When feedback is not enough: The impact of regulatory fit on motivation after positive feedback

WORK ENGAGEMENT HAS BEEN WIDELY recognized as a critical factor driving organizational performance (Lockwood, 2007) and providing organizations with a competitive advantage (Swarnalatha and Prasanna, 2013). As such, it has frequently been studied for its positive effects on job performance, organizational commitment, health (Halbesleben, 2010), career success (Ng and Feldman, 2014), and job satisfaction (Kane et al., 2014) and its negative effects on stress and turnover (Huynh et al., 2014). Given the favorable organizational and individual outcomes associated with engagement, researchers have turned their attention to identifying antecedents in hopes of improving engagement among employees.Extant research has shown that predictors of work engagement include coworker and supervisor support (Sarti, 2014), job control (Kuhnel et al., 2012) as well as the dispositional traits of emotional intelligence, openness to experience, extraversion, and conscientiousness (Akhtar et al., 2015). An additional dispositional characteristic that has not yet been examined for its effect on work engagement is one's regulatory focus.The premise of regulatory focus theory (RFT) (Higgins, 1997) is that individuals may be either promotion or prevention focused. In the work environment, those who are prevention focused are concerned with maintaining their job security and behave in ways that help them avoid losses. They are not concerned with achieving goals but rather maintaining what they have. Those with a promotion focus are primarily concerned with achieving goals and obtaining rewards. Thus, their primary motivation is goal achievement and they behave in ways that facilitate reaching their goals. In the workplace, this may be promotions and/or salary increases.Applying RFT to the current study allows us to argue that the relationships between both prevention and promotion focus with work engagement are positive; however, these relationships hold for different reasons. Essentially, prevention-focused individuals are engaged such that their performance is adequate to fully perform their jobs. Promotion-focused individuals engage in order to excel and be recognized and hopefully identified for promotions.One variable that may affect the relationships between regulatory focus and work engagement is perceived self-value (PSV). PSV refers to how valuable people think they are to their organization (Eisenberger et al., 2002; Ozcelik, 2013). High PSV reflects a feeling of strong value, that the organization needs me. Low PSV indicates a feeling that the individual is not valued and the organization could do just as well without me. This self-perception may interact with one's regulatory focus such that work engagement is enhanced or limited.The purpose of the current study is twofold. First, using RFT as our theoretical foundation, we explore the relationships between prevention and promotion focus and work engagement. Combining these two areas expands the engagement literature by adding new predictor variables. Second, we introduce PSV as a moderator of these relationships to highlight the differences between promotion and prevention focus. The hypothesized model is shown in Figure 1.Regulatory focus theoryRegulatory focus theory (RFT) (Higgins, 1997, 1998) rests in large part on approach/avoidance theories of motivation which suggest individuals are motivated to engage in behaviors that yield positive end states and will avoid behaviors that may produce negative end states. Specifically, RFT proposes individuals self-regulate as they pursue goal adoption through one of two mechanisms: promotion focus or prevention focus. Generally, individuals are motivated to achieve favorable outcomes and avoid negative outcomes and do so through the adoption of a promotion and/or prevention focus. While the underlying purpose for the behavior is the same-achieve a goal-the goals for which individuals strive differ. …

Regulatory focus theory posits the existence of two systems of self-regulation underlying human motivation: promotion focus, which is concerned with aspirations and accomplishments, and prevention focus, which is concerned with obligations and responsibilities. It has been proposed that regulatory focus theory may help to explain learners' variable responses to feedback, predicting that positive feedback is motivating under promotion focus, whereas negative feedback is motivating under prevention focus. We aimed to explore this link between regulatory focus theory and response to feedback using data collected in a naturalistic setting. In a constructivist grounded theory study, we interviewed 22 early-career academic doctors about experiences they perceived as influential in their learning. Although feedback emerged as important, responses to feedback were highly variable. To better understand how feedback becomes (or fails to become) influential, we used the theoretical framework of regulatory focus to re-examine all descriptions of experiences of receiving and responding to feedback. Feedback could be influential or non-influential, regardless of its sign (positive or negative). In circumstances in which the individual's regulatory focus was readily determined, such as in choosing a career (promotion) or preparing for a high-stakes examination (prevention), the apparent influence of feedback was consistent with the prediction of regulatory focus theory. However, we encountered many challenges in applying regulatory focus theory to real feedback scenarios, including the frequent presence of a mixed regulatory focus, the potential for regulatory focus to change over time, and the competing influences of other factors, such as the perceived credibility of the source or content of the feedback. Regulatory focus theory offers a useful, if limited, construct for exploring learners' responses to feedback in the clinical setting. The insights and predictions it offers must be considered in light of the motivational complexity of clinical learning tasks and of other factors influencing the impact of feedback.

