Research and Applications
As an active researcher I strive to make most of our basic research as applicable as possible to the business world. Below, you will find a list of several research projects that have significant consequences for our daily work in organizations. If you want to read more about each of these research topics, please, click on the icon that you are interested in and check out the webpages or pdfs.
How ethical are intercultural negotiations?
Project Description
In this project we examined to what extent Chinese or American negotiators use unethical practices when negotiating with a Chinese versus an American counterpart. Click here to get a copy of the research paper.The self-created myth of the bonus
Project Description
How are beliefs about bonuses after the financial crisis shaped. It is not a point of discussion whether bonuses have a motivating potential (they do!) but there are limits to it. To some extent the impact of the bonus is overestimated, which can significantly influence the bonus debate. Click here to know more. Click here to see me speak about my bonus research.Putting executive pay in context
Project Description
How do people decide how much they are worth? Many consultancy companies are being asked to determine how much board members, executives and managers need to be paid. This is a difficult question if you do not understand the psychology behind it. Click here to know moreThe art of apologies
Can money and trust co-exist
Project Description
What is the true value of benevolence in the financial industry? If your job consists of thinking about money, what does it do to building trust with investors and clients? To find out we set out to examine what money does with trust. Click here to read more about it.How overcompensation can backfire
Project Description
When trust is violated, people may have the intuitive response that providing financial overcompensations may do the trick to get parties bonding again. Our research shows that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, overcompensating as a strategy may actually bring you a bad reputation. Read more about it hereAre leaders fair
Project Description
In this age of increased transparency, it is a requisite that our leaders are fair. However, are they really? Our research shows that it is not easy to always be fair and therefore we need to know more about the conditions that will facilitate fair leader behaviour. Click here to know more.Using too many controls in your company undermines trust
Project Description
In order to restore trust and create a more value-driven organization, managers rely much on the use of control and sanction systems. Although they are expensive in maintenance and use, they do not reveal long-term effects. In fact they may kill the trust that we still had. Read more about it here.Trust in China
Project Description
How trust is build and created differs across cultures. Part of our international research involves understanding what the function of trust is in the West and in China. Understanding the social function of trust may help explaining why trust in China works differently than in the West. Click here for more information.Mergers and Acquisitions
Project Description
You always wanted to know why M&A’s regularly fail and even if they seem to be successful, after some time it always turns out that problems come to the surface. Are there ways to more effectively deal with M&A’s. Read more about it here.The innovation challenges that China faces
Project Description
China has set a strict and challenging agenda when it comes down to become the world’s most innovative society. Based on our own experience and interviews, we identified four important challenges that China business faces when it comes down to becoming truly innovative and develop radical knowledge breakthroughs. Read more about it here.Prof. De Cremer’s research on how using the cc-option in email exchanges significantly affects trust building in teams received much attention from several international media. His research on this phenomenon was published in Harvard Business Review (click here for the pdf of the article). See below for examples of several international media: