{"title":"The promise and perversity of perspective-taking in organizations","authors":"Gillian Ku , Cynthia S. Wang , Adam D. Galinsky","doi":"10.1016/j.riob.2015.07.003","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>Successful managers and leaders need to effectively navigate their organizational worlds, from motivating customers and employees to managing diversity to preventing and resolving conflicts. Perspective-taking is a psychological process that is particularly relevant to each of these activities. The current review critically examines perspective-taking research conducted by both management scholars and social psychologists and specifies perspective-taking's antecedents, consequences, mechanisms, and moderators, as well as identifies theoretical and/or empirical shortfalls. Our summary of the current state of perspective-taking research offers three important contributions. First, we offer a new definition of perspective-taking: the active cognitive process of imagining the world from another's vantage point or imagining oneself in another's shoes to understand their visual viewpoint, thoughts, motivations, intentions, and/or emotions. Second, we highlight that although perspective-taking has many positive benefits for managers and leaders, it also carries with it the potential for perverse effects. Third, we argue that previous theoretical lenses to understand perspective-taking's goal are insufficient in light of all the available evidence. Instead, we offer a new </span>theoretical proposition to capture the full range of perspective-taking's positive and negative effects: perspective-taking helps individuals effectively navigate a world filled with mixed-motive social interactions. Our mixed-motive model of perspective-taking not only captures the current findings but also offers new directions for future research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":56178,"journal":{"name":"Research in Organizational Behavior","volume":"35 ","pages":"Pages 79-102"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2015-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.riob.2015.07.003","citationCount":"149","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Research in Organizational Behavior","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308515000040","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 149
Abstract
Successful managers and leaders need to effectively navigate their organizational worlds, from motivating customers and employees to managing diversity to preventing and resolving conflicts. Perspective-taking is a psychological process that is particularly relevant to each of these activities. The current review critically examines perspective-taking research conducted by both management scholars and social psychologists and specifies perspective-taking's antecedents, consequences, mechanisms, and moderators, as well as identifies theoretical and/or empirical shortfalls. Our summary of the current state of perspective-taking research offers three important contributions. First, we offer a new definition of perspective-taking: the active cognitive process of imagining the world from another's vantage point or imagining oneself in another's shoes to understand their visual viewpoint, thoughts, motivations, intentions, and/or emotions. Second, we highlight that although perspective-taking has many positive benefits for managers and leaders, it also carries with it the potential for perverse effects. Third, we argue that previous theoretical lenses to understand perspective-taking's goal are insufficient in light of all the available evidence. Instead, we offer a new theoretical proposition to capture the full range of perspective-taking's positive and negative effects: perspective-taking helps individuals effectively navigate a world filled with mixed-motive social interactions. Our mixed-motive model of perspective-taking not only captures the current findings but also offers new directions for future research.
期刊介绍:
Research in Organizational Behavior publishes commissioned papers only, spanning several levels of analysis, and ranging from studies of individuals to groups to organizations and their environments. The topics encompassed are likewise diverse, covering issues from individual emotion and cognition to social movements and networks. Cutting across this diversity, however, is a rather consistent quality of presentation. Being both thorough and thoughtful, Research in Organizational Behavior is commissioned pieces provide substantial contributions to research on organizations. Many have received rewards for their level of scholarship and many have become classics in the field of organizational research.