Purpose The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, the authors examine the potential mediating role of promotion focus in terms of the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Second, the authors set out to examine whether the indirect effect of transformational leadership and follower work engagement through promotion focus is stronger when followers' public service motivations are higher versus lower. Design/methodology/approach The present study examines the association between transformational leadership behavior and employees' work engagement. Data included measures of transformational leadership behavior and promotion focus as well as public service motivation and work engagement. Utilizing a field sample of 316 employees, the study tested the proposed relationships with robust data analytic techniques. Results were consistent with the hypothesized theoretical framework, in that promotion focus mediated the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and work engagement stronger when public service motivation was high and weaker when public service motivation was low. Based on the findings, the study concludes that the connection between transformational leadership behavior and work engagements partially mediated by promotion focus and this mediated connection is stronger when employees' public service motivation is high and weak when employees' public service motivation is low—thereby yielding a pattern of moderated mediation. Findings The study findings suggest five main conclusions. First, consistent with previous studies (Aryee et al. , 2012; Bui et al. , 2017; Hetland et al. , 2018; Li et al. , 2021; Ng, 2017; Tims et al ., 2011; Zhu et al ., 2009), the study found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. Second, along the same lines of previous research (Brockner and Higgins, 2001; Hetland et al. , 2018; Johnson et al. , 2017; Kark et al. , 2018; Tung, 2016), this study found a positive association between transformational leadership and employees' promotion focus. Third, as hypnotized, the study found a positive association between employees' promotion focus and their work engagement. Fourth, as hypothesized using regulatory focus theory, promotion focus positively mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. This result elucidates the underlying mechanism that enables leadership to influence employees' work engagement, particularly, through the self-regulatory promotion focus. The result demonstrates that leadership relates to and affects basic motivations of the promotion systems, which have been known as a basic human need for development and growth. The study demonstrates that leaders may be able to promote followers' motivations by provoking a promotion focus frame and this motivational frame further shapes followers' outcomes in terms of employees' work engagement. Hence, this finding support previous research claiming that promotion focus acts as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between transformational leadership and various outcomes(e.g. Johnson et al. , 2017; Kark et al. , 2018). However, this study adds significantly to existing research by being the first study to empirically test and pay attention to the promotion focus frame as the underlying psychological mechanism through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. Finally, consistent with the study hypothesis, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the promotion focus-work engagement association. In addition, as the study hypothesized, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the mediating relationships between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement through promotion focus in public sector organizations. It appears that the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' work engagement through promotion focus is enhanced by the role of employees' PSM. In other words, the employees' public service motivation increases employee engagement further for employees with high situational promotion focus than for employees with a low situational promotion focus, which could be explained by the fact that more public service motivation is more meaningful to followers with promotion focus motivational framework to be more engaged. That is, public servants who are predisposed to respond to motives grounded primarily or exclusively in public institutions and organizations are more engaged at work due to their self-regulatory promotion focus spirit. This result is in congruence with findings that indicate that PSM is an important driver of organizational performance and has a positive impact on organizational behavior (Ritz et al. , 2016). This finding does provide support to Bakker's (2015) proposition that PSM may strengthen the positive relationship between personal resources (e.g. optimism and self-efficacy) and work engagement because public servants with high levels of enduring PSM find their work important and meaningful. Therefore, they are likely to invest their resources in public service work, be engaged in their work and perform well. Research limitations/implications First, it examines the extent to which transformational leadership contributes to employee work engagement. That is, the current study adds to the literature by using promotion focus attributes to probe the underlying mechanism through which transformational leaders enhance employee engagement in the workplace (Kark and van Dijk, 2019). Second, by combining insights obtained from the literature on the self-regulatory theory (Higgins, 1997) and the PSM theory (Perry and Wise, 1990), this study adds to work engagement literature by showing the importance of PSM as an institutional factor in work engagement. Lastly, the study expands the transformational leadership literature by using a moderated mediating model that recognizes PSM as a situational variable in the mediating relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement. Practical implications The results have several implications for practice. Findings reveal that transformational leaders can enhance follower work engagement by inducing their promotion focus orientation. Managers can, therefore, display more transformational behaviors, such as providing a compelling vision, communicating high expectations, promoting new ideas and giving personal attention to each employee in the workplace. In addition, managers may develop a promotion-focus orientation among their followers by appealing more to their ideals and aspirations than to their duties and responsibilities (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Organizations, on the other hand, could offer leadership training and development programs designed to enhance transformational leadership Behaviors. As for employees' PSM, public organizations have to be more creative in attracting, selecting and retaining employees with high levels of public service motives (Kim, 2021). Public organizations can also train their employees on public service values and enhance their incentives structures to align their motivational predispositions with the organization mission and values. Originality/value The present study adds to the existing theory in two ways. First, despite significant progress in exploring the process and boundary conditions for transformational leadership with beneficial work behaviors, the study findings paid attention to the underlying psychological mechanism, precisely the self-regulatory promotion focus frame through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. A second theoretical contribution of the present study is that it adds to the long line of research supporting a more concerted effort to understand both the moderating and mediating mechanisms that link transformational leadership to follower outcomes. By using the moderated mediating model, this study shows that transformational leaders can induce a promotion focus within followers who have developed a public service motivation profile to be more willing to engage in their organizations. The current study also has several practical implications that can be drawn from the study findings. First, organizations should become more sensitive to their employees' (promotional and preventive) self-regulatory foci. Managers should be trained to be strategically oriented toward people's growth and development. Second, by serving as role models, managers can shape their subordinates' regulatory foci. The more managers' actions suggest that they are focused on promotion, the more likely it is that their subordinates will follow suit. Third, managers may emphasize the use of positive feedback, such as praise, by giving it when employees succeed and withholding it when they fail. This feedback style is more likely to elicit a promotion focus, especially if the praise for success focuses on what the employee was able to accomplish (e.g. “You aided

