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Despite the extant research highlighting the benefits of having difficult conversations, its inherent complexity – particularly due to the interdependent, multimodal, and highly contextualized nature of conversation – has impeded its empirical advancement and theoretical integration. Furthermore, previous research has assumed that having, or being able to have, difficult conversations is invariably beneficial for individuals, teams, and organizations. However, exactly how these conversations unfold and lead to positive outcomes remain a mystery. In this symposium, five presentations will explore why and how particular conversational elements within difficult contexts, such as grief, distrust, conflict, diverging goals, and advice giving and seeking, may lead to better or worse outcomes for individuals in organizational settings. In total, the symposium offers empirical and theoretical insights into the burgeoning science of conversation research, as well as practical solutions for managers, leaders, and employees who wish to create spaces where people are heard and feel connected to others. Expressions of Sympathy are Less Effective When They Focus on the Positive Author: Daniel Chiacchia; U. of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Author: Rachel Lise Ruttan; U. of Toronto Author: Katherine Ann DeCelles; U. of Toronto Author: Sora Jun; Rice U. Communicating Under Distrust Author: Laura Wallace; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Yena Kim; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Emma Levine; U. Of Chicago The Social Effects of Discrete Emotions on Curiosity Elicited During Conflict Author: Christina Bradley; U. of Michigan, Ross School of Business Author: Nadav Klein; INSEAD Boomerasking: Answering Your Own Questions Author: Alison Wood Brooks; Harvard U. Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Flattering Advice: Avoiding Disappointment as a Driver of Gender Discrimination Author: Zaidan Chen; Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology Author: David Hagmann; - [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium brings together experts in natural language processing to demonstrate state-of-the-art applications of for analysing text within organisations. Recent innovations are used to understand fundamental topics for managers of the future - teamwork, leadership communication, institutional change, cultural diffusion, and diversity. The presenters will show how a modern toolkit for text analysis can provide innovative solutions to some of the most important problems in our field. A Flexible Python-Based Toolkit for Analyzing Team Communication Author: Xinlan Emily Hu; Wharton How Leaders Build Trust in High-Stakes Communications. Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Author: Evita Huai-ching Liu; Bocconi U. From the Boardroom to the Bedroom: The Expansion and Abstraction of Management as a Cultural Logic Author: Ziwen Chen; Stanford Graduate School of Business Author: Douglas Guilbeault; U. of Pennsylvania Author: Amir Goldberg; Stanford U. Racial Polarization of Who Sponsors Civil Rights Legislation in the United States Author: Joshua Jackson; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Author: Nour Kteily; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Intersectional Gender, Race, and Class Stereotyping: Tests in Contemporary and Historical Naturalist Author: Tessa Charlesworth; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Author: Mazarin Banaji; Harvard U. Author: Aylin Caliskan; U. of Washington Author: Kshitish Ghate; Carnegie Mellon U. Author: Gandalf Nicolas; Rutgers U., New Brunswick [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To truly bring a conflict to an end, it is important for disputants to reconcile through conversations, yet navigating the discussion of conflict is not a trivial pursuit. This symposium brings together four presentations exploring how beliefs, motives, and the way people communicate about conflicts impact conflict resolution. In the first presentation, Yeomans and colleagues offer an important advance in methods for detecting linguistic features of conflict expression. Using real conflict conversations, they show the precision of their coding manual and Natural Language Processing model in forecasting conflict dynamics and provide empirical support for conflict expression theory. In the second presentation, Chen and Chaudhry examine a novel psychological motive in conflict conversations: establishing a shared reality over relative blame. They demonstrate that whether disputants agree with the counterpart's relative blame perception impacts how disputants respond after being blamed (i.e., apologizing or blaming). In the third presentation, Li, Batista, and Schroeder investigate how different perceptions of responsibility division arise in miscommunication. They test whether people hold speakers as more responsible than listeners, and whether people consider their counterparts to be more responsible than themselves. In the final presentation, Boland and Davidai explore how specific beliefs can lead people to avoid potentially conflictual conversations and find that people who hold zero-sum beliefs about politics are more likely to avoid political conversations. Taken together, this symposium highlights how conflict dynamics are affected by what people believe, what they want, and what they say in conversations, providing insights into actionable recommendations for conflict resolution. A Natural Language Processing Model for Conflict Expression Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Author: