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Conspiracy theories arise during important societal and political events, with negative consequences. Yet, conspiracy theories remain to be investigated in the context of sporting tournaments, in spite of the importance of such events in contemporary societies. During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, conspiracy theories alleging that the newly introduced video Assistant Referee (VAR) was used with malevolent motives gained popularity online. In this paper, we used a Twitter content analysis to explore VAR conspiracy theories during the World Cup (N = 2,768 tweets). Conspiracy tweets peaked after eliminations of some teams and were strongly associated with labels referring to self-categorization at the group-level, supporting the notion that conspiracy beliefs are triggered by contexts threatening one's social identity. Conspiracy tweets were also correlated with tweets expressing skepticism or defiance against the VAR, suggesting that conspiracy beliefs might be related to sport fans' other identity management strategies. Finally, we drew an intergroup typology of VAR conspiracy beliefs' recurrent figures, highlighting that higher ordered categorization helped conspiracy narratives and content to adapt throughout the tournament. We discuss the identity management strategy status of sport fans' conspiracy beliefs.

Donors often use the services of an intermediary to prevent their donations from being too thinly distributed over multiple public projects. We explore whether donors’ willingness to coordinate their funds via an intermediary depends on the extent of the intermediary’s discretion over their contributions, as well as the organizational overhead costs incurred by the intermediary. We investigate this using a laboratory experiment in which donors face multiple identical threshold public goods and the opportunity to coordinate their contributions via another donor assigned to the role of intermediary. In line with standard game theoretic predictions, we find that donors make use of the intermediary only when they know she is heavily restricted in terms of the proportion of their contributions she can expropriate for herself. However, we find strong evidence that the positive effect of these restrictions is undone once the intermediary incurs a sunk overhead cost. Our analysis suggests that the ex-ante inequality created as a result of this sunk cost reduces the trustworthiness of the intermediary in the donors’ eyes, which in turn reduces the donors’ willingness to use the intermediary to coordinate their contributions effectively.

Recent studies show that loss probability (LP) is a decisive factor when people evaluate risk of assets in laboratory experiments, suggesting a positive relationship between LP and expected stock returns. This corresponds to the classical "Safety-First" principle. We find empirical support for this prediction in the U.S. stock market. During our sample period, average risk-adjusted return differences between stocks in the two extreme LP deciles exceed 0.73% per month. The positive LP effect, characterized by the intention of some investors to pay low prices for high LP stocks, remains significant after controlling for microcaps as in Hou et al. (2019).

We document judicial leniency on defendant birthdays across 5 million decisions. French sentences are 1% fewer and 3% shorter. U.S. federal sentences are 33% shorter in the day component of sentences (the month component remains unaffected). New Orleans sentences are 15% shorter overall. No leniency appears on the days before or after a defendant’s birthday. Federal judges using deterrence language in opinions, are unaffected, isolating the judicial as opposed to defendant channel. The effect is doubled when judge and defendant share the same race. Our courtroom setting rules out many models of social preferences with reciprocity motives, but may be consistent with indirect reciprocity and guilt aversion based on the judge’s beliefs about the defendant’s reference point.

There has a significant increase in the volume of research on the management of talent over recent decades; however, the question of what talent is remains under debate. How talent is understood and defined has significant implications for its management within organizations, yet these aspects are often overlooked in the extant literature. Through a review of 192 articles in the sub-disciplines of talent management (sub-stream of strategic human resource management), stars (human capital), and high potential (organizational behavior/-psychology), we offer guidance for research on talent. Our findings suggest that the current research adopts an overly binary conceptualization of talent, as illustrated in five relevant dimensions: inclusive–exclusive, innate–acquired, transferable–context dependent, subject–object, and input–outcomes. We call for a more nuanced approach to the topic and build insights from paradox theory, encouraging a transition from “either/or” perspectives to “both/and” perspectives. Matching theory is identified as a useful lens to guide future research, and we offer suggestions for a more nuanced approach in practice by encouraging organizations and their stakeholders to embrace the paradoxes of talent.

Incentives have surprisingly inconsistent effects when it comes to encouraging people to behave prosocially. Classical economic theory, according to which a specific behavior becomes more prevalent when it is rewarded, struggles to explain why incentives sometimes backfire. More recent theories therefore posit a reputational cost offsetting the benefits of receiving an incentive -- yet unexplained effects of incentives remain, for instance across incentive types and countries. We propose that social norms can offer an explanation for these inconsistencies. Ultimately, social norms determine the reputational costs or benefits resulting from a given behavior, and thus variation in the effect of incentives may reflect variation in norms. We implemented a formal model of prosocial behavior integrating social norms, which we empirically tested on the real-world prosocial behavior of blood donation. Blood donation is essential for many life-saving medical procedures, but also presents an ideal testing ground for our theory: Various incentive policies for blood donors exist across countries, enabling a comparative approach. Our preregistered analyses reveal that social norms can indeed account for the varying effects of financial and time incentives on individual-level blood donation behavior across 28 European countries. Incentives are associated with higher levels of prosociality when norms regarding the incentive are more positive. The results indicate that social norms play an important role in explaining the relationship between incentives and prosocial behavior. More generally, our approach highlights the potential of integrating theory from across the economic and behavioral sciences to generate novel insights, with tangible consequences for policy-making., 34 pages, 11 figures

