Seminar – Rejecting novel ideas: The role of manager status and territoriality

Vijaya Venkataramani, Associate Professor, R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland

Although employees come up with creative ideas, many of them do not get endorsed or implemented by managers. In shedding light on this phenomenon, we predict that managers who have lower social status in the organisation are more likely to reject employees’ novel ideas. Guided by associative-propositional evaluation theory (AP-E; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2011), we propose that employees’ novel (as compared to more familiar) ideas trigger greater feelings of threat and vigilance in low-status managers that these employees, if successful, could potentially infringe on their domains at work. As a result, such low-status managers feel the need to be territorial, i.e. to maintain and protect their existing work domains from potential infringement by others, and therefore, refrain from endorsing their employees’ novel ideas. Moreover, we propose that such negative effects are attenuated when low status managers have high levels of identification with their organisations, allowing them to subordinate their self-interest to the interest of the organisation. We find support for these arguments in several field and lab studies. We discuss implications for the literatures on creativity recognition, territoriality and status in organisations.

Speaker bio

Vijaya Venkataramani is an Associate Professor of Management & Organisation at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. She is a former Associate Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. Professor Venkataramani’s research focuses on creativity and innovation in organisations, especially understanding how informal social relationships and social networks at work enable employees’ ability to develop and implement creative ideas. Her recent research has focused on exploring why, although employees may have new ideas, these ideas often go unheard, unrecognised or even prematurely rejected by their managers, and how both employees and managers can address this. Her research has appeared in such journals as the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology and Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes.

Vijaya received her PhD in organisational behaviour and human resources from Purdue University in 2008. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked in India as a human resources manager.

For more information, please contact Luke Slater.