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Providing aid in times of increasing humanitarian need, limited budgets, and mounting security risks is challenging. This paper explores in what organisational circumstances evaluators judge, positively and negatively, the performance of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards. It assesses whether and how, as perceived by expert evaluators, CARE and Oxfam successfully met multiple institutional requirements concerning beneficiary needs and organisational demands. It utilises the Competing Values Framework to analyse evaluator statements about project performance and organisational control and flexibility issues, using seven CARE and four Oxfam evaluation reports from 2005-11. The reports are compared using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The resulting configurations show that positive evaluations of an INGO's internal and external flexibility relate to satisfying beneficiary needs and organisational demands, whereas negative evaluations of external flexibility pertain to not meeting beneficiary needs and negative statements about internal control concerning not fulfilling organisational demands.

The covid-19 pandemic has strained organizational systems, with the health care field particularly affected given sudden surges of demand and changes of policy. The pandemic showcases the need to understand how social systems can be resilient to such external shocks. Drawing on 'joint production motivation' theory, this article offers a theoretical framework linking a social system's resilience with individual behavior. We examine a population strongly affected by the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic: nursing students participating in internship programs before and during the crisis. Of the 141 nursing students in our sample, 23% opted to continue their internship. Four characteristics of work teams (collaborative contact, shared understanding, task interdependence, and collaborative organizational cultures) are hypothesized to explain students' continued occupational commitment during the crisis. Results from binomial logistic regression analyses show task interdependence and intrinsic motivation positively affect the decision for continued participation in internship programs during the pandemic.

This study examines the effects of different types of private Islamic schools on student achievement and achievement gaps. We formulate hypotheses, drawing on an education production function approach that outlines differences in investment and resource allocation decisions across these tracks and streams. We tested our hypotheses using Indonesian data collected in 2013 on 156,952 students nested in 3,150 schools in 366 municipalities. Using multilevel regression analyses, we found that student achievement and achievement gaps vary over private Islamic school tracks and streams. Even though student achievement and achievement gaps are strongly determined by student and family characteristics, our findings suggest that differences between school tracks and streams also play an important role. Moreover, our study revealed a large variability in student achievement and achievement gaps between municipalities.

Standard anticorruption interventions consist of intensified monitoring and sanctioning. Rooted in principal‐agent theory, these interventions are based on the assumption that corrupt acts follow a rational cost‐benefit calculation by gain‐seeking individuals. Given their mixed results, however, these interventions require closer scrutiny. Building on goal‐framing theory, the authors argue that rule compliance requires a salient normative goal frame, since monitoring can never be perfect. Being inherently brittle, it needs constant reinforcement through external cues operating alongside formal monitoring and sanctioning. Leaders and peers setting a good example can provide such cues. In line with this hypothesis, analysis of multilevel repeated measures data from a vignette study of 580 Indonesian senior civil servants shows that the perceived likelihood of a hypothetical civil servant accepting a bribe is lowest when monitoring and sanctioning are strong and when leaders and peers are known to have refused bribes in the past.

We develop a model of strategic network formation of collaborations to analyze the consequences of an understudied but consequential form of heterogeneity: differences between actors in the form of their production functions. We also address how this interacts with resource heterogeneity, as a way to measure the impact actors have as potential partners on a collaborative project. Some actors (e.g., start-up firms) may exhibit increasing returns to their investment into collaboration projects, while others (e.g., established firms) may face decreasing returns. Our model provides insights into how actor heterogeneity can help explain well-observed collaboration patterns. We show that if there is a direct relation between increasing returns and resources, start-ups exclude mature firms and networks become segregated by types of production function, portraying dominant group architectures. On the other hand, if there is an inverse relation between increasing returns and resources, networks portray core-periphery architectures, where the mature firms form a core and start-ups with low-resources link to them.

