How policy implementation impacts employee suffering at work: An exploration of medical leaves of absence ↗️
Liza Y. Barnes, Christina N. Lacerenza, & Ashley E. Hardin
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2026
Each year, more than eight million U.S. employees take medical leave for their own serious health condition-yet millions more who qualify don’t, fearing career penalties or job loss. In a country without a federal job-protected paid medical leave policy, organizations ultimately determine whether leave becomes a pathway to healing or a source of additional suffering for employees. Leveraging interviews with employees who have taken leave and HR leave coordinators, we introduce a “healing-centered implementation approach” to medical leave. Our work highlights medical leave as a notable policy worthy of scholarly study, elevates healing as a key indicator of policy effectiveness, and shows that the way leave policies are both enacted and written profoundly shapes employee health. In this article, we provide actionable steps for organizational leaders to implement medical leave policies in a way that reduces employee suffering, fosters healing, and ultimately builds a more sustainable business.
Manipulation in organizational research: On executing and interpreting designs from treatments to primes ↗️
Kira Schabram, Christopher G. Myers, & Ashley E. Hardin
Organizational Research Methods, 2026
While other applied sciences systematically distinguish between manipulation designs, organizational research does not. Herein, we disentangle distinct applications that differ in how the manipulation is deployed, analyzed, and interpreted in support of hypotheses. First, we define two archetypes: treatments, experimental designs that expose participants to different levels/types of a manipulation of theoretical interest, and primes, manipulations that are not of theoretical interest but generate variance in a state that is. We position these and creative derivations (e.g., interventions and invariant prompts) as specialized tools in our methodological kit. Second, we review 450 manipulations published in leading organizational journals to identify each type's prevalence and application in our field. From this we derive our guiding thesis that while treatments offer unique advantages (foremost establishing causality), they are not always possible, nor the best fit for a research question; in these cases, a non-causal but accurate test of theory, such as a prime design, may prove superior to a causal but inaccurate test. We conclude by outlining best practices for selection, execution, and evaluation by researchers, reviewers, and readers.
A window into coworkers' worlds: The relational outcomes of learning vivid, unintentional, and nonwork-related information about coworkers ↗️
Ashley E. Hardin, Beth S. Schinoff, Kris Byron, & Rachel M. Balven
Academy of Management Journal, 2025
Research suggests that changes in where and how employees work may make it difficult to build meaningful coworker relationships. These same changes, however, may provide a window into their coworkers’ nonwork lives—offering vivid and seemingly unintended insights into how their coworkers parent, what their hobbies are, and what their homes look like. In this way, the changing nature of work provides a potential paradox: it can simultaneously increase social distance between coworkers while potentially decreasing that distance by providing a vivid and unfiltered glimpse into their nonwork lives. Extending social penetration theory, we use a multimethod approach including experimental studies and surveys to examine how three dimensions of coworker learning—learning that is (1) more vivid, (2) perceived as unintentional, and (3) about a coworker’s nonwork life—lead an employee to view that coworker as more authentic, trustworthy, and human. Moreover, seeing a coworker in these ways increases an employee’s actual and intended investment in their personal and professional relationship with that coworker. Our findings contribute to the literatures on work relationships, social cognition, and the physical work environment.
Research also featured in Harvard Business Review: How WFH Can Actually Strengthen Bonds Between Coworkers.
The more you know: The impact of personal knowledge on interpersonal treatment at work ↗️
Ashley E. Hardin
Organization Science, 2024
Employees often receive conflicting advice about sharing personal information in the workplace. They are told to “bring your whole self to work” but also to keep it professional and not share too much personal information with colleagues. Research has been equivocal in its overall guidance about sharing personal information at work: it may be either beneficial or harmful for work relationships. These inconsistencies are likely driven by the types of questions posed. Specifically, existing research has studied the impact of a particular piece of personal information and the specific details of what is learned, not what all of these pieces of personal information amount to. Instead, this paper takes a new vantage point to understand how the amount of personal knowledge (the quantity of information that one person knows across many aspects of a colleague’s personal life) influences positive interpersonal dynamics at work by humanizing the known colleague. Through a full-cycle research approach, I establish causal support experimentally and then replicate support for my hypotheses in the field, demonstrating a positive, persistent effect: having more personal knowledge—regardless of whether that knowledge conveys value incongruence or life-to-work interference—leads to a more humanized perception of the known colleague, resulting in increased responsiveness toward that colleague. These findings resolve an existing puzzle in the literature and also contribute to a more nuanced understanding of work relationships and interpersonal learning at work.