The main aim of the article is to point out the possibilities of researching the process of achieving goals from the perspective of regulatory fit theory. As part of the justification of this approach, the article presents the historically main theories of achieving goals – learning and performance goals (Elliot & Dweck, 1988), ego-involved and task-involved goals (Nicholls,1984), mastery and performance goals (Ames & Archer, 1988), which both may be in the dimension of approach or avoidance (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). Then attention is also focus to the motivational construct of regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997), which we connect with achieving goals. In the introduction, the achieved goals and types of regulatory focuses are presented in relation to their consequences. Mastery goals are focused on the development of one‘s own competence, and performance goals are characterized by the effort to overcome others, so they use social comparison. The approach dimension represents an effort to outperform others (performance goals) or one‘s previous performance (mastery goals), while the avoidance dimension represents an effort not to be worse than others (performance goals) or not to be worse compared to one‘s previous performance (mastery goals). For persons using the regulatory focus promotion, the occurrence of positive consequences is motivating, and for persons using the regulatory focus prevention, the fact that negative consequences do not occur is motivating. The article discusses the results of research dealing with which types of achievement goal (mastery and performance approach and avoidance goals) or regulatory focus (promotion and prevention regulatory focus) can be associated with more positive consequences in terms of achieving goals, while pointing out the inconsistency of these results. From this point of view, the hypothesis of regulatory fit appears to be a more unambiguous predictor of the success of achieving goals. Its principle is that the achieved performance goal is in accordance with an appropriate regulatory focus. For approach goals it is promotion regulatory strategy and for avoidance goals it is prevention regulatory strategy. In this case, regulatory fit is a better predictor of the success of achieving goals than the type of goal or regulatory focus itself. Even though the regulatory focus and achieved goals certainly have common features such as their definition through gains (promotion focus and approach goals) or losses (prevention focus and avoidance goals), they are different psychological constructs, because the goal rather represents the reasons for which behavior is realized and the regulatory focus is a concrete strategy for achieving goals. Thus, the fit between the focus and the type of goal may not always occur. At the end of the article we propose arrangements from the perspective of the regulatory fit hypothesis, which could improve the prediction of the success of the achieved goal. For example, studies conducted so far investigating regulatory fit did not take into account the possibility of changing the type of goal and the type of regulatory focus over time. Also, all studies are focused either on situational (which is relevant for the situation and is variable) or dispositional regulatory focus (a stable personality trait that refers to how a person typically strives to achieve a goal) independently and did not take into account that the fit between situational and dispositional regulatory focus equally positively predicts success in achieving the appropriate type of goal.

