Collaborate, don’t dictate. - George Romero
What I-O Folks Are Reading
Selections from published articles, articles in press, and other academic resources.
The Ideas That Wouldn’t Stay Dead!
When there’s no more room in hell, the leadership theories will walk the earth:
Considerable progress has been made in the field of leadership in recent years. However, we argue that this is undermined by a strong residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die. These, we term zombie leadership.
Why, then do these ideas continue to walk among us?
Zombie leadership lives on not because it has empirical support but because it flatters and appeals to elites, to the leadership industrial complex that supports them, and also to the anxieties of ordinary people in a world seemingly beyond their control.
Zombie Leadership: Dead Ideas That Still Walk Among Us. The Leadership Quarterly.
They Stumble Among Us!
We have witnessed an evolution in the use of smartphones in recent years. We have been aware for some time of the potentially deleterious impact of smartphones on users' lives and their propensity for user addiction, as reflected in the large and growing body of work on this topic. One modern phenomenon – the distracted mobile phone user in public, or “smartphone zombie” – has received limited research attention. The purpose of the present study is to develop a robust measure of smartphone zombie behaviour.
The Problematic Use of Smartphones in Public: The Development and Validation of a Measure of Smartphone “Zombie” Behaviour. Information Technology & People.
Organizational Zombies!
Based on the cognitive-affective personality system theory and social network theory, this study examined the influence of three common workplace haters (negative gossiper, two-faced person, and loafer) on employee well-being and knowledge sharing and explores the moderating effect of organizational social capital.
People are Scarier Than Ghosts? Workplace Haters and Knowledge Sharing. Social Science Quarterly.
What Everyone Else is Reading
Articles, books, and resources from the popular business press.
Zombie Brands
Why Blue Apron, Allbirds, and others are still alive, only different.
They’re back, but they’re not the same. Think Toys’R’Us. Think Kodak cameras. Think Bed, Bath & Beyond. The end of your business no longer means the end of your brand. Thanks to zombie branding, your names and logos can be used to nostalgia-pill customers for years into the future.
Meet the Zombie Brands. Fast Company.
Zombie Companies
…the current roster of startup failures now feeds a rather fascinating new type of startup: one that helps others wind their business down when it's time to do so.
So there are now hospices to help zombie companies rest in peace. Fascinating. Anyway, welcome to 2024.
Cash-Crunched Tech Startups Are Morphing Into Zombie Companies. Inc.
Zombie Projects
Scott D. Anthony, thinks a lot about zombies. More specifically, he thinks a lot about zombie projects. “A zombie project is like the walking undead,” explains Anthony. “It is the shuffling, lingering project that, if you are honest about it, will never have material impact. But it’s the thing that is sucking all the innovation life out of an organisation. It’s the thing that’s killing your ability to do new things because you’re working on all these zombie efforts that are taking all of your time and all of your energy.”
How to Kill Zombies in the Workplace. Forbes.
Amazon Best Sellers: Ethics
Links lead to short summaries.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, Michael Lewis
The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey & Rebecca Merrill
Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently, John C. Maxwell
The Richest Man in Babylon, George Clason (Sure. Why not?)
How Good People Make Tough Choices Rev Ed: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, Rushworth Kidder
Construct of the Week
A psychological construct relevant to work psychology.
Leadership: “Within the academic field of leadership there is broad consensus that this this can be defined as the process whereby one or more people motivate one or more other people to contribute to the achievement of collective goals (of any form) by shaping beliefs, values, and understandings in context rather than by exercising stick-and-carrot behavioral control.”
Haslam, S. A., Alvesson, M., & Reicher, S. D. (2024). Zombie Leadership: Dead Ideas That Still Walk Among Us. The Leadership Quarterly.
The Research Quiz
The purpose of employee referral programs (ERPs) is to generate more qualified referrals for open positions. But what, if any, effect do ERPs have on retention?
Researchers randomly introduced ERPs to stores in a grocery chain. In this way, they were able to observe the various direct and indirect effects of the size of referral bonuses. What do you think they found?
Stores with referral bonuses experienced __________ retention.