Corinne Bendersky; U. of California, Los Angeles Author: Laurie R. Weingart; Carnegie Mellon U. Author: Yeonjeong Kim; Massachusetts Institute of Technology To Blame or to Apologize? Resolving a Conflict Requires Negotiating Over a Shared Reality Author: Eva Yiyu Chen; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Shereen J. Chaudhry; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Who's at Fault? Assignment of Responsibility in Miscommunication Author: Sophia Li; Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Author: Rafael Batista; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Juliana Schroeder; U. of California, Berkeley Zero-Sum Beliefs and the Avoidance of Political Conversations Author: F Katelynn Boland; Columbia Business School Author: Shai Davidai; Columbia Business School [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium is designed to advance research on organizational communication by bringing together leading scholars examining state- of-the-art applications of natural language processing. Language is endemic to almost every aspect of an organization - we talk and write to each other all the time. However, the dominant paradigms for studying social interactions involves indirect measures of communication - for example, by manipulating language in a lab experiment, or by surveying people about their previous interactions. These methods allow researchers to structure their data in advance. But naturally occurring data from communication - the text and speech itself - is unstructured, and presents many common analytical challenges for those who care about the consequences of that communication. The presentations in this symposium demonstrate how that communication can be measured directly. Each presenter considers natural language data from common and difficult conversations throughout an organization. And in each case, natural language processing is used to show that the content of the communication has direct consequences for organizational outcomes. Across different field settings, we show how our analyses can also provide evidence for biases and information gaps that can inform behavioral models of decision-making in an organization. Beyond Sentiment: The Value and Measurement of Certainty in Language Author: Matthew Rocklage; Northeastern U. Author: Sharlene He; Concordia U. Author: Derek Rucker; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Author: Loran F. Nordgren; Northwestern U. Back to the Future: A "Lab-in-the-Field" Experiment On Mental Time Travel in Startup Teams Author: Madison Singell; Stanford Graduate School of Business Author: Andrea Freund; Stanford Graduate School of Business Author: Hayagreeva Rao; Stanford U. Author: Margaret A. Neale; Professor emerita Stanford Graduate School of Business Conversational receptiveness is contagious and reduces affective polarization Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Identifying and predicting the diversity of stereotype change in natural language Author: Tessa Charlesworth; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Author: Mark HATZENBUEHLER; Harvard U. Author: Mazarin Banaji; Harvard U. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars spanning different fields within the social sciences have long recognized that communication is a key element of leadership. While early research on leader communication focused largely on how communication revealed leader characteristics, researchers in later decades have expanded their focus to how leader communication affects followers, stakeholders, and organizations. In addition, thanks to advancing analytical technologies such as NLP- and AI-based tools, scholars can now assess leader communication at greater scale (e.g., big data) and in more diverse forms (e.g., text, vocal tone, facial expressions, body gestures). This series of papers speak to these research trends, and document several key ways in which leaders' verbal and nonverbal communication affects consequential outcomes, from leaders' own career outcomes to stakeholders' reactions to that communication. The five studies take place in diverse empirical contexts and feature diverse methods in studying leaders' communication data. The symposium will offer valuable insights into leaders' influence processes through their communication, and showcase various ways scholars can study them. The Impact of CEO Gender on the Self-Promotion-Dismissal Relationship Author: Jungwoo Ha; UCLy - ESDES - U. of Lyon Author: Margaret Ormiston; George Washington U. Author: Elaine M. Wong; U. of California, Riverside Market Response to War Language Author: Donal Crilly; London Business School Author: Joao Cotter Salvado; Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics How Leaders Build Relationships in High-Stakes Conversations Author: Evita Huai-ching Liu; Bocconi U. Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Are Nonverbal Displays of Dominance and Prestige Likely to be Universal Signals? Author: Zak Witkower; U. of British Columbia Author: Jessica Tracy; U. of British Columbia Author: Nicholas Rule; U. of Toronto Innovating The Development of Leadership Language with Artificial Intelligence Author: George Banks; UNC Charlotte Author: Wenwen Dou; U. of North Carolina, Charlotte Author: Srijan Kumar; Georgia Institute of Technology Author: Scott Tonidandel; UNC-Charlotte [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentoring is an important organizational process that contributes to career development and personal growth. Mentors are uniquely positioned to provide opportunities for learning by sharing important feedback with their mentees, and research on mentoring has demonstrated its ability to help mentees cope with major organizational shocks. The goals of this symposium are to explore new insights and identify communication behaviors that can enable the creation of more positive workplace mentorship relationships. In pursuit of these two missions, in the proposed symposium we bring together four papers to reveal novel theoretical directions and important empirical insights about factors that may aid or hamper beneficial work mentoring relationships. Our discussant, Taya Cohen, will help integrate these papers and facilitate discussion. We hope the findings presented will reveal novel and important empirical insights, and aid business organizations and managers of the future in creating beneficial work mentoring relationships. * The Detrimental Effects of High-Status Mentors for Low Performers * Presenter: Jennifer Abel; Harvard Business School * Presenter: Paul Isaac Green; U. of Texas at Austin * Presenter: Ting Zhang; Harvard Business School * Presenter: Francesca Gino; Harvard Business School * Tips from the Top: Do the Best Performers Really Give the Best Advice? * Presenter: David Levari; Harvard Business School * Presenter: Daniel Gilbert; Harvard U. * Presenter: Timothy Wilson; U. of Virginia * The Importance of Honest and Benevolent Feedback in the Workplace * Presenter: Kori Krueger; Carnegie Mellon U. -Tepper School of Business * Presenter: Binyamin Cooper; Carnegie Mellon U. * Presenter: Emma Levine; U. Of Chicago * Presenter: Taya R. Cohen; Carnegie Mellon U. -Tepper School of Business * Overcoming Interpersonal Hesitance to Give Honest Feedback Through Benevolent Candor * Presenter: Ariella Kristal; Harvard Business School * Presenter: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedback is an integral part of organizational life. It is a crucial process through which individuals can improve their learning, growth, and development (Ashford & Cummings, 1983; Higgins & Thomas, 2001). Past research has highlighted how the influence of feedback on employee attitudes and behaviors can depend on the approach through which feedback is delivered (Brutus, 2010; Ilgen et al., 1979; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Shute, 2008; Zhou, 1998). This symposium aims to deepen our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of different feedback styles and approaches. The presented work offers insights from the giver perspective of providing different forms of performance feedback, as well as the receivers' perspective regarding preferences for and receipt of different forms of feedback. Altogether, this symposium highlights two primary aspects of feedback in organizations, using a variety of methodologies. First, papers 1 and 2 demonstrate how givers' work experiences and goal frames influences the type and delivery of feedback offered, which can lead to different employee attitudes and perceptions. Subsequently, papers 3 and 4 turn to feedback receivers, and highlight gender differences in the types of feedback women and men receive and prefer. Overall, this symposium offers insights into how givers' experiences and attitudes can meaningfully impact the type of feedback offered, and how recipient gender can shape the experience of receiving different types of feedback. * Managers' Experience at Work Determines Their Approaches in Feedback * Presenter: Jinseok Chun; Duke U. * Presenter: Jin Nam Choi; Seoul National U. * When Best Intentions Backfire: The Interpersonal Cost of Motivational Feedback * Presenter: Min Ju Lee; U. of Texas at Austin * Presenter: Paul Isaac Green; U. of Texas at Austin * Presenter: Ethan Burris; U. of Texas at Austin * Benevolent Sexism in Workplace Feedback * Presenter: Ariella Kristal; Harvard Business School * Presenter: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School * Relative Performance Feedback: Gendered Preferences and Asymmetric Costs * Presenter: Judy Qiu; London Business School * Presenter: Selin Selin Kesebir; London Business School [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium is designed to advance research on organizational communication by bringing together leading scholars examining state-of-the-art applications of natural language processing. Language is endemic to almost every aspect of an organization -we talk and write to each other all the time. However, the dominant paradigms for studying social interactions involves indirect measures of communication -for example, by manipulating language in a lab experiment, or by surveying people about their previous interactions. These methods allow researchers to structure their data in advance. But naturally occurring data from communication -the text and speech itself -is unstructured, and presents many common analytical challenges for those who care about the consequences of that communication. The presentations in this symposium demonstrate how that communication can be measured directly. Each presenter considers natural language data from common and difficult conversations throughout an organization. And in each case, natural language processing is used to show that the content of the communication has direct consequences for organizational outcomes. Across different field settings, we show how our analyses can also provide evidence for biases and information gaps that can inform behavioral models of decision-making in an organization. * Computational Consumer Segmentation and Brand Management * Presenter: Ada Aka; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania * Presenter: Sudeep Bhatia; U. of Pennsylvania * Presenter: Gideon Nave; -* Presenter: Christopher