As an important tool for supervisors to intervene subordinates’ work and influence their performance, supervisor feedback has gradually become a new academic research hotspot. In this study, we build and verify a theoretical model to explore the different effects of supervisor positive and negative feedback on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance, and the moderating role of regulatory focus in these relationships. With data from pairing samples of 403 Chinese employees and their direct supervisors, the results indicate that supervisor positive feedback is positively related to subordinate in-role and extra-role performance. Supervisor negative feedback is positively related to subordinate in-role performance and negatively related to subordinate extra-role performance. Regulatory focus of subordinate can moderate the influence of supervisor positive feedback on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance, but it cannot moderate the influence of supervisor negative feedback on subordinate in-role and extra-role performance. That means when subordinates have promotion focus, the influence of supervisor positive feedback on their in-role performance and extra-role performance was stronger than those with prevention focus. These results further enrich the research on the relationship between supervisor feedback and subordinate performance, especially the different effects of positive and negative feedback from supervisor on subordinate with different regulatory focus. All conclusions from the analyses above not only further verify and develop some previous points on supervisor feedback and subordinate performance, but also derive certain management implications for promoting subordinate in-role and extra-role performance from the perspective of supervisor positive and negative feedback.

: Providing personnel with feedback is like gambling in the stock exchange: on average, you gain, yet the variance is such that you have a 40% chance of a (performance) loss following feedback (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). The obvious question is then when feedback leads to gain. A hunch is that the sign (positive or negative) of feedback matters. Yet, the vast literature has no clear specifications regarding when and how feedback sign influences motivation (e.g. Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). This research, following Van-Dijk and Kluger (2004), suggests that feedback sign effects can be explained by self-regulation theory (Higgins, 1997, 1998) which distinguishes between two regulatory foci: prevention versus promotion. They proposed that positive (negative) feedback motivates more under promotion (prevention) focus. Here, we suggest that the nature of the task determines regulatory focus. Prevention-inducing tasks are tasks that require vigilance and cautiousness (e.g. guarding duty, a safety task), while promotion-inducing tasks are tasks that require openness and creativeness (e.g. planning a battle's strategy, developing a new training program). Consistent with our prediction, the results of two experiments showed that negative feedback is most effective for prevention tasks, which positive feedback is most effective for promotion tasks.

Regulatory focus theory proposes that decision making and goal pursuit occur via either a promotion focus (a sensitivity to gains and a desire for advancement and growth) or a prevention focus (a sensitivity to losses and a desire for stability and security). Recent theorizing in strategic management research suggests that there may be important firm-level outcomes influenced by the regulatory focus of top executives. We expand research on regulatory focus theory by testing whether chief executive officers' (CEOs') regulatory focus impacts the proclivity of firms to undertake acquisitions. Furthermore, regulatory focus theory suggests that the effects of people's promotion and prevention foci are magnified when their regulatory focus is congruent with salient situational characteristics, a phenomenon known as regulatory fit. As a test of this idea, we demonstrate how the effects of CEO promotion and prevention foci are differentially impacted by one such characteristic, namely incentive compensation. Our findings indicate that CEO regulatory focus impacts both the quantity and scale of acquisitions undertaken by a firm. We also find some support for our arguments that these relationships are moderated by stock option pay.

