Innovation in services: corporate culture and investment banking

The article discusses service innovation in the investment banking industry. Service industry innovations differ from innovations in industries that produce physical products because they rarely have intellectual property and patent protections. However, investment banking services are typically a series of interrelated businesses such as consulting, wealth management and accounting, and innovations require a business wide coordinated approach. The authors argue that a strong corporate culture can support rather than hinder innovation. The creation of such a culture requires strong leadership and an emphasis on innovation in hiring and promotions

Norms in mixed sex and mixed race work groups

Abstract Norms determine regular patterns of behavior and influence members' identification with a group. They are also a proximate way to predict and understand behavior in diverse work groups but, surprisingly, have not been extensively examined in this context. After reviewing research on group norms and the psychology of prejudice, I suggest that reaping the benefits of the increased range of available task relevant resources in demographically diverse work groups may depend on the strength and content of the norms it adopts, but that diverse groups face distinct obstacles in developing strong norms that create satisfying interpersonal interaction and effective work performance. I consider the difficulties diverse work groups have in forming strong norms and then focus on how anti-bias norms, which are directed toward preventing behaviors associated with prejudice and discrimination and address members' security concerns, and openness norms, which promote people's ability to individuate those whom they might otherwise stereotype as well as address nurturance concerns, may increase a work group's ability to optimize social interaction and performance amidst

Politically correct norms encourage creativity among mixed-sex work groups

They reduce uncertainty, write Jack A. Goncalo, Jennifer Chatman, Michelle M. Duguid and Jessica A. Kenned

Creativity from Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity in Mixed-Sex Work Groups

Most group creativity research is premised on the assumption that creativity is unleashed by removing normative constraints. As work organizations become increasingly diverse in terms of gender, however, this assumption needs to be reconsidered since mixed-sex interactions carry a high risk of offense. Departing from the assumption that normative constraints necessarily stifle creativity, we develop a theoretical perspective in which creativity in mixed-sex groups is enhanced by imposing a norm to be politically correct (PC)—a norm that sets clear expectations for how men and women should interact with one another. We present evidence from two group experiments showing that the PC norm promotes rather than suppresses members’ free expression of ideas by reducing the uncertainty they experience in mixed-sex work groups. These results highlight a paradoxical consequence of the PC norm: A term that has been used to undermine expectations to censor offensive language as a threat to free speech actually provides a normative foundation upon which demographically heterogeneous work groups can freely exchange creative ideas. We discuss the implications of our findings for managing creativity in diverse groups and under conditions of uncertainty, and the counterintuitive role that normative constraints play in that process