Reputation has been shown to provide an informal solution to the problem of cooperation in human societies. After reviewing models that connect reputations and cooperation, we address how reputation results from information exchange embedded in a social network that changes endogenously itself. Theoretical studies highlight that network topologies have different effects on the extent of cooperation, since they can foster or hinder the flow of reputational information. Subsequently, we review models and empirical studies that intend to grasp the coevolution of reputations, cooperation and social networks. We identify open questions in the literature concerning how networks affect the accuracy of reputations, the honesty of shared information and the spread of reputational information. Certain network topologies may facilitate biased beliefs and intergroup competition or in-group identity formation that could lead to high cooperation within but conflicts between different subgroups of a network. Our review covers theoretical, experimental and field studies across various disciplines that target these questions and could explain how the dynamics of interactions and reputations help or prevent the establishment and sustainability of cooperation in small- and large-scale societies. Funding:European Research Council (ERC)European Research Council (ERC)European Commission [648693]; National Research, Development and Innovation Office -NKFIH (OTKA)Orszagos Tudomanyos Kutatasi Alapprogramok (OTKA) [K132250]; Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO); DutchMinistry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) [024.003.025]

Most of the current literature on gossip describes gossipmongers as incessantly sharing evaluative and valuable information about an absent third party in teams, groups, communities, and organizations. However, potential gossipers can similarly decide not to share what they know, depending on the content, the context, or their relationship with the other actors in the gossip triad. We argue that understanding the reasons why people do not gossip may provide useful insights into individual motives, group dynamics, and collective behaviors. This theoretical contribution first critically surveys the existing gossip literature with the aim of highlighting the conditions under which people might refrain from sharing third party information. We then propose to apply Goal Framing theory as a way to bridge a theory of the micro-foundations of human behavior with an analytical model of the gossip triad that disentangles the various ways through which senders, receivers, and objects of gossip may be interrelated. From a goal framing perspective, most research on gossip illustrates the mechanisms in which the hedonic gratification derived from gossiping is reinforced by gain or normative goals. However, a normative or a gain goal frame can prevent the gossip monger from spreading the information, and we argue that depending on different configurations of frames and relations between actors the perceived costs of sending gossip may be far higher than much of the previous literature suggests.

Gossip is a pervasive phenomenon in organizations causing many individuals to have second-hand information about their colleagues. However, whether it is used to inform friendship choices (i.e., friendship creation, friendship maintenance, friendship discontinuation) is not that evident. This paper articulates and empirically tests a complex contagion model to explain how gossip, through its reputational effects, can affect the evolution of friendship ties. We argue that hearing gossip from more than a single sender (and about several targets) impacts receivers’ friendships with the gossip targets. Hypotheses are tested in a two-wave sociometric panel study among 148 employees in a Dutch childcare organization. Stochastic actor-oriented models reveal positive gossip favors receiver-target friendships, whereas negative gossip inhibits them. We also find evidence supporting that, for damaging relationships, negative gossip needs to originate in more than a single sender. Positive gossip about a high number of targets discourages friendships with colleagues in general, while negative gossip about many targets produces diverging trends. Overall, the study demonstrates that second-hand information influences the evolution of expressive relations. It also underscores the need to refine and extend current theorizing concerning the multiple (and potentially competing) psychological mechanisms causing some of the observed effects.

Despite the pivotal role that both power and interpersonal trust play in a multitude of social exchange situations, relatively little is known about their interplay. Moreover, previous theorizing makes competing claims. Do we consider our relatively more powerful exchange partners to be less trustworthy, as rational choice reasoning would suggest? Or do more complex psychological mechanisms lead us to trust them more, as motivated cognition reasoning implies? Extending the latter approach, we develop and empirically test three hypotheses on the interrelation between perceptions of interpersonal trust and power. According to the status value hypothesis, individuals are more likely to befriend those whom they or others perceive as powerful. The status signaling hypothesis states that the friends of people one perceives as powerful will also be seen as powerful. According to the self-monitoring hypothesis, high self-monitors are more likely than low self-monitors to befriend those they or others perceive as powerful. We use multiplex stochastic actor-based models to analyze the co-evolution of trust and power relations amongn= 49 employees in a Dutch Youth Care organization. Data covers three waves of a longitudinal sociometric network survey collected over a period of 18 months in the years 2009–2010. In general, we find some support for all three hypotheses, though the effects are weak. Being one of the first organizational field studies on the co-evolution of power and trust, we conclude with discussing the implications of these findings for the study of social exchange processes.

