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Managing business processes means establishing and maintaining their regulatory power, i.e., their capacity to guide and shape the practice of users and stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the regulatory power of standardized business processes can be established and managed.

Building on a theory of standardization and on qualitative data, the authors suggest a “model of self-reinforcing business process management.”

Business process management consists of several phases (process design, process implementation, process application and process follow-up). A cyclical perspective on how these phases work together to create process legitimacy as presented in the model of self-reinforcing business process management can foster better understanding of the self-reinforcing dynamics of business process management.

The paper offers starting points for interdisciplinary research on business process management. The proposed model should be further examined with regard to its usefulness for overcoming tensions and dynamics associated with standardization.

The model of self-reinforcing business process management provides a guideline for managers involved in planning, implementing, applying, or improving business processes or further areas of change-related organizational governance.

By modeling a cyclical sequence of business process management and highlighting the role of different kinds of legitimacy, the authors integrate functionalist and social perspectives on business process management in one model.

Several theoretical models have been developed to describe the process of successful team adaptation. Testing the models through empirical research is lacking. This study aims to empirically examine the way teams adapt to unexpected or novel circumstances and investigate the four-phase team adaptation process (i.e. situation assessment → plan formulation → plan execution → team learning), as proposed by Rosen et al. (2011).

To test the positive relationship between the four team adaptation phases and their suggested sequence, a cross-sectional field study was conducted. Data were collected from 23 teams participating during an 8-week team project.

Results from random intercept models confirmed that the team adaptation process consisted of four phases that were positively related to each other. As expected, plan formulation mediated the positive relationship between situation assessment and plan execution. However, team learning was independently related to all three previous phases, and not only to situation assessment as theory suggests.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first attempts to test the theoretical model of the team adaptation process presented by Rosen et al. (2011). Findings illustrated that the team adaptation process is not a simple four-phase sequence, but it constitutes four dynamic phases that are strongly interrelated to each other.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that a more optimal regulatory focus in conflict reflects a mix of promotion and prevention considerations because conflict often elicits needs for promoting well-being as well as needs for preventing threats to security and interests. Two studies using distinct methodologies tested the hypothesis that social conflict is associated with better outcomes when the parties construe the conflict with a regulatory focus that reflects a combination of both promotion and prevention orientations.

Study 1 was an experiment that framed the same low-intensity conflict scenario as either prevention- or promotion-focused, or as both. In Study 2, we mouse-coded stream-of-thought accounts of participants’ actual ongoing high-intensity conflicts for time spent in both promotion and prevention focus.

In Study 1, the combined framing resulted in greater satisfaction with expected conflict outcomes and goal attainment than did either prevention or promotion framing alone. However, a promotion frame alone was associated with greater process and relationship satisfaction. These results were replicated in Study 2.

Prior research on regulatory focus has emphasized the benefits of a promotion focus over prevention when managing conflict. The present research offers new insight into how these seemingly opposing motives can operate in tandem to increase conflict satisfaction. Thus, this research illustrates the value of moving beyond dichotomized motivational distinctions in conflict research, to understand the dynamic interplay of how these distinctions may be navigated in concert for more effective conflict engagement. It also illustrates the value of mouse-coding methods for capturing the dynamic interplay of motives as they rise and fall in salience over time.

Traditional approaches to business processes and their management consider the “people dimension” as an antecedent of process performance. The authors complemented this approach by considering employees as process perceivers and thus taking an employee-centered perspective on business processes. The authors investigated dimensions of healthy business processes, that is, processes which, while promoting performance, foster employee well-being.

Based on a qualitative dataset and two quantitative studies, the authors developed and validated a scale for healthy business processes, interpreted it from a salutogenic perspective and tested relationships with people and performance outcomes.

The scale comprises four factors reflecting the three dimensions of the salutogenic concept “sense of coherence”: manageability was represented by the factors process tools and process flexibility; comprehensibility was represented by the factor process description; and meaningfulness was represented by the factor management support. The scale and its subscales were significantly related to people and performance outcomes.

