2012 - Working Papers: Organizational Behavior and Human Resources

Although research suggests that worksite health promotion (WHP) programs can be effective in enhancing employee health, 50-75% of employees choose not to participate in such programs when offered. The present study's aim is to identify the underlying barriers to participation in two distinct phases of a WHP program (web-based health risk assessment and a group workshop), using a large random sample of university employees that includes both participants and non-participants.  Employees (n=1926) completed an anonymous web-based survey and reported whether they participated in each stage of the program and what the barriers to participation were. Although the results indicate that employee characteristics (such as age and gender), type of job, and employee perceptions of their health and their organization are all associated with non-participation, the magnitude and nature of these associations differ across the two phases of the WHP program.  In addition, the reasons employees gave for their non-participation differed across sub-groups of employees defined by the characteristics listed above. We discuss how future research on WHP programs can build on these findings and propose a theoretical framework for participation enhancement.

A number of recent studies use nominal pay in estimating pay models. We show that this practice may lead to results that are substantially different from the results of log pay models, and that the differences between the two types of models are considerable when it comes to interaction effects, but less so when it comes to main effects. We conduct two constructive replications of previous studies that used either log pay or nominal pay to examine these differences.

The large gender inequality in salary is partly due to differences in the propensity to negotiate. Drawing from the gender, negotiation, and power literatures, we argued that power underlies gender differences in salary negotiation. In three studies, we examined the mediating and moderating effects of power on gender differences in likelihood to negotiate and expected performance in a salary negotiation. In Study 1, we measured power in the negotiation and found that it mediates gender differences in likelihood to negotiate. In Studies 2 and 3, we primed power experientially and manipulated power structurally (with the presence vs. absence of an alternative job; BATNA), respectively. In both studies, in the neutral condition, women were less likely to negotiate than men, and in Study 3 women expected to perform less well than men, but these gender differences were eliminated with the power manipulations. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

At the beginning of the 21^st century we are witnessing a new phenomenon of international entrepreneurship; skilled entrepreneurs from developed countries are temporarily moving to emerging economies in order to pursue business opportunities. While anecdotal evidence exists, very little theoretical development has taken place so far explain to this phenomenon.

In this paper, we present two short cases based on such anecdotal evidence. These cases form the basis for the development of a conceptual framework which entails a profile of entrepreneurs who have the ability to establish and operate new business ventures in an emerging economy which is characterized by a high psychic distance .

Using Siu's work on immigrant laborers (1952) we suggest that skilled, professional entrepreneurs from Israel, who seek business opportunities in China, have a profile that differs from typical immigrant entrepreneurs described in literature and is closer to the immigrant laborers described by Siu and we suggest therefore naming them “sojourning entrepreneurs”. They have the ability to overcome liability of foreignness, without integrating in the host society, and without becoming part of the local culture and the ability to engage both networks in the home country and in the host country to further the entrepreneurial venture in the host country. We pose that these foreign entrepreneurs will be more successful in China when using local partners or strategic alliances and that their success will be based on the ability to leverage their foreignness and temporarity and become liaisons and mediators between agents in the home and in the host country.