Science, and the inaugural PhD graduate of the UCL Manage- .... data as variables to the classic regression analysis. ..
Putting the Neuroscience in Organizational Neuroscience: An Interview With Dr. Sebastiano Massaro In this issue, Dr. Sebastiano Massaro tells his story from his beginning in neuroscience to his current involvement in organizational neuroscience (ON). In so doing, he describes why ON is extremely relevant for management and I-O psychology and he argues for the need of rigorous ON research practices. Sebastiano Massaro is an assistant professor at the Warwick Business School. He is academic lead of the Global Research Priority in Behavioral Science, and the inaugural PhD graduate of the UCL Management Science and Innovation Department. He holds a BSc in Biotechnology from the Medical School of the University of Padova, and a MRes in Neuroscience summa cum laude from the University of Trieste and the International School of Advanced Studies. Sebastiano also received the 2011 Academy of Management OB Most Innovative Student Paper Award.
M. K. Ward North Carolina State University
In this interview, Sebastiano shows his expertise all the way from neurons to organizations. At the same time, he reminds us to be conscious of the mechanisms of the brain—things that influence what we think and do, and of which we are largely unaware. Your early training was in neuroscience. Why did you get involved in ON rather than continue in mainstream neuroscience?
Bill Becker Texas Christian University
Simply said: While I was educated, trained, and did a good deal of research in neuroscience, a few years ago I decided to make a career change and to pursue a PhD in management. During my PhD training a paper about ON (Becker, Cropanzano, & Sanfey, 2011) came out. My initial reaction was skeptical. “What is this about?” The word “neuroscience” in the title of a management paper sounded suspicious. Yet, once I read the paper, I realized that the authors were bringing forward a fundamental concept: If we wish to fully understand human behavior, both of single individuals and of people within organizations, we shall also account for their neural underpinnings.
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For behavioral neuroscientists this is a fairly obvious concept. However, this idea has been largely overlooked and challenged within mainstream management and I-O community. Thus, I just put two and two together and thought, “I’m a neuroscientist now shaping my career as a management scholar: Why not do some ON research then and fill some of these gaps?” What’s your idea of ON? I view ON as a truly multilevel interdisciplinary research field that belongs to management, organizational sciences, and business studies, as well as has foundations and branches in the social neuroscience scholarship (Decety & Keenan, 2006). Initially, I thought that ON was just an empirical field: the application of neuroscience methods to organizational and management research. More recently, however, I have appreciated that neuroscience insights can offer important theoretical lenses across various areas of management and I-O psychology, including strategy and organization behavior. Indeed, the idea of organizations as brains is not new (Morgan, 1986); and, how often do we read about organizational cognition or learning? Learning and cognition are neuroscience-based concepts, aren’t they? Where did this thinking lead you? One year ago, I was hired at the Warwick Business School, which has an innovative research group in behavioral science. This allowed me to work with world-leading behavioral scientists, management scholars, economists, and psychologists. I’m also co-leading the university’s Global Research Priority in Behavioural Science, 34
which spans across departments and aims to advance the global behavioral science agenda into various research areas, including ON. This research network, together with the momentum within the scholarly community about ON, is providing a good platform to perform ON research within a scientifically rigorous setting. My ON research has two main talking points. The first is theoretical, almost epistemological: I am an advocate of the need for sounder methodological, ethical, and professional guidelines in ON (Massaro, forthcoming). Management scholars have a lot of fascination about neuroscience, but usually they are not trained. For instance, they often think that ON research equates to putting someone into a scanner and getting a colorful picture of the person’s brain. This is not the whole story: Neuroscience is not just neuroimaging. Or, we frequently read concerns about neuroscience being a reductionist threat for management; but similar worries were resolved years ago in social neuroscience. Similarly, researchers attempting neuroscience approaches in management often are more excited about being pioneers than about seeking scientific soundness. We all should step back and concentrate on doing ON research properly rather than chasing academic accolade. My primary research goal is thus to inform the management academic community about what neuroscience research signifies and its real potential for management and organizational studies. My other research is empirical. I focus on the interplay between emotion and cognition, a hot topic in management and in I-O psychology and a long-debated puzzle in behavioral neuroscience. In management and I-O psychology we need a January 2015, Volume 52, Number 3
more nuanced view on emotions and the way in which we perceive, relate to, and deceive them. Just think that we usually recognize emotions through faces, and the categorization of facial features can occur at latencies as short as 100 milliseconds. Face recognition is a fundamental aspect of everyday life, since it conveys key information used to guide and evaluate social interactions. But how can we fully capture such dynamic phenomena with just a classic questionnaire? While much of my research in this area is still at its very early stages, we’re using a number of behavioral methods, from qualitative tools up to neuroimaging. We also use measurements related to the autonomic nervous system, like heart rate variability. The extrapolated data as variables to the classic regression analysis. These physiological measures are probably the most practical approach to do basic empirical ON. But research is not all I do. I also like to educate the broader academic public about ON. For example, at Warwick I teach an innovative module titled, “Neuroscience for Business and Social Studies.” I get to present neuroscience across its broad spectrum as a complementary means to look at common topics students encounter during their business or economics studies. I cover the essentials of neuroscience, starting from its history up to the more recent insights in neuroeconomics and marketing, always remarking that the understanding of neural processes is an important element to fully comprehend human behavior (Kandel & Squire, 2000). If I want to present something “cool,” but if am not entirely grounded on that topic, I invite guest speakers. For example, a colleague from the Engineering Department recently demonstrated to the class how to conduct a simple EEG experiment on atThe Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
