When a Colleague Dies, CEOs Change How They Lead

Guoli Chen
www.barrons.com
Originally posted April 8, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

A version of my research, “That Could Have Been Me: Director Deaths, CEO Mortality Salience and Corporate Prosocial Behavior” (co-authored with Craig Crossland and Sterling Huang and forthcoming in Management Science) notes the significant impact a director’s death can have on resource allocation within a firm and on CEO’s activities, both outside and inside the organization.

For example, we saw that CEOs who’d experienced the death of a director on their boards reduced the number of outside directorships they held in the publicly listed firms. At the same time, they increased their number of directorships in non-profit organizations. It seems that thoughts of mortality had inspired a desire to make a lasting, positive contribution to society, or to jettison some priorities in favor of more pro-social ones.

We also saw differences in how CEOs led their firms. In our study, which looked at statistics taken from public firms where a director had died in the years between 1990 and 2013 and compared them with similar firms where no director had died, we saw that CEOs who’d experienced the death of a close colleague spend less efforts on the firms’ immediate growth or financial return activities. We found that there is an increase of costs-of-goods-sold, and companies they lead become less aggressive in expanding their assets and firm size, after the director death events. It could be due to the “quiet life” or “withdrawal behavior” hypotheses which suggest that CEOs become less engaged with the corporate activities after they realize the finite of life span. They may shift their time and focus from corporate to family or community activities.

Meanwhile we also observed that firms lead by these CEOs after the director death experienced an increase their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. CEOs with a heightened awareness of deaths will influence their firms resource allocation towards activities that provide benefits to broader stakeholders, such as employee health plans, more environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes, and charitable contributions.

The info is here.

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety

Miguel Fariasa, Anna-Kaisa Newheiserb, Guy Kahanec, and Zoe de Toledo
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 49, Issue 6, November 2013, Pages 1210–1213

Abstract

Growing evidence indicates that religious belief helps individuals to cope with stress and anxiety. But is this effect specific to supernatural beliefs, or is it a more general function of belief — including belief in science? We developed a measure of belief in science and conducted two experiments in which we manipulated stress and existential anxiety. In Experiment 1, we assessed rowers about to compete (high-stress condition) and rowers at a training session (low-stress condition). As predicted, rowers in the high-stress group reported greater belief in science. In Experiment 2, participants primed with mortality (vs. participants in a control condition) reported greater belief in science. In both experiments, belief in science was negatively correlated with religiosity. Thus, some secular individuals may use science as a form of “faith” that helps them to deal with stressful and anxiety-provoking situations.

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The suggested parallels between religious belief and belief in science may seem to be in tension with recent work emphasizing the intuitive character of religious belief. Tasks involving more analytic processing were shown to decrease religious belief (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012), whereas the stimulation of a more intuitive mindset led to a greater belief in God (Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2012). Contrary to religion, scientific practice is defined by analytical thinking; rational enquiry and weighing of evidence are given precedence even when they conflict with intuition. But when it comes to believing, even if it is a belief in the scientific method as opposed to divine revelation, the underlying mechanism may be similar.

The entire article is here.

War zone killing: Vets feel 'alone' in their guilt

By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press
Originally published February 22, 2013

A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer — and he carries the guilt every day.

"I can't forgive myself," he says. "And the people who can forgive me are dead."

With American troops at war for more than a decade, there's been an unprecedented number of studies into war zone psychology and an evolving understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinicians suspect some troops are suffering from what they call "moral injuries" — wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code.

Though there may be some overlap in symptoms, moral injuries aren't what most people think of as PTSD, the nightmares and flashbacks of terrifying, life-threatening combat events. A moral injury tortures the conscience; symptoms include deep shame, guilt and rage. It's not a medical problem, and it's unclear how to treat it, says retired Col. Elspeth Ritchie, former psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.

The entire story is here.