In this exploratory study, we present findings from semi-structured interviews with 11 self-identified lesbian and gay (LG) humanitarian aid workers of Doctors without Borders (MSF). We investigate their perceptions of workplace inclusion in terms of perceived satisfaction of their needs for authenticity and belonging within two organizational settings, namely office and field. Through our combined deductive and inductive approach, based on grounded theory, we find that perceptions of their colleagues' and supervisors' attitudes and behaviors, as well as organizational inclusiveness practices play a role in LGs' perceived authenticity, but not belonging, in the workplace. However, these organization-level characteristics do not account for between-participant differences in perceived authenticity. Therefore, we inductively construct a typology of three groups, which we coined conscious first-missioners, authentic realists, and idealistic activists, based on how LG humanitarian aid workers assess and deal with not being able to be their authentic selves when they are in the field, because homosexuality is illegal in many project countries. Conscious first-missioners are separated from the other two groups based on having gone to the field once, whereby they felt in control over the decision on how to manage their sexuality. Alternatively, authentic realists and idealistic activists alike felt they did not really have a choice in how to manage their sexuality, but handled that differently. We find the importance of one's sexuality as well as adherence to the overarching organizational mission relevant individual-level factors herein. Furthermore, we find disclosure of sexual identity to be strongly context-dependent, as participants are 'out of the closet' in the office, but go back into the closet when they enter the field, with different country contexts even leading to different decisions concerning self-disclosure, thus demonstrating the importance of careful sexual identity management. This so-called disclosure dilemma, we find, may not be merely an individual choice, but rather a shared dilemma involving multiple stakeholders, such as the organization and fellow team members. We discuss the findings' contributions to existing literature on LGs' workplace experiences and implications for future research on inclusion of sexual and other invisible minorities in the workplace.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate three distinct hypotheses about the relationship between human resource (HR) practices (discretion and skill enhancement) and the level of trade openness and foreign direct investments of countries. Design/methodology/approach – The study applies multilevel analysis using data of 16,701 employees living in 23 European countries. Findings – Based on the multilevel analysis mixed support is found for the hypothesis stating that economic openness is curvilinearly related (an inverted U) to the use of HR practices. While this holds for discretion, it does not for skill enhancement. Originality/value – While economic globalization is often mentioned as an important factor in understanding organizational relations, there have only been few international comparative studies explicitly linking measures of economic openness and HR practices. This study investigate whether economic globalization is important or not.

Research suggests that doctor–patient relations have evolved from a doctor-centered, paternalistic approach towards a more patient-centered, egalitarian model of interactions between physicians and their patients. Given the long-running debate on the positive relationship between education and health, the question arises how this development in doctor–patient relations affects social inequalities in health. First, we test to what extent egalitarian (e.g. discussing treatment decisions with patients) doctor–patient relations are underlying the education–self-reported health association. Second, we test whether egalitarian and paternalistic (e.g. withholding some information from patients) doctor–patient relations show differential effects on self-reported health across educational groups. Analyses of the European Social Survey (ESS) 2004/2005 for 24 countries demonstrate that a more egalitarian doctor–patient relationship does not substantially reduce educational inequalities in self-reported health. However, some direct positive effects of egalitarian and direct negative effects of paternalistic doctor–patient relations on health ratings can be found. Finally, results show how the health status of the lower educated can improve with a more egalitarian and less paternalistic doctor–patient relationship.

A limited body of research has examined satisfaction with work–life balance of expatriate workers who live abroad, residing outside the typical “family” or “life” domain. This study aims to demonstrate how and under which organizational circumstances job autonomy can increase work–life balance satisfaction of humanitarian aid expatriates. We hypothesize that especially in humanitarian work, trust in management can buffer potential negative effects of high autonomy. We test our hypothesis by means of ordinal logistic regression, using survey data collected among expatriates of the Operational Center Amsterdam of Médecins Sans Frontières ( N = 142). Results reveal that high levels of autonomy are positively related with work–life balance satisfaction when trust in the management of the organization is high. When trust in management is low, the effect of high autonomy on work–life balance satisfaction is negative. This implies that trust in management indeed buffers negative effects of high autonomy among expatriate humanitarian aid workers.

