Stephen M. Colarelli - The Biological Foundations of Organizational Behavior

Stephen M. Colarelli is professor of psychology at Central Michigan University.
Richard D. Arvey is head of the Department of Management and Organization at the National University of Singapore.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2015 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2015.

Printed in the United States of America

24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-12715-6 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-12729-3 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226127293.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The biological foundations of organizational behavior / edited by Stephen M. Colarelli and Richard D. Arvey.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-12715-6 (cloth : alkaline paper)ISBN 978-0-226-12729-3 (e-book)

1. Organizational behavior. I. Colarelli, Stephen M., 1951 editor. II. Arvey, Richard D., editor.

HD58.7.B545 2015

302.3'5dc23

2014010240

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

THE BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Edited by Stephen M. Colarelli and Richard D. Arvey

The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London

CONTENTS

Stephen M. Colarelli and Richard D. Arvey

Zhaoli Song, Wendong Li, and Nan Wang

Remus Ilies and Nikolaos Dimotakis

Scott Shane and Nicos Nicolaou

Timothy A. Judge and Robert Hogan

Jayanth Narayanan and Smrithi Prasad

Zhen Zhang and Michael J. Zyphur

Michael E. Price and Mark Van Vugt

Peter DeScioli, Robert Kurzban, and Peter M. Todd

Nigel Nicholson

Roderick E. White and Barbara Decker Pierce

Glenn R. Carroll and Kieran OConnor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would have never been written without the efforts of many people. Our first debt of gratitude is to David Pervin, the editor at the University of Chicago Press who approached us asking if we would be interested in writing a book about biology and organizational behavior. David was a champion of this book from the beginning. We also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to of the books contributors. They kindly and patiently worked through revisions to produce a marvelous set of chapters.

The School of Business of the National University of Singapore (NUS) hosted a week-long conference in the spring of 2011, during which the books contributors discussed the first drafts of their chapters and solidified a common thematic vision for the book. We would like to thank NUSs Business School and its dean, Bernard Yeung, for their gracious hospitality and generosity in bringing authors from around the world to Singapore for a week. Several staff members and graduate students from NUSs Department of Management and Organization worked very hard to make the conference a success. Our thanks go to Don Jia Qing Chen, Sally Han, and Wendy Lim.

Joe Jackson took over for David as our editor once the second round of drafts was in. During this transition, Christie Henry, the Presss editorial director for the social sciences, helped keep communication and revisions moving forward. Joe guided us through responding to the outside reviewers comments on the entire book and making subsequent revisions. Joe also did final editing on all of the chapters. Our outside reviewers gave us excellent feedback on the initial proposal and on the first draft of the book.

Steve spent a sabbatical semester at the Department of Management and Organization at NUS while he and Rich completed the book. Steve is grateful for the support and hospitality he received from Rich and the Business School at NUS. Thanks also go to Central Michigan University for additional travel assistance for Steve and sabbatical support. Particular thanks go to his dean, Pamela Gates, and his department chair, Hajime Otani. Shanna Palmer and Robin Decker ably assisted with word processing.

We are grateful to Kingsley Browne, who graciously read and commented on the entire manuscript. Kingsley is a scholars scholar, with a wide grasp of the literature in evolutionary psychology and its intellectual history. His perceptive comments were invaluable.

Finally, we are grateful to the University of Chicago Press. It has a reputation as one of the great university presses, and our experience confirms this. Our editors were flexible and supportive of creativity and scholarly independence, while also maintaining an ethos of quality, intellectual rigor, and interdisciplinary scholarship.

ONE

Introduction: Biology and Organizational Behavior

Stephen M. Colarelli and Richard D. Arvey

It has been more than two hundred years since Charles Darwins birth, and his theory of evolution by natural selection has had an incalculable impact on science and society. A majority of nonscientists (except in the United States) and virtually all scientists in industrialized countries now regard all life as the product of evolution by natural selection (Miller, Scott, and Okamoto 2006). Prior to Darwin, from Aristotle to the nineteenth century, people believed that forms of life were created whole in a matter of moments and never changed. Darwin turned all this on its head, showing that life forms evolve and change over eons of time.animal cloning) make headlines, many practical advances go unnoticed because, like the air we breathe, they are all around us.

Given the impact of biology on so many areas of science and the economy, it seems odd that modern genetics and the theory of evolution by natural selection have had such a small impact on the study of organizational behavior (OB). In four leading journals in OB from the years 2005 through 2012, we found just six articles with biological, evolutionary, or genetic orientations. Although the literature on occupational stress and occupational health refers to biological mechanisms of stress, there is little mention of evolution and genetics (Ganster and Rosen 2013), despite the obvious linkages (e.g., Hadany et al. 2006; Hoffman and Parsons 1993). Likewise, the organizational literature on sex differences eschews biological explanations (Powell 2010), something that most biologists would most certainly find strange.

We are biological creatures, and therefore our biological makeup influences our behaviornot entirely, but most certainly in important ways. Organizational scholars are missing a significant piece of the puzzle by overlooking biological mechanisms. Just as other social sciences have benefited by incorporating a biological perspective, the field of OB can benefit by incorporating a biological perspective into its theoretical and research toolkits. We are not claiming to know precisely how biological factors may influence theory and research in OB or that we can draw a blueprint of the biological implications for management practice. But, given the evidence, it would be prudent to take stock of what we do know about biology and behavior in organizations and to begin to think about biologys potential relevance for management practice.

WHY SO LITTLE BIOLOGY IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR?

Much of OB is still dominated by what Tooby and Cosmides (1992) call the standard social science model (SSSM), and this has slowed the acceptance of biological perspectives. The SSSM holds that most of the variation in human behavior is due to culture and socialization, and that humans are unique among species in that biological and instinctual constraints play a relatively small role in their behavior. The SSSM is evident in theories of sex differences (e.g., Hyde 2007), learning and training (e.g., Luthans 1975; Meichenbaum 1977), organizational culture (e.g., Schein 1985), and newcomer socialization (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, and Peterson 2003; Feldman and Bolino 1999). Cognitive psychology (which also views the mind as highly malleable, fallible, and shaped primarily marily by cultural inputs) has had a powerful impact on OB in many areasranging from individual and organizational learning (Crossan et al. 1995) to planning and decision making (Choo 1998).