needs of employers to tailor management training on legal and ethical decision-making. The participating managers were clustered according to their emphases on Ethical Importance and Legal Importance in judging business situations. Analysis of Variance was then combined with Scheffe Multiple Comparison Tests to assess whether the factors derived from a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories were significantly different across the clusters. The product of this analysis is unique sets of attributes that describe each cluster of managers, and provide an empirical basis for determining training priorities. Finally, the carefully constructed and thoroughly tested 12 research scenarios that form the core of the survey instrument enable their redeployment in subsequent research and their use by practicing executives who wish to compare data provided by their managers to results from the study participants.

This chapter starts by defining social norms in entertainment-education (EE) and provides an overview of social norms constructs and theories. The chapter next presents social norms case studies from the authors’ work as EE researchers in four countries. The first case study measures changes in social norms in India as a result of the television program Kyunki…Jeena Issi Ka Naam Hai (Because… That’s What Life Is). The second case study is from Mozambique, where the authors investigated the role of social norms from the Ouro Negro (Black Gold) radio program. The third case study examined social norms from a TV drama in Bangladesh: Icchedana (On the Wings of Wishes). And the final case study is from Zambia, where social norms measurement tools were tested with hopes of scaling across EE programs. The chapter concludes with lessons learned from the authors’ collective experiences studying social norms and EE.

Based on social norms theory, we examine the impact of local gambling culture, an unexpected result of government-permitted lotteries, on enterprise bribery. We propose that local gambling cultures can promote active enterprise involvement in bribery activities by reinforcing the speculative psychology of enterprise decision-makers. In addition, we argue that local gambling culture is less likely to lead female (returnee) chairpersons to develop speculative psychology than male (nonreturnee) chairpersons. This, in turn, allows female (returnee) chairpersons to undermine the positive impact of local gambling culture on involvement in enterprise bribery. Based on 11 years of empirical data obtained from privately listed Chinese companies (including 2,637 listed companies with 15,036 firm-year data points), we obtain empirical evidence to support most of these views. This study is the first to explore the relationship between local gambling culture and enterprise bribery, and important insights are provided for shareholders and policy-makers to better curb enterprise bribery.

This paper explores the relationship between social psychology and social theory by following the development of Social Identity Theory (SIT). It is argued that the current state of SIT is profoundly shaped by a range of intellectual and moral strategies adopted by Henri Tajfel. This “Tajfel effect” manifests itself as a particular form of individualist analysis developed within SIT, coupled with a wholesale exclusion of social structure. Combined together, these tendencies undermine SITs ability to describe how both categorisation and social change arise within a shifting and complex modern social landscape.

Reducing stigma towards people living with HIV and people who inject drugs using social norms theory: An online study with Australian health care workers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review social identity theory and its implications for learning in organizations.Design/methodology/approachThis article is a conceptual paper based on a multidisciplinary review of the literature on social identity theory. This article explains the theoretical concepts, constructs, and findings of an identity‐based view of learning in organizations. The article describes the theoretical foundations of social identity theory and its elaboration as self‐categorization theory, along with some of the limitations of the theory. Important implications for workplace learning are presented.FindingsAlthough multiple factors influence how people work, social identity theory portends to be a unifying theory of organizational behavior because what and how people think as members of social groups influences subsequent behavior and attitudes in social systems. This influence has important implications for workplace learning..Practical implicationsThe social identities in organizations serve as important drivers of performance. How people think as members of groups affects the outcomes of learning interventions. Therefore, social identity is a key input to or driver of learning and performance in organizations.Originality/valueTraining and development have focused primarily on the individual and occasionally the organizational levels with little attention to the identity‐based dynamics of group behavior in organizational settings. This paper offers insights from social identity theory for training and development.

Among the existing sexual assault prevention efforts on college campuses, few use mass communication strategies designed to simultaneously entertain and educate. Although many entertainment-education efforts are guided by social cognitive theory, other theories may be useful in entertainment-education design. Previous research has found that social cognitive theory and social norms theory can successfully influence participants’ perceived norms and efficacy related to sexual assault reduction; however, whether such results can be replicated in a naturalistic setting and the extent to which the guiding theoretical foundation may influence outcomes remain unknown. We used a pre- and posttest field experiment with college students in residence halls to assess how different theoretical foundations may influence effects. Over the course of a semester, the participants viewed eight mini-magazines developed using (1) social cognitive theory, (2) social norms theory, (3) a combination of both theoretical frameworks, or (4) a control condition with no sexual assault prevention messaging. Participants in the combined content condition had greater levels of self-efficacy related to sexual assault prevention and more accurate norm perceptions. There were also effects for the mini-magazines developed with only one theoretical framework. Overall, we found that multiple theories can effectively guide entertainment-education message development.