This study investigates the co-evolution of friendship and gossip in organizations. Two contradicting perspectives are tested. The social capital perspective predicts that friendship causes gossip between employees, defined as informal evaluative talking about absent colleagues. The evolutionary perspective reverses this causality claiming that gossiping facilitates friendship. The data comprises of three observations of a complete organizational network, allowing longitudinal social network analyses. Gossip and friendship are modeled as both explanatory and outcome networks with RSiena. Results support the evolutionary perspective in that gossip between two individuals increases the likelihood of their future friendship formation. However, individuals with disproportionately high gossip activity have fewer friends in the network, suggesting that the use of gossiping to attract friends has a limit. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

'Representative voice' can be defined as actions in which one or more speakers represent others when speaking up about a problem at the workplace or making a suggestion. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of representative voice, assess the frequency of its occurrence and examine department characteristics associated with its frequency. We present a theoretical framework and develop and test hypotheses about the effects of characteristics of the departmental context on the frequency of representative voice. Our focus is on organizational design features, i.e. characteristics that can be directly implemented by management. Data on 40 departments of a large Dutch childcare organization suggested that representative voice occurred in most of the organization's departments, although not frequently. Multilevel analyses showed that representative voice was best predicted by the presence of shared problems. Further, representative voice was more frequent in departments in which employees worked directly with clients (i.e. children), and in larger departments. Frequent contact with the department's manager and among the department's employees had no effect.

Parliamentary motions are a vital and frequently used element of political control in democratic regimes. Despite their high incidence and potential impact on the political fate of a government and its policies, we know relatively little about the conditions under which parliamentary motions are likely to be accepted or rejected. Current collective decision-making models use a voting power framework in which power and influence of the involved parties are the main predictors. We propose an alternative, social dilemma approach, according to which a motion’s likelihood to be accepted depends on the severity of the social dilemma underlying the decision issue. Actor- and dilemma-centered hypotheses are developed and tested with data from a stratified random sample of 822 motions that have been voted upon in the Dutch Parliament between September 2009 and February 2011. The social dilemma structure of each motion is extracted through content coding, applying a cognitive mapping technique developed by Anthony, Heckathorn and Maser. Logistic regression analyses are in line with both, actor-centered and social-dilemma centered approaches, though the latter show stronger effect sizes. Motions have a lower chance to be accepted if voting potential is low, the proposer is not from the voting party, and if the problem underlying the motion reflects a prisoner’s dilemma or a pure competition game as compared to a coordination game. The number of proposing parties or a battle of the sexes structure does not significantly affect the outcome.

Prosocial behavior involves costs for the self and results in benefits for others. Altruistic acts confer benefits to others, but net costs to the self. Different types of prosocial behavior are distinguished, depending on whether it is enacted by an individual or as part of a group effort, and whether it is first order (direct contributions) or second order (sanctioning) behavior. Six theoretical approaches are outlined (evolutionary, rationalist, structural, institutional, situational, and individual differences). They explain the evolution of prosocial behavior and its variation across groups, contexts, and situations. Avenues for future research are discussed.

Three hypotheses about the effects of different informal social network structures on gossip behavior are developed and tested. Gossip is defined as a conversation about a third person who is not participating in the conversation. Having analyzed the costs and benefits of gossip, we prefer the coalition hypothesis.~It states that gossip will flourish in social networks that have a relatively large number of coalition triads, that is ego and alter having a good relationship amongst themselves and both having a bad relationship with tertius, the object of gossip. Two rivalling hypotheses are developed. The constraint hypothesis predicts that the inclination towards gossip is greater, the larger the number of structural holes in the personal network of the gossipmonger.~The closure hypothesis predicts that more gossip will be found in networks with a large number of closed triads, that is where both gossipmonger and listener have a good relationship with the absent third person. The hypotheses are tested using a newly developed instrument to measure gossip behavior and network data from six work organizations and six school classes. The data support the coalition hypothesis and do not support the two rivalling hypotheses.

Proponents of new public management (NPM) expect public organizations to become more flexible and adaptive after administrative reforms, effectively showing convergence with patterns of organizational change in the private sector. This "convergence argument" is tested with a sample of 61 public and 61 private organizations in the Netherlands. We analyze whether public organizations, after 20 years of NPM reform, have changed their organizational structures and internal policies in relation to competitive, regulatory, and autonomy pressures, similarly to private organizations. Statistical analyses show that competition increases the incidence of change both in public and private organizations. High managerial autonomy and exposure to regulatory pressures relate to increased incidence of change in public organizations, but not in private ones. The results support the idea that NPM reform has made public organizations more similar to private organizations but that some concrete differences persist between private and public management in the Netherlands.

