Catering to the needs of an aging workforce : the role of employee age in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and employee satisfaction.

Contemporary organizations often reciprocate to society for using resources and for affecting stakeholders by engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It has been shown that CSR has a positive impact on employee attitudes. However, not all employees may react equally strongly to CSR practices. Based on socio-emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen in Science 312:1913–1915, 2006), we contend that the effect of CSR on employee satisfaction will be more pronounced for older than for younger employees, because CSR practices address those emotional needs and goals that are prioritized when people’s future time perspective decreases. In one multi-source field study (N = 143) and one experimental study (N = 500), we demonstrate that CSR indeed has a stronger positive effect on employee satisfaction for older relative to younger employees. Accordingly, engaging in CSR can be an attractive tool for organizations that aim to keep their aging workforce satisfied with their job

From quantity to quality : cognitive, motivational and social aspects of creative idea generation and selection

The main principles behind brainstorming are the belief that quantity breeds quality, and the deferment of judgment. Adherence to the brainstorming rules, which are derived from these principles, should increase the number of high-quality ideas that are generated in a brainstorming session, and should therefore increase the chance that a good idea gets selected for further development. This last assumption is central to this dissertation. Eight experiments are reported. My findings indicated that (1) productivity was not related to the quality of selected ideas, i.e., generating more ideas did not increase the chance that good ideas were selected; (2) deep exploration of domain knowledge increased the originality of generated, but not selected, ideas; (3) the selection of creative ideas was hindered by participants' persistent tendency to select ideas that were perceived as feasible and desirable

Collective regulatory focus predicts specific aspects of team innovation

Much innovative work in organizations takes place in teams. Because organizational demands are complex and resources are limited, teams need to regulate their collective efforts to perform optimally. Based on previous research and a stage-based approach to innovation, it was hypothesized that team-level regulatory focus would predict teams' activities regarding the generation and promotion of innovative ideas, but not actual implementation. Regulatory focus and innovative performance were measured in an organizational survey study. Results showed that, as expected, regulatory focus affected idea generation and idea promotion, but not idea realization