Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 26: An Annual Series of Analytical Essays and Critical Reviews volume 26

During the past 50 years, organizational scholarship on leadership has shifted from a focus on the significance of leadership for meaning-making to the significance of leadership for economic performance. This shift has been problematic for two reasons. First, it has given rise to numerous conceptual difficulties that now plague the study of leadership. Second, there is now comparatively little attention to the question of how individuals find meaning in the economic sphere even though this question should arguably be one of the most important questions for organizational scholarship. This chapter discusses several reasons for the shift, arguing that one of the most important has been the lack of a clear definition and operationalization of meaningful economic activity. As a first step to redressing this shift, we offer a definition and operationalization of meaningful action, and we propose a typology of executive behaviors as a foundation for a systematic exploration of the meaning-making capacity of leaders. We conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the capacity of leaders to infuse meaning and the capacity of leaders to impact on performance. This twenty-sixth volume of Research in Organizational Behavior presents a set of well-crafted and thoughtful essays on a series of research topics. They range from efforts to redirect the study of leadership, to analyses of interpersonal relationships, to considerations of cross-cultural issues in organizing work, to discussions of institutional and environmental forces on organizational outcomes. Each of these essays includes a thorough review of the relevant literature, and more importantly, pushes that literature forward with new conceptual analysis and theory. In short, these essays continue the spirit of "rigorous eclecticism" that has exemplified the annual publication of ROB.

As a collection, this year's set of essays provides a healthy advance for the field of organizational behavior. They are examples of serious scholarship that extend and challenge our current thinking about organizations and the behavior of its participants. Many of these chapters will take their place among the best presented by the Research in Organizational Behavior series.

• Revisiting the Meaning of Leadership

• When and How Team Leaders Matter

• Normal Act of Irrational Trust: Motivated Attributions and the Trust Development Process

• Gender Stereotypes and Negotiation Performance: An Examination of
Theory and Research

• Third-Party Reactions to Employee (Mis)treatment: A Justice Perspective
• Subgroup Dynamics in Internationally Distributed Teams: Ethnocentrism or Cross-National Learning?

• Protestant Relational Ideology: The Cognitive Underpinnings and Organizational Implications of an American Anomaly
• Isomorphism In Reverse: Institutional Theory as an Explanation For Recent Increases in Intraindustry Heterogeneity and Managerial Discretion

• The Red Queen: History-Dependent Competition Among Organizations Presents essays on a series of research topics, ranging from efforts to redirect the study of leadership, to analyses of interpersonal relationships, to considerations of cross-cultural issues in organizing work, to discussions of institutional and environmental forces on organizational outcomes.