Extending Hirschman’s ‘Exit—Voice—Loyalty’ framework, the authors distinguish between attitudinal and relational aspects of loyalty. They hypothesize that co-workers’ support for voice will moderate the effect of relational, but not attitudinal loyalty on voice. In line with the study’s hypotheses, multilevel analyses of survey data on 204 voice actions (concerning three issues) of 121 employees in a Dutch public sector organization showed that the effect of relational loyalty (operationalized as social relations) on voice depended on context and issue. When department members perceived serious problems, relational loyalty decreased the likelihood of voice for one of the issues. For another issue, relational loyalty increased the likelihood of voice when department norms encouraged voice. By contrast, attitudinal loyalty (operationalized as organizational commitment) had no effect on voice.

We use a model of continuous attachments in networks to generate propositions concerning inequalities in network structures, and test the propositions on data from organizational settings. Our network model, inspired by that of [Gould, Roger 2002. The origins of status hierarchies: A formal theory and empirical test. American Journal of Sociology 107, 1143-1178], is based on a theoretically informed actor model, in which each network member sets attachment strengths based on perceived partner quality, reciprocity, influence from others, attribute homophily, and attachment resistance. A computer algorithm finds the single robust equilibrium configuration of attachment strengths. This allows us to generate six propositions concerning inequalities at the individual, dyadic, triadic, and network levels. We test the propositions on network data for four kinds of attachments over four waves for five organizations, and find that the results generally support the propositions. The results suggest that partner quality, reciprocity, and attachment resistance are the most important elements in the network members' choices. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In the main theoretical framework of the present book, it was outlined that an actor’s level of solidary and prosocial behavior in a given situation is largely dependent on his or her framing of the situation. According to Lindenberg’s framing theory (in this volume), three general and distinct ways of framing a given situation can be: (1) a hedonic frame aimed at immediate pleasure, (2) a gain frame aimed at the maximization of one’s own personal resources and largely ignoring the well-being of others, and (3) a normative frame in which people aim to do what is morally appropriate even if such behavior opposes their material self-interests. In this chapter we relate this theory to determine in which situations people follow social norms of fairness and (financial) honesty. When investigating this question, it is necessary to distinguish two kinds of situations. First, an actor may perceive that disobeying a certain social norm might lead to some external sanctions. Take the example of a university professor who has given a presentation at a private company and has earned 2,000 euros for this. When filling in his yearly tax declaration, he wonders whether or not to declare this extra income. This does not need to be a moral question. If the professor assumes the tax authorities will find out if he conceals this extra income and he expects severe punishment for such behavior, he may indicate the extra income simply because he wants to avoid the punishment. In the terminology of Lindenberg’s framing theory, the professor’s decision in this example is independent of whether he is in a normative or in a gain frame. Even if he feels no moral obligation at all to pay his taxes, he may do so because he perceives this decision to be in his material self-interest. To put it differently: if external sanctions are severe enough, problems in ensuring solidary behavior do not emerge.

We live in a world where the diffusion of information is incredibly easy. There are abundant recent examples of information dissemination that have captured global attention, such as WikiLeaks (Leigh and Harding, 2011), or the Snowden case (Greenwald, 2014) and, to add entertainment value because of its saucy implications, the breach of the on-line dating service Ashley Madison.1,2 At first sight, these events may appear to be cases of good old gossip on steroids. However, we should not jump to such conclusion, because the current definitions of gossip are too generic to account for the novelties of Internet-mediated communication. This chapter revolves around a conceptual framework which addresses such short-coming, while accommodating a vast variety of communication activities, gossip being one of them. The proposed characterization of concepts permits analytical clarity when considering forms of Internet-supported communications, and moreover organizes the analyses of a series of interesting questions. Among them, we are particularly concerned with forms of governance that are enabled by the Internet, and in particular by so-called “Internet-based reputation systems,” which allow people to voice their assessments of products that they have acquired, or of services that they have experienced.