From Shared Climate to Self-Triggered Social Ecosystems: An Alternative View

Much of organizational behavior and conflict management research looks at how social context influences individuals’ experiences and behaviors. An alternative view is that individuals can to some degree create their own contexts, and do so in a way that follows them across dyads, groups, and organizations. We call these individual-specific contexts “self-triggered social ecosystems.” In this paper, we propose that self-triggered social ecosystems are created when someone consistently enacts visible behaviors that trigger similar and visible reactions from others. We attribute the formation of STSEs to social inertia, and identify three individual traits that ensure that an individual’s behavior is consistent across people and situations: self-monitoring, implicit beliefs, and emotional intelligence. To create an STSE, this behavior must be visible to others, and we specify the conditions that increase visibility. Finally, we discuss why understanding self-triggered social ecosystems is important for organizations, and identify managerial implications of this phenomenon.