The authors propose that health-oriented business process management and performance-oriented business process management are two components of an integrated business process management that favors neither a functionalist, efficiency-oriented approach nor an employee-oriented approach, but takes both approaches and their interaction equally into account in the sense of person-process fit.

Although mediation has increased considerably in popularity and usage, it lacks a coherent framework and evidence base to illuminate the conditions under which different types of mediation strategies are most effective. This has resulted in a wide array of strategies and tactics being offered to mediators, with little sense of which may work best under different conditions. This paper aims to further develop a contingency model of adaptive mediation.

The current paper extends previous research on adaptive mediation by presenting findings from focus group and survey research with experienced mediators that help to further develop and specify a new adaptive model of mediation.

The findings support the utility of a contingency model of adaptive mediation based on the four fundamental dimensions of mediation situations (conflict intensity, situational constraints, cooperative vs competitive disputant relationships and overt vs covert issues and processes) for better understanding and predicting changes in mediator strategies independent of mediator style preferences.

The present studies reflect the behavioral tactics experienced mediators recommend when facing the four distinct challenges to mediation. Research has yet to determine whether the sets of tactics recommended would actually be more successfully used in mediations presenting the four challenges. Subsequent research should assess the relative effects of the use of the different behavioral strategies under these conditions.

The program of research described and extended in this paper is an attempt to develop an integrative model of adaptive mediation, which can ultimately enhance the critical link between mediation research on the one hand and mediation practice on the other.

Research on conflict mediation presents a scattered, piecemeal understanding of what determines mediators’ strategies and tactics and ultimately what constitutes successful mediation. This paper presents research on developing a unifying framework – the situated model of mediation – that identifies and integrates the most basic dimensions of mediation situations. These dimensions combine to determine differences in mediator’s strategies that in turn influence mediation processes and outcomes.

The approach used by this paper was twofold. First, the existing empirical literature was reviewed on factors that influence mediator’s behaviors. Based on the findings of this review, a survey study was conducted with experienced mediators to determine the most fundamental dimensions of mediation situations affecting mediators’ behaviors and mediation processes and outcomes. The data were analyzed through exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis.

The results of the study show that four of the most fundamental dimensions of mediation situations include: low vs high intensity of the conflict, cooperative vs competitive relationship between the parties, tight vs flexible context and overt vs covert processes and issues. Each of these factors was found to independently predict differences in mediators’ behaviors and perceptions of processes and outcomes. These dimensions are then combined to constitute the basic dimensions of the situated model of mediation.

The situated model of mediation is both heuristic and generative, and it shows how a minimal number of factors are sufficient to capture the complexity of conflict mediation in a wide range of contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how people's gender‐role identities (self‐identified masculinity and femininity) affect their perceptions of the emotional role of the humiliated victim in conflicts (and the norms surrounding the role), and how these perceptions affect the negativity and aggressiveness of their responses and the degree to which they ruminate over conflict and remain hostile over time.

This paper builds on literature on humiliation, aggression, gender, and rumination and presents a correlational scenario study with 96 male graduate students from a large Northeastern University.

Males with high‐masculine gender‐role identities are more likely to perceive the social norms surrounding a humiliating conflictual encounter as privileging aggression, and to report intentions to act accordingly, than males with high‐feminine gender‐role identities. Furthermore, participants are more likely to ruminate about the conflict, and therefore maintain their anger and aggressive intentions a week later, when they perceive the situation to privilege aggression.

This paper sheds light on how aspects of peoples' identities can affect their perceptions of social norms (i.e. whether or not aggression is condoned), and degrees of dysphoric rumination and aggression in conflict. Subsequent research should investigate the social conditions influencing these processes.

Research on the psychology of humiliation has identified it as a central factor in many intractable conflicts. However, this is the first study to begin to specify the nature of this relationship and to investigate it in a laboratory setting.