Introduction and Overview
In today’s world of team-based work, growing diversity, boundaryless careers, and exceedingly competitive markets, it is vital to understand how individuals and groups make decisions and work together to create new products, goods and services. How do people coordinate and manage their conflicts? What leads groups towards high quality decisions, and why do individuals so often fail to be creative? What does it take to manage one’s career, and what predicts individual learning and development? How do we select and socialize newcomers into groups and organizations, and with what effect – why do some newcomers stick around and others not?
It is these and related questions that our scientific research and academic teaching program is concerned with. Our goal is to develop, test, and teach theory that explains how psychological processes and principles at the individual and group-level alone and in interaction predict motivational and affective states (e.g., organizational commitment, group affective tone, work motivation), cooperation and coordination among individuals and groups (e.g., organizational citizenship behavior, conflict management), and individual and group performance (e.g., task and career decisions, selection, creativity and innovation, negotiated agreement, decision failures).
To achieve this goal we engage in laboratory and field research, publish research findings and theoretical insights in academic and professional outlets, and design and teach courses and seminars at the Bachelor’s, (Research) Master’s, and PhD level.
