Prosocial I-O: Quo Vadis
The Micro-Foundations of Responsible Management
Stuart Carr
Massey University
Professor Maurizio Zollo holds the dean’s chair in Strategy and Corporate Responsibility at Bocconi University in Milan and is director of the Center for Research in Organization and Management (CROMA). He joined Bocconi University in 2007 after 10 years with the strategy department of INSEAD (the European Institute of Business Administration). Professor Zollo is currently the editor of the European Management Review, the official journal of the European Academy of Management (EURAM), and serves on the executive committee of the European Academy of Management as well as of the European Academy of Business in Society (of which he was one of the cofounders). He is also the program chair of the Innovation and Knowledge interest group of the Strategic Management Society and a past member of executive committee of the strategy division of the Academy of Management.
Professor Zollo holds a Laurea degree in monetary economics from Bocconi University and a PhD in management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Zollo, please tell us a little more about your work.
Well, I am currently wearing many hats. As director of the Center for Research on Organization and Management (CROMA, www.croma.unibocconi.it), I help affiliated scholars develop multidisciplinary collaborative research programs and coordinate others. One program focuses on the integration of principles of social and environmental responsibility into company strategies, operations, and culture. This direction also forms part of my work (with Alfonso Gambardella) as editor of the European Management Review, which seeks to move the frontier of knowledge in management and become the first A-level management journal outside of USA.
To achieve these goals it is crucial to break down disciplinary silos to promote collaboration across the broad management area and with other social sciences. I try to do this also in my roles on the executive committees of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and the European Academy of Business in Society (EABIS).
Does the psychology of work and organization play a role in these activities?
Yes, and increasingly so. Many of the programs at CROMA are characterized by what I call “micro-foundational” components in their design. Essentially we focus on the individual manager’s psychological and neurological traits as predictors of decisions and outcomes not only in individuals and groups but also collectively at the organizational level. We work in collaboration with the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at San Raffaele University in Milan, arguably the leading research hospital in Italy, and we are starting to see some results that are very promising. We just published the first article on what one could call “neuro-management,” the application of neuroscientific concepts and methods to the study of actual managerial decisions and performance rather than highly stylized abstract games typical of neuro-economics research. We think we are among the first in the world to use brain imaging techniques to understand how entrepreneurs differ from managers and from “normal” individuals in the way they make innovation decisions. A next step is to neuro-image how leaders and managers make tradeoffs related to the social and economic impacts of their decisions and actions.
How prominent is work and organizational psychology in the CSR field?
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been studied so far primarily as an organizational phenomenon. The emphasis was on how companies could understand better what their stakeholders expect from them and what they should do to meet those expectations. Typically, researchers focused on initiatives like the development of a code of ethics, the production of so-called social reports, the establishment of partnerships with NGOs and other institutional actors, and so on. No attention was paid to the individual decision maker in these as well as in any other initiatives and processes with potentially significant implications for society and for the environment, except for primarily theoretical arguments on business ethics and moral philosophy.
I firmly believe this was a mistake. The fundamental challenges for advancing managerial theory and practice on these themes, in my opinion, are two. First, the challenge needs to be reframed as an internal change process, rather than an external communication and engagement effort. This is important because it puts focus on the role of organizational activities, structures, and cultural traits. Even more importantly though, we must understand the problem as fundamentally determined by decision-making biases that business leaders and managers (unconsciously) have when it comes to framing business problems, searching for solutions, and weighing alternative courses of action. Organizational (social and cognitive) psychology is critical to advance the study of CSR along these lines. I believe your recent annual conferences and the last issue of TIP have featured CSR, and this is very encouraging indeed.
How could I-O psychology be more prominent?
More attention can perhaps be paid to psychological factors in decisions and consequent behaviors that can have high impacts on the well being of company stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers and partners, investors, and the communities in which the firm operates). In a recent paper, entitled “The Psychological Antecedents to Socially Responsible Behaviour,” published in European Management Review in August 2008 and coauthored with Donal Crilly and Susan Schneider, we identify some of these factors in specific emotional dispositions, personal values, and cognitive motives underlying the decisions made in some difficult dilemma situations.
The paper is just a first step. The field is wide open and eager to receive contributing ideas and expertise, conceptual and methodological, from I-O psychologists to help develop and test a more comprehensive model of CSR decisions, as well as performance implications of the decisions at group and organizational levels. CSR research needs to start investing in experimental designs to tease out, under controlled conditions, personal, group-level, and contextual explanations of socially responsible versus irresponsible behavior by business managers.
By helping shift attention of CSR scholars towards the “micro-foundations” of business conduct vis-a-vis society, I-O psychologists would not only make their own expertise more relevant to the advancements in the field, they would also contribute towards positive change in the way companies tackle the issues, especially towards the diffusion of a culture of responsibility, transparency, and sustainability within the organization.
From your perspective, and with your experience, how could the I-O psychology profession help, do you think?
First and foremost, I-O psychologists must take their place at the multi-disciplinary table to design the next generation of CSR research. This is not easy. It requires a willingness to exit the comfort zone and work with scholars from diverse fields, different “languages,” and methodological skills and epistemological assumptions. I would personally be delighted to know if there is interest in the I-O community.
The other way to help is by entering into the global debate on the role of business in society, from the point of view of the individual manager’s (or top management team’s) decisions and actions, stemming from psychological characteristics. In addition to key potential contributions in theory development and empirical validation, there are excellent opportunities to share collective wisdom accumulated in I-O psychology through specialized conferences and special issues of academic or managerial journals.
There is an open, online call for papers “Re-thinking the Firm in a Post-Crisis World,” issued by the European Management Review, which could certainly be enriched by contributions from applied psychologists, alone or in multidisciplinary teams (www.palgrave-journals.com/emr/emr_cfp_re-thinking-the-firm.pdf). I look forward to seeing more such investments in research efforts and engagements in the global discourse. What a fabulous opportunity to get social scientists to finally work together for a higher purpose: understanding and helping remove barriers to a healthy relationship between business and society, for the benefit of both.
Professor Zollo, thanks so much for a glimpse at your innovative and intriguing work. I am sure it will continue to enrich your profession and ours, via the shared space in between.
Further Reading
Berry, M. O., Reichman, W., & Schein, V. E. (2008). The United Nations Global Compact needs I-O psychology participation. The Industrial Psychologist, 45(4), 33–9.
Crilly, D., Schneider, S. C., & Zollo, M. (2008). Psychological antecedents to socially responsible behaviour. European Management Review, 5(3), 175–90.