Managers often lament that their employees are risk averse and do not take sufficient risks. While in some instances employees might in fact be too risk averse, we explore situations in which managers may incorrectly judge their employees to be overly risk averse or timid. In two studies, we find evidence of a timidity bias in evaluations--evaluators judge target decision makers to be risk aver...

Employees make decisions every day about whether to contribute to others--and their willingness to help is crucial to group and organizational effectiveness. But in a competitive, often zero-sum, world of work, generosity can be a dangerous path. How can leaders foster it without cutting into productivity, undermining fairness, and allowing employees to become doormats? The key, explains Wharto...

Reappraisals of the history and historiography of the Scottish Enlightenment abound these days. Yet however much is produced, authors continue to find new and interesting things to say. John Dwyer has certainly proved this in his excellent, fairly short study of the Scottish moralists. Dwyer, thankfully, has not taken the high road to philosophy but has investigated the output of the eighteenth...

We adopt an interactionist logic to study the determinants of risk taking by chief executive officers (CEOs). We introduce the concept of ‘‘capability cues’’—contextual signals that decision makers might reasonably interpret as indicators of their current level of overall ability—arguing that positive cues will induce boldness, while negative cues will induce timidity. Then, drawing from prior ...

accident, so producing, of necessity, a physical health consciousness. The importance of the spiritual, psychological, or mental aspect of the total individual, in the eyes of the readers for whom this book is written, can be assessed by the number of pages devoted to this part of the personality, 17 of a total of 407. Although the author quotes, on the first page of his book, that health is "a...