Olivola; Carnegie Mellon U. * Language as a Window into the Mind: A Computational Approach to Organizational Identification * Presenter: Lara Yang; -* Modelling the Tightness-Looseness Tradeoff Between Self-Regulation and Creativity * Presenter: Joshua Jackson; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill * Presenter: Michele Gelfand; Stanford Graduate School of Business * Building an interpretable NLP system to encourage civil discourse * Presenter: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School * Presenter: Burint Bevis; Imperial College Business School [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium is designed to advance research on organizational communication by bringing together leading scholars examining state-of-the-art applications of natural language processing. Language is endemic to almost every aspect of an organization - we talk and write to each other all the time. However, the dominant paradigms for studying social interactions involves indirect measures of communication (surveys, network analyses, etc.). The presentations in this symposium demonstrate how that communication can be measured directly. Each presenter considers natural language data from common and difficult conversations throughout an organization. And in each case, natural language processing is used to show that the content of the communication has direct consequences for organizational outcomes. Across different field settings, we show how our analyses can also provide evidence for biases and information gaps that can inform behavioral models of decision-making in an organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text is a rich and naturally-occurring source of data throughout all organizations, but it is not trivial to analyze - it is high-dimensional, sparse, and context-dependent. Each presenter focuses on building scaleable and interpretable models of how people communicate inside organizations. Across all four examples in this symposium, natural language processing is employed to directly observe the contents of organizational communication, and suggest simple conversational interventions that might support the broader goals of the organization. The topic of each of the presentations concerns an interpersonal communication challenge of central interest to OB scholars, such as feedback, team work, and reputation management. Each presentation offers a novel application from a suite of modern advances in natural language processing, including open-source software implementations that can be used to replicate our methods in other domains. Each work considers the managerial implications of natural language processing by drawing on a distinct theoretical framework for the goals of communication in each domain. This allows our work, as a whole, to outline a scope of what is possible in future applications of these natural language processing in organizational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do people heed the advice from an algorithm as opposed to a human? This session delves into novel research in which people opt for the recommendations from algorithmically-derived sources and uses experimental approaches to quantify and theoretically inform the conditions in which decision-makers listen to (or ignore) algorithmic advice. The papers in this session examine a breadth of decision-making scenarios and a diverse range of contextual factors, including: contrast in stated preferences and behavioral decisions; domain sensitivity of algorithmic advice; conversational fluency in evaluations of AI competence; gender-status stereotype congruence of AI agents; and the effect of anthropomorphization of algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreement is an unavoidable part of social life. Because no two people hold identical beliefs, knowledge, values, or goals, opposing viewpoints are bound to arise at some point in the pursuit of personal and collective interests in professional organizations, civic spaces, and personal relationships. A large literature has suggested that engaging with diverse viewpoints can create numerous benefits. However, people often struggle to handle disagreement constructively. The presence of contradictory opinions often gives rise to negative affect, biased information processing, and negative inferences about the other side, resulting in either argumentation and escalated conflicts or disengagement and avoidance. Such reactions keep people from reaping the benefits of diverse viewpoints and threaten the prosperity of organizations and our society as a whole. How can people engage with disagreement more effectively through dialogues? This symposium aims to introduce four innovative empirical papers that investigate different aspects of effective conversations about opposing views ranging from affective experiences to communication medium and language to interpersonal processes. Each paper identifies an important barrier to effective communication and offers a unique practical solution to help people create more productive conversations when disagreement arises. Moreover, this symposium showcases a broad range of research methods for studying conflict of opinions, including randomized experiments in lab and field settings, archival analysis, content analysis, and machine learning techniques. Taken together, this symposium provides attendees interested in communication and conflicts in organizational and civic life with new ideas and methodologies for future research as well as insights into effective interventions to meet a wide variety of communication challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]