Different roots, different fruits: Gender-based differences in cultural narratives about perceived discrimination produce divergent psychological consequences ↗️
Leigh P. Tost, Ashley E. Hardin, Jacob W. Roberson, & Francesca Gino
Academy of Management Journal, 2022
We examine whether narratives about, and the psychological consequences of, perceived gender discrimination differ between women and men. We argue that women and men have different dominant narratives about the reasons why people discriminate against people of their respective genders. While women attribute the majority of their perceptions of gender discrimination in the workplace to patriarchal norms and practices, the majority of men’s perceptions of gender discrimination emerge from a belief that organizations are likely to discriminate against them in order to reduce discrimination against women. These differences in understandings about the root causes of gender discrimination also produce divergent psychological consequences. We argue that perceived workplace gender discrimination (a) reduces self-efficacy among women but not among men and (b) reduces both men’s and women’s sense of belonging in the workplace. We further argue that these effects contribute to a reduction of well-being among members of both genders, with the negative effect on well-being being more pronounced among women than among men. We examine these predictions in five studies of working adults. We discuss the implications for research on perceptions of discrimination and for organizations seeking to reduce the negative consequences of perceptions of discrimination.
Research also featured in AOM Insights: Women and Men Perceive Gender Discrimination Differently
Selected for the Honor Roll of Responsible Research in Business and Management
Show me the … family: How photos of meaningful relationships reduce unethical behavior at work ↗️
Ashley E. Hardin, Christopher W. Bauman, & David M. Mayer
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2020
Environmental cues in the workplace influence unethical behavior, but the effects of these cues are less well understood than the effects of individual differences and social aspects of situations on unethical behavior. In this paper, we examine a common but underappreciated aspect of workspaces: photos of close others. Drawing on the literatures on symbols at work and behavioral ethics, we theorize that having photos of close others in sight decreases the hegemony of an economic schema in people’s minds, which in turn decreases their propensity to commit unethical behavior. Supporting our theory, a field survey and three experiments find a negative relationship between displaying photos of close others at work and financial transgressions and indicate that a decrease in the salience of the economic schema is a mechanism that drives the effect. We discuss implications of the results for the literatures on behavioral ethics, symbols at work, and work-life integration.
Research also featured in Harvard Business Review: Why You Should Encourage Employees to Display Family Photos at Work.
The interpersonal costs of dishonesty: How dishonest behavior reduces individuals’ ability to read others’ emotions ↗️
Julia J. Lee, Ashley E. Hardin, Bidhan Parmar, & Francesca Gino
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2019
Environmental cues in the workplace influence unethical behavior, but the effects of these cues are less well understood than the effects of individual differences and social aspects of situations on unethical behavior. In this paper, we examine a common but underappreciated aspect of workspaces: photos of close others. Drawing on the literatures on symbols at work and behavioral ethics, we theorize that having photos of close others in sight decreases the hegemony of an economic schema in people’s minds, which in turn decreases their propensity to commit unethical behavior. Supporting our theory, a field survey and three experiments find a negative relationship between displaying photos of close others at work and financial transgressions and indicate that a decrease in the salience of the economic schema is a mechanism that drives the effect. We discuss implications of the results for the literatures on behavioral ethics, symbols at work, and work-life integration.
Research also featured in Scientific American: How dishonesty drains you
Cooperation in multicultural negotiations: How the cultures of people with low and high power interact ↗️
Shirli Kopelman, Ashley E. Hardin, Christopher G. Myers & Leigh P. Tost
Journal of Applied Psychology, 2016
This study examined whether the cultures of low- and high-power negotiators interact to influence cooperative behavior of low-power negotiators. Managers from 4 different cultural groups (Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, and the United States) negotiated face-to-face in a simulated power-asymmetric commons dilemma. Results supported an interaction effect in which cooperation of people with lower power was influenced by both their culture and the culture of the person with higher power. In particular, in a multicultural setting, low-power managers from Hong Kong, a vertical-collectivist culture emphasizing power differences and group alignment, adjusted their cooperation depending on the culture of the high-power manager with whom they interacted. This study contributes to understanding how culture shapes behavior of people with relatively low power, illustrates how a logic of appropriateness informs cooperation, and highlights the importance of studying multicultural social interactions in the context of negotiations, work teams, and global leadership.
Respect as an engine for new ideas: Linking respectful engagement, relational information processing, and creativity among employees and teams ↗️
Abraham Carmeli, Jane E. Dutton, & Ashley E. Hardin
Human Relations, 2015
In four studies we examine whether and why respectfully engaging with other organizational members can augment creativity for individuals and teams. We develop and test a model in which respectful engagement among organizational members facilitates relational information processing, which in turn results in enhanced creative behaviors. We found a similar pattern across all four studies – respectful engagement is indirectly related, through relational information processing, to creative behavior at both the individual and team levels. These findings underscore the importance of respectful engagement in facilitating relational information processing and fostering creative behaviors at both the individual and team levels.
Compassion at work ↗️
Jane E. Dutton, Kristina M. Workman & Ashley E. Hardin
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2014
Compassion is an interpersonal process involving the noticing, feeling, sensemaking, and acting that alleviates the suffering of another person. This process has recently received substantial attention by organizational researchers and practitioners alike. This article reviews what researchers currently know about compassion as it unfolds in dyadic interactions in work organizations. We begin by reviewing what we know about the benefits of compassion for the person who is suffering, for the provider of compassion, and for third parties who witness or hear about compassion at work. The heart of the article focuses on what research tells us about embedding compassion in the personal, relational, and organizational contexts in which compassion takes place. We conclude by discussing implications for practice and for the future research agenda regarding this vital interpersonal process.
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