tentional cues. This teaching is quite challenging because I’m often talking to people who don’t have basic neural knowledge. Some want to know everything on how the brain makes decisions right away but perhaps do not even know that neurons are cells. Yet, I empathize with them, and I am happy to see their interest growing as they learn more about the nervous system. At the end of the day, knowing more about neuroscience means knowing more about themselves. How could our TIP readers recruit a neuroscientist for research? I believe neuroscientists are always willing to listen to new ideas and have shared projects. One selling point is that those of us researching and consulting in organizations probably have a more nuanced knowledge of the social world than what the average neuroscientist might have. Thus, together, we could come up with original research questions that fall outside of mainstream approaches or contexts. The best option is to talk to people who are trained experts in fields which are close to your own research: a social neuroscientist may be a better bet than a molecular neuropharmacologist. Remember, as you strike up collaborations, that no one is born a neuroscientist. Rather, we are like kids in the world of neuroscience. This because neuroscience research is extremely fast-paced and the research community is way bigger than the I-O and management ones. So those of us in management and I-O need to know why we need to employ a neuroscience approach to our research, understand well the relevant literature, and move on with state-of-the art research practices. 35
In terms of tools in neuroscience, why should TIP readers care about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)? In other words, what are the advantages of fMRI compared to other measures like EEG? MRI machines traditionally enable a higher spatial resolution than standard EEG systems because EEG measures signals at the scalp. Imagine we have a ball, and the brain is this sort of sphere. Very simply said, EEG would record signals at the surface of the ball. For instance, this is relevant in understanding variation of activity in deep brain areas like the insula, where fMRI would be more capable of detecting neural activity. The use of either EEG or fMRI, or both, depends a lot on the specific research needs. So, we really need to be prepared to use several tools, including fMRI. What would strengthen ON research? Well, I obviously read academic management journals. Unfortunately, there have been a number of experimental pieces in leading journals that were too vague about the methodology used. This impedes understanding how the research was actually conducted or how to reproduce the studies. Thus, I would like to see more detailed methodological descriptions of ON research. The problem is these descriptions have to be technically precise, and this requirement might clash with the need to be understood by an untrained scholarly community or even by editors. On the other hand, oversimplifying the methods can easily lead to poor research outcomes. Finding the right trade-off between these extremes is the key challenge in publishing ON work. What are the next big questions in ON? We are at a very interesting point in time 36
for ON, and more generally for the I-O and management scholarships: Can they take on neuroscience research and do it properly? Or should they just close their eyes and forget for instance that we are humans and we have a nervous system that allows us to essentially live, work, and also carry out this interview? Jokes aside, this is a big dilemma that goes to the core of the disciplines. A puzzle that can’t be answered in a paper but only by a joint academic effort in setting core guidelines and key points for ON. Only by doing this will we also address the various concerns, doubts, and research imprecisions that have populated ON so far. What final comments do you have for TIP readers? The way research is conducted in management or I-O is profoundly embedded in the social sciences. Understanding neuroscience, from its molecular core up to the insights of neuroimaging research, can be a powerful instrument to reflect on how we conduct our research. The power of modern neuroscience indeed comes from its location at the interface between the natural and social sciences; applying an ON approach to management and I-O psychology can actually be a revolution in our paradigm of research practices. But, are we really ready to embrace ON and in what way? My concern is that due to an intrinsic lack of neuroscience knowledge ON will remain at a very vague theoretical level with an increasing number of unskilled scholars willing to jump on the bandwagon. While being critical and having many views with the aim of improving knowledge is surely the first stage needed to advance a research dialogue, it is also essential to remember that the real step January 2015, Volume 52, Number 3
forward is to perform rigorous research and bring forward scientifically sound theoretical frameworks. That’s why it’s very important to work in collaboration with neuroscientists and aim for high-quality interdisciplinary research. This, in my opinion, is the only sensible approach to advance management and I-O knowledge in a truly meaningful way. Conclusions We send an international thank you to Sebastiano Massaro for sharing stories about ON from the eyes of a neuroscientist. His point of view reminds us that a humble, curious, and disciplined approach is necessary for ON to progress.
References Becker, W. J., Cropanzano, R., & Sanfey, A. G. (2011). Organizational neuroscience: Taking organizational theory inside the neural black box. Journal of Management, 37, 933–961. Decety, J., & Keenan, J. P. (2006). Social neuroscience: A new journal. Social Neuroscience, 1, 1–4. Kandel, E. R. & Squire L. R. (2000). Neuroscience: Breaking dow,n scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind. Science 290, 1113–1120. Massaro, S. (forthcoming). Neuroscientific methods applications in strategic management. In G. Dagnino & C. Cinci (Eds.), Strategic management: A research method handbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Morgan, G. (1986). Images of organization. New York, NY: Sage.
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