Morton Deutsch: Celebrating His Theorizing and Research

Abstract

This tribute to Morton Deutsch celebrates his unique contributions to social psychological theory, research, cross‐cultural applications to business and organizational settings, and cross‐species applications. Mort's theorizing progressed from cooperation and competition to trust to conflict resolution to distributive justice, and finally to oppression. As a researcher, Mort was remarkably creative and innovative. His ability to think of ways to study experimentally complex social phenomena created a revolution in social psychology research. Mort's theories and research is being used to understand the nature of effective leadership and organization functioning in business and industry in Asia and other parts of the world. The strong cross‐cultural validation of Mort's theorizing and research is unusual in the social sciences. Finally, Mort's cooperation and competition theory operationalizes the dynamics between cooperative and competitive processes in a variety of species and accounts for the mechanisms (e.g., goal structures) that underlie different evolutionary processes.

Tracing the Roots of Constructive Conflict Management in Family Firms

“…Trust is also conceived of as a metaemotion that will facilitate knowledge exchange between family members (Belli & Broncano, 2017). Trust is dynamic: easy to break and difficult to create (Johnson, Johnson, Tjosvold, & Roseth, 2018); and trust and constructive conflict are reciprocally reinforced (Tjosvold, Wan, & Tang, 2016). In family firms, trust is invoked as a governance mechanism facilitating open-minded discussions in family forums, such as family councils or boards, in which family members participate (Eddleston, Chrisman, Steier, & Chua, 2010).…”

Using Social Psychology to Constructively Involve Colleagues in Internal Evaluation

“…A review article on social interdependence theory, consolidating over 750 research studies conducted over 110 years, demonstrates that extensive research has been conducted in diverse educational, business, and social service organizations and supports the conclusion that the theory has wide generalizability and considerable external validity (Johnson, 2003). More recent reviews highlight the significant contribution that social interdependence theory has made to influencing social policy and understanding cross-cultural dynamics in business and organizational settings (Johnson et al, 2019; Maton, 2017; Tjosvold et al, 2014).…”

Facilitating Constructive Discussions of Difficult Socio-Scientific Issues

“…It is important to acknowledge the difference between a controversial comment and an offensive comment. Controversy can aid effective discussions ( 17 ). However, when someone says something particularly offensive, you may choose to pause the conversation.…”