Nanotechnology becomes the most interesting area for researchers from last two decades. There are several methods to synthesis nanoparticles but the use of green method for synthesis reduces or eliminates the generation of hazardous byproducts. Green synthesis method is environment friendly alternative to conventional synthesis techniques. Green chemistry is about reducing risk, energy, environmental impact, hazard, cost, materials and waste. The green method or biological method involves the use of microorganisms, plants etc. for synthesis of nanoparticles. In our present research work we use Murraya koenigii leaves powder extract as reducing and capping agent. Plant sources containing the phytoconstituents viz., Tannins, Alkaloids, Polyphenols, Flavonoids, Citric acid etc. Metallic and metal oxides nanoparticles of various shapes, sizes, contents and physicochemical properties can be synthesized using green synthesis method. The synthesized Iron oxide Nanoparticles were characterized be different analytical techniques. The surface morphology revealed by SEM, elemental composition by EDX, Different functional groups revealed by FTIR spectroscopy and particle size measured by particle size analyzer.

This article examines identity work in the creative industries as a type of identity formation that has been underexplored in the literature on identity work to date. Based on interviews with performing artists in music and theatre, we show how creative workers feel compelled to perform negative (tortured and despondent) identity work in order to attain a positive (coherent, self-sustaining and self-affirming) sense of artistic self. We argue that the dubious link between mental illness and creativity, propagated not only by popular media and pseudo-scientific accounts but also by art history and the creative industries themselves, has served to undergird a social imaginary of the artist as a ‘tortured’ creator. This imaginary in turn provides discursive resources, behavioral cues and affective stimulation for the performance of occupationally desirable yet perilous tormented creative selves. We identify three distinct identity work strategies undertaken by creative workers, namely self-analysis, self-diagnosis and self-medication, in which social imaginaries purporting an overlap between mental illness and creativity in artistic work play a constitutive role. Our findings contribute to the emergent interdisciplinary literature on identity work in the creative industries and the arts. Moreover, we caution that the negative forms of identity-building practised by our interviewees, underpinned as they are by social imaginaries of the artist as anguished, dejected and agonized, may in fact be dangerously counterproductive for creative workers coping with the higher rates of depression, anxiety and substance abuse found in precarious creative professions.

We report experimental findings on distribution decisions by Germans and Egyptians. We explore their sensitivity along three different dimensions: we study (i) the impact of the price of giving, (ii) how giving responds to the cultural and gender identity of the recipient, and (iii) how a threat of rejection in a bargaining situation affects the distribution choice. We show substantial differences in generosity between participants in Egypt vs. Germany, the former showing substantial equality-seeking behavior. Correspondingly, both genders in Egypt increase giving when it becomes more costly as do German females, in contrast to German males who give particularly when it is cheap. While Egyptian participants choose according to an equality norm independently of the recipient’s identity, we detect substantial discrimination by German females when giving to Egyptian males. This discrimination is in line with prejudice as males in Egypt give significantly more than what Germans expect from them. Conversely, males in Egypt overestimate the generosity of Germans towards them. We finally show that, relative to giving in the dictator game, the ultimatum game offers increase among German participants, but not among participants in Egypt. Females in Egypt even decrease giving in UG relative to DG when allocating to males in Egypt. This finding is in line with highly favorable offers being rejected by a substantial fraction of participants in Egypt.

On the basis of the EGOS 2021 sub-plenary on ‘Professions and Inequality: Challenges, Controversies, and Opportunities’, the presenters and panellists wrote four short essays on the relationship between inequality as a grand challenge and professional occupations and organizations, their structures, practices, and strategies. Individually, these essays take an inquisitorial stance on extant understandings of (1) how professions may exacerbate existing inequalities and (2) how professions can be part of the solution and help tackle inequality as a grand challenge. Taken together, the discussion forum aims at advancing scholarly debates on inequality by showing how professions’ scholarship may critically interrogate extant understandings of inequality as a broad, multifaceted concept, whilst providing fruitful directions for research on inequality, their potential solutions, and the role and responsibilities of organization and management scholars.

Students often choose to pursue a business major during their post-secondary education to increase their chances of securing employment post-graduation. However, evidence suggests that many recent business degree graduates struggle with underemployment, highlighting the importance of examining how post-secondary institutions can better prepare students for the transition to work. In the current study, we investigated how including a personal strengths-driven intervention, the Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE), in management curricula may help better prepare students for securing employment by increasing students’ confidence in their ability to succeed in an employment interview (i.e., by enhancing interview self-efficacy). Using a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design with a control group (N=190 undergraduate students), we found that the RBSE increased students’ interview self-efficacy and that this effect was moderated by pre-test levels of general self-efficacy and career choice confidence. Moreover, we found that students with lower levels of general self-efficacy and career choice confidence experienced greater benefits from the RBSE. Our results contribute to the management education literature by demonstrating how strengths-based interventions with a reflection component can be leveraged to develop interview self-efficacy in business students.

Examples are briefly described of organizations that offer a perspective to complement the experience of industrial democracy inNorway and Mondragon. The examples are organizations choosing a structure and culture that minimize hierarchy. They provide a less traditional approach to balancing political and socio-technical participation. To do so they devolve responsibility for coordination of effort and expertise to individuals and teams most directly providing the effort and expertise. This gives the individuals and teams high autonomy. Examples include a university class, action learning projects in community and organizational settings, and a voluntary self-organizing network of facilitators. In addition, a small sample of organizations from the larger sample documented by Corporate Rebels (https://corporate-rebels.com/) is also briefly described and compared. Finally, the examples are located within other, wider, changes taking place.