Purpose The contractors’ consummate performance behavior is the key to achieving the project’s value added, but existing research has paid little attention to how to stimulate this behavior. Based on contractual functions and regulatory focus theory, this study examined how the allocation of contractual functions and the contractors’ regulatory focus affect their consummate performance behaviors. At the same time, considering the important position of guanxi between owner and contractor, this study also examined the moderating effect of guanxi on the relationship between the contractors’ regulatory focus and consummate performance behaviors. Design/methodology/approach This study first constructs a conceptual model that incorporates contractual functions (control, coordination and adaptation), contractors’ regulatory focus (promotion focus, prevention focus) and the effect of guanxi on contractors’ consummate performance behavior. Next, partial least squares structural equation modeling is used to analyze the survey data of 297 Chinese construction project professionals. Findings This study has the following four findings. First, contractual control has a negative effect on contractors’ promotion focus but a positive effect on their prevention focus. Contractual coordination and adaptation have a positive effect on contractors’ promotion focus but a negative effect on their prevention focus. Second, contractors’ promotion focus has a positive effect on their consummate performance behaviors, while their prevention focus has a negative effect on such behaviors. Third, both of contractors’ promotion focus and prevention focus play a mediating role in the relationship between contractual functions and their consummate performance behaviors. Finally, guanxi plays a moderating role in the relationship between contractors’ regulatory focus and their consummate performance behaviors. Originality/value Theoretically, this study enriches the research on the antecedents of contractors’ regulatory focus and extends the literature on contractual and guanxi management in construction projects. In practice, this study can provide guidance for improving contractors’ consummate performance behaviors and reasonable allocation of contractual functions.

Although the literature suggests that firms tend to adopt “conservative” behavior in the face of positive performance feedback, there are also studies that take the opposite view on the impact of positive performance feedback. Based on the behavior theory of the firm and regulatory focus theory, this study explored the impact of positive performance feedback on innovation search behavior and the boundary effect of CEO regulatory focus to gain insight into the mechanisms of innovation search behavior and to promote innovation for sustainable development. Based on data from 230 biopharmaceutical companies in China, the analysis found that: (1) positive performance feedback had a significant positive effect on depth search behavior and a significant negative effect on breadth search behavior; (2) CEOs’ promotion focus had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between positive performance feedback and depth search behavior and a positive moderating effect on the relationship between positive performance feedback and breadth search behavior; and (3) CEOs’ prevention focus positively moderated the relationship between positive performance feedback in relation to depth search behavior. This study extends the behavior theory of the firm and reveals the mechanism of the differential impact of positive performance feedback on innovation search behavior, which has implications for the study of which innovation search practices should be conducted by high-performing firms to promote sustainable development.

This research examines the influence of consumer regulatory focus on preference for product bundles. Product bundling is a type of consumer promotion in which multiple products are combined as a single comprehensive package, commonly accompanying with price discounts. This research focuses on the non-variety bundle that includes multiple units of the same item and the variety bundle that is composed of different products that vary in terms of ingredients, taste, or flavor, and examines the influence of consumer regulatory focus on preference for non-variety and variety bundles. It is hypothesized that between the two types of bundles, variety (vs. non-variety) bundle is preferred for consumers with higher promotion (vs. prevention) focus. This prediction is based on the theory of regulatory focus that people with promotion-focus tend to seek diversification, whereas people with prevention-focus tend to prefer safety in their purchase. The results of two empirical studies show that regulatory focus has a significant influence on preference for product bundles. Study 1 tested the influence of consumers’ chronic regulatory focus on choice between variety bundle and non-variety bundle options. The results showed that the regulatory focus of the participants was significantly related to the choice of variety (vs. non-variety) bundle. Consumers with higher promotion (vs. prevention) focused were more likely to select the variety (vs. non-variety) bundle. Study 2 re-examined the influence of regulatory focus on preference for bundle by examining its influence on the attitude toward the variety and non-variety bundle products. The results of Study 2 showed that the attitude toward the variety bundle was positively related to the participants’ chronic promotion-focus, whereas the attitude toward the non-variety bundle was positively related to the participants’ chronic prevention-focus. Consequently, the results of two empirical studies present strong evidence that evaluation of the variety bundle is positively related to consumers’ promotion focus, whereas evaluation of the non-variety bundle was positively related to prevention focus. The result was significant in bundle choice (Study 1) and attitude toward bundles (Study 2). The paper also present theoretical contributions, managerial implications, limitations, and directions for future research. This research contribute to the related research domains by presenting that consumer regulatory focus is one of consumer characteristics has a strong influence on preference for bundle types. This research also contribute to the sales promotion research by testing the factors that influence consumer preference for variety and non-variety bundles. In addition, this research presents important practical implications. For instance, this research highlights the importance of identifying the right target consumers when promoting bundled products. A firm should target its marketing effort toward the consumers with promotion focus when promoting variety bundle and toward the consumers with prevention focus when promoting non-variety bundles. This paper also presents directions for future research.

