Corporate AI Backlash
Plus: When Leaders Leave, Unionization of Gig Workers, & Entrepreneurial Loneliness
Without labor nothing prospers. - Sophocles
What I-O Nerds Are Reading
Selections from published articles, articles in press, and other academic resources.
Loneliness is Bad for Entrepreneurs, Except When It’s Good for Them
Integrating literature on loneliness, well-being, and entrepreneurship, we conduct a qualitative, inductive study analyzing over 9000 Reddit posts drawn from online entrepreneurship communities where individuals seek and offer advice on how to address entrepreneurial loneliness. In applying appraisal theory to interpret our findings, we discover that whereas some entrepreneurs experience loneliness as threatening and harmful, others experience loneliness as positive or irrelevant, contrary to existing literature that points to loneliness as wholly negative.
The Many Faces of Entrepreneurial Loneliness. Personnel Psychology.
When Leaders Leave
Findings indicate that, after a leader departs, there is an immediate increase in collective turnover and that unit performance decreases over time. Further, when the incoming leader is temporary, unit performance increases briefly, but the rate of performance drops over time.
Moving On: Exploring the Implications of Leader Departure and Incoming Temporary Leaders for Collective Turnover and Unit Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology.
The Road to Hell is Paved With Them
We find evidence of a positive relationship between women on boards and women’s representation in senior management during the pre-regulation era – otherwise referred to as the trickle-down effect. However, the introduction of regulation had the unintended consequence of weakening the relationship between women on boards and women in senior management.
Regulation and the Trickle-Down Effect of Women in Leadership Roles. The Leadership Quarterly.
What Everyone Else is Reading
Articles, books, and resources from the popular business press.
Big Choices for Gig Workers
Uber and Lyft are quietly funding worker groups to pump the brakes on drivers organizing.
Gig Workers Have to Choose Between Freedom and Security as Unionization Intensifies (Video). Fast Company.
To HR or Not to HR, That is the Question
Working in a toxic environment can rapidly erode your feelings about your job. Just dragging yourself to the office every day can fill you with dread. And evaluating whether to speak up about the toxicity — Who should you talk to? How much should you say? — can be incredibly intimidating.
When Should You Take a Problem to HR? Harvard Business Review.
AI Backlash
Two thirds (66%) of organisations in the UK are implementing or considering bans on generative AI applications within the workplace, according to a survey of IT decision makers by software company Blackberry. Most (69%) of these bans are long term or permanent, with 78% concerned that unsecured AI apps pose a cybersecurity threat.
Chat GPT May be Banned in Some UK Organisations. Bloomberg Businessweek.
New York Times’ Bestselling Business Books
Links lead to short summaries.
Atomic Habits, James Clear
The Creative Act, Rick Rubin with Neil Strauss
I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Ramit Sethi
Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman
Dare to Lead, Brené Brown
Construct of the Week
A psychological construct relevant to work psychology.
Impression Management: Any attempt—conscious or unconscious—by an individual to control others’ impressions of them by controlling the information, behaviors, and appearance that the individual presents to others.
The Research Quiz
Test your intuition against this research finding.
How good are we at judging how much other people like us? Researchers asked participants who didn't know each other to carry out a conversation and then rate how much they believed the other person liked them. What do you think they found?
Did participants overestimate or underestimate how much the other person liked them?