Necessary Evils and Interpersonal Sensitivity in Organizations

By Andrew L. Molinsky, Joshua D. Margolis. 2005

248 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d607cf5c8c49f1bfb0784f3eb2a0d97766e96ed8

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Citations in the corpus

Leading with Meaning: Beneficiary Contact, Prosocial Impact, and the Performance Effects of Transformational Leadership (2012, background): “…can influence followers’ perceptions of meaningfulness through two broad sets of strategies: providing messages that frame and reframe the meaning of the followers’ work and restructuring responsibilities to change and alter the meaning of the work (Griffin, 1983; Molinsky & Margolis, 2005).”
Navigating the Bind of Necessary Evils: Psychological Engagement and the Production of Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior (2008, background): “The set of complex task challenges inherent in performing a medical procedure or firing someone, for example, burdens professionals with a cognitive load ( Molinsky & Margolis, 2005 ) potentially sufficient to inhibit emotions such as sympathy (Skitka et al., 2002: 481– 483), which thereby eases the”
Doing good, doing harm, being well and burning out: The interactions of perceived prosocial and antisocial impact in service work (2007, background): “An important interpersonal stressor that contributes to decreased well-being in service occupations is the experience of harming the beneficiaries of one’s work – the very people employees’ jobs are designed to help (Molinsky & Margolis, 2005).”
Impact and the art of motivation maintenance: The effects of contact with beneficiaries on persistence behavior (2007, background): “Third, it is not yet clear whether the eVects of contact with beneWciaries last beyond a month in the case of Experiment 1, or beyond a single task experience in the case of Experiments 2 and 3, and whether the eVects apply to a broad range of jobs and tasks, especially those in which interactions w”
Putting job design in context: Introduction to the special issue (2010, background): “Molinsky and Margolis (2005) call attention to the fact that many jobs are designed to include ‘‘necessary evils’’—tasks that require employees to harm others in the interest of a perceived greater good, such as managers delivering downsizings, police officers arresting criminals, military officers…”
Employees without a Cause: The Motivational Effects of Prosocial Impact in Public Service (2008, background): “Employees in public service jobs are often exposed to extensive negative feedback (Lee and Ashforth 1996), required to harm the people their jobs are designed to help ( Molinsky and Margolis 2005 ), and overloaded with responsibility for helping (Marshall, Barnett, and Sayer 1997).”
Toward a theory of business (2015, background): “Molinsky and Margolis (2005), for example, alerted us to the challenge of administering a ‘‘necessary evil’’ to another.”
The Hot and Cool of Death Awareness at Work: Mortality Cues, Aging, and Self-Protective and Prosocial Motivations (2009, background): “…harm doing, trauma, and death suggests that, over time, exposure facilitates a process of emotional habituation, or desensitizing, through which mortal- ity becomes less terrifying and paralyzing (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Molinsky & Margolis, 2005; Palmer, 1983; Regehr, Goldberg, & Hughes, 2002).”
Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Prosocial Difference (2007, background): “…& Campion, 2002; Parker et al., 2001), and theory on necessary evils—tasks that require employees to harm others in the interest of a “greater good” (Molinsky & Margolis, 2005)— the job design literature focuses on a rather narrow, limited set of job characteristics defined largely by Hackman…”
Destructive Leadership (2013, background): “…Is this behavior justifiable, and is the amount of harm done sufficient to merit confronting it? harmful behavior can be seen as justified in some circumstances, for example, when it occurs “in the service of achieving some perceived greater good or purpose” (Molinsky & Margolis, 2005: 245).”
Recovery at Work: Understanding the Restorative Side of “Depleting” Client Interactions (2012, background): “…resources generated include task complexity (Campbell, 1989), task significance (Hackman & Oldham, 1976), and whether the task represents a “necessary evil”—that is, it involves emotional or physical harm to the client required to achieve a greater good or purpose (Molinsky & Margolis, 2005).”
Compassion revealed: What we know about compassion at work (and where we need to know more) (2011, background): “…pain (e.g., downsizing agents; Mishra, Mishra, & Spreitzer, 2009), in which the performance of socalled “necessary evils” is inescapable in many cases, and is often quite painful for the agents themselves (see Clair, Ladge, & Cotton, 2010; Margolis & Molinsky, 2008; Molinsky & Margolis, 2005).”
When Employees Do Bad Things for Good Reasons: Examining Unethical Pro-Organizational Behaviors (2011, background): “…to better understand how unethical behavior occurs within organizations, we moved beyond the assumption that unethical behavior is conducted exclusively with the intent to harm organizations (see also Molinsky and Margolis 2005, Scott 2003, Vardi and Weitz 2004, Vardi and Wiener 1996, Warren 2003).”