Regulatory focus theory has been used in prior research to explain how motivations guide strategic action. This study examines the previously unexamined link between the top management regulatory focus and organizational mortality. We argue and find that the effects of regulatory focus unfold over time as companies addressing a discontinuous change in the industry. Using a sample of 116 private banks from 2009 to 2018, we find that prevention focus reduces mortality at the inception, while promotion focus becomes a more important determinant for firm survival as the change unfolds. In addition, we argue that top management’s temporal focus moderates these effects. We find that future focus strengthens the effects of promotion focus on mortality. Contrary to our expectations, however, past focus does not strengthen, but instead weakens the effect of prevention focus on mortality. Our findings provide novel insights on the interactive effects of regulatory and temporal focus on organizational survival during industry discontinuities.

The study examines CEO communication in times of strategic change based on regulatory focus theory that describes individuals’ promotion and prevention focus. While promotion-focused individuals strive for maximizing gains, prevention-focused individuals strive for minimizing losses. As CEO communication is especially relevant during strategic changes, when fundamental processes and beliefs are affected and employees need sense-making and meaning-making contributions, the paper analyzes the regulatory focus of CEO letters to shareholders in annual reports and links it to the intensity of change that the organization is currently executing. The paper first develops existing analysis tools further and examines regulatory focus of CEOs as well as the type of change qualitatively from annual reports. Secondly, the paper ties the intensity of change to the CEO regulatory focus quantitatively. Results indicate a persistence of both promotion as well as prevention elements in CEO letters to shareholders. While controlling for contextual variables of the organization, the findings furthermore show a positive association between a more promotion-focused CEO letter to shareholders and the intensity of the organization’s change. Keywords: CEO Communication, Strategic Change, Regulatory Focus Theory, Promotion Focus, Prevention Focus

Author’s Introduction In our globalized world individuals are frequently confronted with intergroup encounters. Some of them pass by more smoothly than others. Understanding group members’ motivational dynamics provides the key for positive intergroup encounters and the creation of environments fostering such positive events. For a long time, research on motivation in the domain of intergroup behavior mainly focused on needs and motives such as the need for self‐esteem in social identity theory and the need to reduce uncertainty in uncertainty‐identity theory. In contrast, approaches to motivation in many other domains of psychological research have switched from such need‐based approaches to self‐regulation approaches (i.e., theories and models focusing on the processes underlying motivated action). This change of focus from the content of motivation (i.e., need and motives answering the question what motivates behavior) to studying the motivational processes (i.e., self‐regulation approaches answering the question how motivation translates in to action) has led to an enormous progress. To give just one example, this approach allows for much more precise predictions of behavior. Only recently research on intergroup behavior has adopted this change of paradigms in research on motivation. The current article summarized one line of research within this domain, namely the work applying regulatory focus theory (one of the dominant self‐regulation theories) to intergroup behavior. Author Recommends Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. This is a seminal publication on social identity theory and offers important and fundamental information about what intergroup behavior is. At the same time, it presents the first need‐based approach to intergroup behavior. Otten, S., Sassenberg, K., & Kessler, T. (Eds.) (2009). Intergroup relations: The role of motivation and emotion. New York: Psychology Press. This book provides an up‐to‐date overview of research on motivation in the field of intergroup behavior. It provides a good understanding of a variety of intergroup phenomena and explanations for them based on motivational approaches and social cognition approaches to emotions. Carver, C. S. (2004). Self‐regulation of action and affect. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of Self‐Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (pp. 13–39). New York, NY: Guilford. The whole book provides an excellent overview of self‐regulation research in a variety of domains. The particular chapter is an excellent, comprehensive, and concise introduction to the basic ideas of self‐regulation. Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist , 52, 1280–1300. This is a seminal publication on regulatory focus theory and offers the fundamental information on what regulatory focus is, what its basic principles are, and outcomes it leads to. Higgins, E. T. (2008). Regulatory fit. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp. 356–372). New York: Guilford. This chapter provides a summary of the more recent developments that followed regulatory focus theory. Its main focus is on regulatory fit (i.e., the fit between an individual’s behavioural strategy and the options provided by the environment). Sassenberg, K., & Woltin, K.‐A. (2008). Group‐based self‐regulation: The effects of regulatory focus. European Review of Social Psychology , 19, 126–164. This article offers a more extensive analysis and overview of the research on regulatory focus and intergroup behavior. It presents a comprehensive narrative review of this research and how regulatory focus and self‐discrepancies operate at the group level. Levine, J. M., Higgins, E. T., & Choi, H.‐S. (2000). Development of strategic norms in groups. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 82, 88–101. This article presents the first study applying regulatory focus theory to the group level. It assesses how regulatory focus – manipulated as part of the instructions for a group task – affects small group decision making. Sassenberg, K., Kessler, T., & Mummendey, A. (2003). Less negative = more positive? Social discrimination as avoidance and approach. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 39, 48–58. The research presented in this article is the first in applying regulatory focus theory to intergroup behavior. In studies making use of the minimal group paradigm, it demonstrates how regulatory focus can help to make more precise predictions about intergroup behavior – in this case social discrimination. Seibt, B., & Förster, J. (2004). Stereotype threat and performance: How self‐stereotypes influence processing by inducing regulatory foci. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 87, 38–56. This article explains another prominent intergroup phenomenon based on regulatory focus theory, namely stereotype threat. Sassenberg, K., Jonas, K. J., Shah, J. Y., & Brazy, P. C. (2007). Regulatory fit of the ingroup: The impact of group power and regulatory focus on implicit intergroup bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 92, 249–267. This article connects socio‐structural variables of the intergroup context and regulatory focus by studying how the social power of a group and the regulatory focus of an individual predict whether individuals are interested to become a member of a particular group and how much they like a group they are a member of. Online Materials http://gpi.sagepub.com This is a link to the journal Group Processes and Intergroup relations . Volume 13 will contain a special issue on Self‐regulation within and between groups providing an overview and more examples how self‐regulation approaches allow for a better understanding of (inter)group behavior. In addition, this is a nice place to find some of the current issues being researched in the field of intergroup behavior. It is also a journal to refer students to who are having trouble locating recent articles for class. http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/socialidentityassignment.htm This link leads to a small assignment by Michel Schmitt that illustrates the idea of social identity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyI77Yh1Gg This link leads to the video “A girl like me” which illustrates that from early childhood on group members (here African‐Americans) internalize the characteristics of their group in comparison to ot

Organizational resilience is an indispensable organizational ability for enterprises in the case of VUCA, and it is the pulse that leads the development of new ventures.Based on the regulatory focus theory and organizational resilience theory, this paper focuses on the impact of entrepreneurs ' regulatory focus on the organizational resilience of new ventures. An empirical study of 138 valid questionnaires shows that entrepreneurs ' promotion focus and defense focus have a positive impact on the organizational resilience of new ventures, and the positive impact of promotion focus is more significant. At the same time, entrepreneurs ' regulatory focus of promotion and regulatory focus of defense have a synergistic effect on the organizational resilience of new ventures.

The Effect of Positive and Negative Verbal Feedback on Surgical Skills Performance and Motivation