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Despite contrary evidence, much management research treats Asians as culturally homogeneous. This study seeks to explore how managers from four Asian nations differ in conflict management and whether observed differences are linked to cultural attitudes.

A questionnaire assessed conflict management practices and cultural attitudes of managers from four nations with considerable historical, geographical, and economic differences. ANOVA and ANCOVA were used to test hypotheses about groups differences in preference for three conflict management styles – competing integrating, and avoiding – controlling for differences in demographics and cultural attitudes.

Statistically significant differences were found on all three of the conflict management styles, although the hypotheses were only partly supported. Controlling for differences in demographics and cultural attitudes had little impact on the main findings. Some similarities among the nationalities were found: “integrating” was the most preferred style, and showed the least variation, among the groups. However, there was less similarity among the nationalities regarding “competing” and “avoiding”.

Since the hypotheses – based largely on national culture differences among the nationalities – were only partly supported, future research should attempt to identify variables that better explain differences among nationalities in conflict management style.

The information on conflict management style preferences in these four nations will be valuable to those wishing to do business there. Further, refuting the common assumption of cultural homogeneity among Asians will better prepare Westerners for doing business elsewhere in Asia.

This paper demonstrates that national differences in conflict management style were not based on demographic differences in the sample or differences in cultural attitudes.

Poor mental health is common amongst unaccompanied refugee adolescents and may have serious negative consequences for their successful settlement. This study aims to elucidate unaccompanied adolescents’ experiences of psychosocial challenges and what they need to cope with this during their course of settlement in Denmark, particularly focussing on social support.

The study sample included six male unaccompanied refugee adolescents aged 17–18, living in two residential care facilities. Based on a triangulation of methods (i.e. participant observation, individual interviews and a focus group interview using photo-elicitation), a thematic analysis was conducted within the conceptual framework of stigma and a need for relatedness.

Several interwoven and on-going psychosocial challenges, including perceived stigma and loneliness combined with past traumatic experiences and uncertainties about the future, were experienced by the adolescents in this study. As opposed to experiencing emotional distress, stigma and loneliness, various activities of “forgetting”, which involved a sense of momentary relief or bliss, a sense of “normalcy” and acceptance and/or a sense of relatedness, helped them to cope.

For psychosocial care services to respond to adolescents’ mental health needs in an optimal way, the results suggest that activities and social support that are sufficiently adapted to individual needs should be the focal point in their daily lives.

The study offers insights into the needs of unaccompanied refugee adolescents in coping with the psychosocial challenges experienced in their daily lives.

Many psychologists posit that intrinsic motivation generated by personal interest and spontaneous satisfactions is qualitatively different from extrinsic motivation generated by external rewards. However, the contemporary neural understanding of human motivation has been developed almost exclusively based on the neural mechanisms of extrinsic motivation. In neuroscience studies on extrinsic motivation, striatum activity has been consistently observed as the core neural system related to human motivation. Recently, a few studies have started examining the neural system behind intrinsic motivation. Though these studies have found that striatum activity is crucial for the generation of intrinsic motivation, the unique neural basis of intrinsic motivation has not yet been fully identified. I suggest that insular cortex activity, known to be related to intrinsic enjoyment and satisfaction, is a unique neural component of intrinsic motivation. In this chapter, I addressed the theoretical background to and empirical evidence for this postulation.

Behavioral ethics research in the field of management is burgeoning. While many advancements have been made, applying an organizational neuroscience approach to this area of research has the possibility of creating significant new theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions. We overview the major areas of behavioral ethics research concerning moral cognition and conation, and then we concentrate on existing neuroscience applications to moral cognition (moral awareness, moral judgment/reasoning, effects of moral emotions on moral reasoning, and ethical ideology). We also demonstrate the usefulness of neuroscience applications to organizational behavioral ethics research by summarizing a recent study on the neuroscience of ethical leadership. We close by recommending future research that applies neuroscience to topics such as moral development, group ethical judgments and group moral approbation, and moral conation (e.g., moral courage and moral identity). Our overall purpose is to encourage future neuroscience research on organizational behavioral ethics to supplement and/or complement existing psychological approaches.

Recent years have brought significant advances in research on behavioral ethics. However, research on ethical decision making is still in a nascent stage. Our objective in this paper is twofold: First, we argue that the practice of mindfulness may have significant positive effects on ethical decision making in organizations. More specifically, we will discuss the benefits of “reperceiving” – a meta-mechanism in the practice of mindfulness for ethical decision making and we provide an overview of mindfulness research pertaining to ethical decision making. Subsequently, we explore areas in which neuroscience research may inform research on ethics in organizations. We conclude that both neuroscience and mindfulness offer considerable promise to the field of ethical decision making.

Scholarship on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is voluminous. Nevertheless, there is relatively little work that examines DEI from an organization development and change (ODC) or systems perspective. As a result, there is no unified framework ODC practitioners can use for DEI diagnosis and intervention. The purpose of this chapter is to review the ODC literature with respect to DEI and propose a diagnostic Context-Levels-Culture (CLC) framework for understanding and addressing diversity-related challenges in organizations. We also present a case example of how this framework can be used in DEI consulting, including implications for future research and practice.

Work design has largely overlooked cognitive–emotional interactions in understanding employee motivation and satisfaction. My aim in this chapter is to develop a conceptual model that integrates what we know about these interactions from research on emotions and neuroscience with traditional and emergent work design perspectives. I propose that striving for universal goals influences how a person responds to the work characteristics, such that an event that is personally relevant or “self-referential” will elicit an emotional reaction that must be regulated for optimal performance, job satisfaction, and well-being. A Self-Referential Emotion Regulatory Model (SERM) of work design is presented.

This study examines the effect of employees' perceptions of political connections on performance measurement systems (PMS) design choice and firm performance. In addition, this study explores the moderating effect of social networking, a very common and widely used factor by domestic and foreign multinational firms operating in China, and its joint effect with political connections or PMS design choice on firm performance. We collected survey responses from a sample of 110 managers from manufacturing firms in China. Our results reveal that highly politically connected managers use nonfinancial measures, leading to improved firm performance. Our results suggest that social networking interacts significantly with political connections, and nonfinancial and financial measures on firm performance. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

This chapter provides evidence that legislation affecting litigation risk has an influence on the financial reporting behavior of corporate management, we address the following research questions: (1) Do firms react to changes in litigation risk that result from the passage of new legislation at the federal level by adjusting their level of conservatism with regard to reporting earnings? (2) How do firms’ levels of conservatism react to changes in litigation risk over time? We analyze the level and trend in conditional conservatism to evaluate the efficacy of legislation in altering managerial reporting choice. Our examination takes place in the context of two distinct pieces of legislation intended to alter the legal environment faced by corporate managers: (1) the PSLRA (1995), and (2) Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Our findings indicate that the passage of legislation that increases litigation risk is associated with increased timeliness (conservatism) in financial reporting by managers. The increased timeliness, however, begins to subside shortly after the initial effect. While the initial effect of a reduction in litigation risk is negligible, subsequent periods exhibit declining timeliness (conservatism) in financial reporting. Our results indicate that legislative actions can be successful in altering management reporting choice through changes in legal regime. However, our results also demonstrate that the desired influence of these legislative policies may be transient.