Riddle Me This: Justice Thresholds,“Moving-On” Magic,and a Map to Workplace Well-Being- GOM’s 2025 Best Papers!

Gather ’round, friends—today’s riddle has three sparkling answers: What links managers’ sense of fairness, entrepreneurs telling failure stories, and a grand tour of workplace mental health? They’re the themes that stole the show in Group & Organization Management’s (GOM) 2025 Best Papers—each one a party popper for both theory and practice. Let’s toss confetti and dig in!

First up, the justice detectives aka the 2025 Best Quantitative Paper (Miron et al., 2024). Miron and colleagues pull back the curtain on when bosses (of any gender) raise the evidentiary bar for calling inequality “unfair.” As managerial power climbs, so do the “injustice standards,” nudging leaders toward status-quo comfort and away from equality action—a finding visualized in their standards-by-power plots. It’s a crisp, sobering insight: power shapes what counts as “enough evidence,” and that perception shapes whether change happens.

Next, the comeback artists aka the 2025 Best Qualitative Paper (Richey et al., 2025). Richey and colleagues decode how entrepreneurs publicly narrate venture failure to earn legitimacy to try again. Using Goffman’s “keyings,” they show how founders swing between Adventure, Education, and Death frames—and even layer them—to steer tone, evoke empathy, and spark encouragement from audiences during the “moving on” phase. It’s failure, remixed as teachable quest, graduation day, or dignified finale—storycraft with real consequences for what comes next.

Finally, the mapmakers aka the 2025 Best Conceptual Paper (Thomas et al., 2024). Thomas and colleagues offer a three-axis taxonomy that makes today’s sprawling mental-health offerings legible: Purpose (restoring ↔ enriching), Delivery (external ↔ internal), and Latitude (mandatory ↔ voluntary). Their schematic is the field guide leaders, HR, and employees need to compare options, set expectations, and boost real uptake—less buzzword bingo, more better help.

Together, these winners celebrate what GOM does best: fresh lenses, practical traction, and ideas that do not just sit on the page—they travel. So lace up: we are off on a journey where standards shift, stories heal, and support gets smarter. Here’s to the 2025 best papers—and to the bright paths they have lit!

When Do Bosses Stop Caring About Organizational Justice? Managerial Power and Male versus Female Managers’ Appraisals of Workplace Gender Inequality

Ever wondered why some managers sprint toward fairness like they’re late to a surprise party, while others fiddle with the rulebook until the music stops? Anca M. Miron, Nyla R. Branscombe, Madison Malcore, Michael Tylor Losser, Danica Kulibert, and Christopher L. Groves follow that mystery through the corridors of power, asking a deceptively simple question: how much proof do bosses need before they’ll call a gender wage gap “unfair,” and does that bar change with power—or with whether the boss is a man or a woman? The authors call this bar an “injustice standard,” and they treat it like a volume knob on a stereo: dial it up, and the cries of unfairness get drowned out; dial it down, and action suddenly sounds urgent. Their motivation springs from a puzzle in prior research—sometimes women leaders look like change agents, sometimes like “cogs in the machine.” What if the key isn’t who the leader is, but how much power they hold and which identity (manager vs. gender) is turned up in their heads at the moment?

To test this, the authors ran two studies with working managers and gave “power” a concrete face: first, economic advantage (earning more than women at one’s company), and second, organizational charge (having say over salaries and direction). Then they asked managers either to report their own “injustice standards” (how much evidence they personally need) or to estimate other people’s standards (what they think an outgroup would need). Study 2 refined the lens: everyone estimated the same outgroup—disadvantaged women—so the spotlight sat squarely on the manager identity. It’s a clever design: if power really nudges the dial, we should see standards rise with power across both genders and across both “me” and “them” perspectives. And if identity matters, making “manager” salient should flatten gender differences.

That’s exactly the plot twist: as power increases, so do injustice standards—for men and women alike—and those higher standards become the secret passageway to inaction. With the bar raised, managers are more resistant to equality efforts, more likely to legitimize existing gaps, and more negative toward diversity policies. In Study 2, once everyone was focused on disadvantaged women (which made “I am a manager” the loudest identity), gender differences largely melted away: powerful men and women both projected high standards onto those women and, in turn, felt more justified doing less. In short, more clout, taller goalposts; taller goalposts, fewer goals.

The takeaway is mischievously practical: the biggest lever isn’t pleading with leaders to “care,” it’s resetting the dial that tells them what counts as enough proof. Make the manager identity share the stage with perspective-taking and clear, structured thresholds (what evidence triggers action), and you lower the drawbridge so justice can cross. The authors even sketch future avenues: measure power in multiple ways, design interventions that induce perspective-taking, and help women managers recategorize with the disadvantaged to rekindle action. Until then, remember the soundtrack of this story: when power turns the volume up on “prove it,” even a loud injustice can sound like a whisper.

The “Key” to Moving on: A Frame Analysis of Entrepreneurs’ Venture-Failure Narratives for Public Audiences

Ever wondered what happens after an entrepreneur posts the dreaded “we’re shutting down” note and the internet collectively leans in? Michelle Richey, Ian Hodgkinson1, and M. N. Ravishankar peek behind that curtain and asks a deliciously human question: when founders tell the world about a failed venture, how do they shape the story so the crowd doesn’t just nod sadly—but actually roots for a comeback? The authors hunt for the “keys” (literally, keyings) that turn a plain, literal failure into a narrative remix for public ears during the tender “moving on” phase. Think of it like changing the soundtrack under the same scene: the picture hasn’t changed, but the meaning has. And yes, the right soundtrack can make an audience whisper, “Go on—try again.”

The spark for this sleuthing is simple: private post-mortems and public confessions are not the same animal. Privately, people sift blame and grief; publicly, they juggle legitimacy—because future investors, collaborators, and the general peanut gallery all leave breadcrumbs of approval or doubt online. So the big riddle is: what narrative flavors invite empathy rather than eye-rolls? The team dives into 91 founder-written failure blog posts—mostly first-person, English-language missives—from Medium and personal sites. They code like archaeologists with NVivo, uncovering recurring “keys”: Adventure (the journey), Education (the classroom), and Death (the end). Better yet, they show how posts layer these keys over time, creating four story arcs: up-keying (positive on positive), down-keying (negative on negative), upturns (start low, end high), and downturns (start high, end low). If you’re picturing a DJ blending tracks, you’re not wrong.

The approach is rigorously narrative: identify the literal frame (the venture failed), then watch how writers overlay an Adventure key (“we crossed mountains, braved storms”), an Education key (“here’s what we learned—so you don’t have to pay this tuition”), or a Death key (“we made the hard call to pull the plug”). In Table 1, you can practically see the mix-and-match: Adventure + Education to spotlight hard-won wisdom; Education + Death to emphasize lessons while acknowledging the cost; Adventure – Death – to paint a perilous landscape where forces beyond the founder loom large. Figure 1 sketches the analysis pipeline, from first-order codes to those big three keys, while Table 2 tracks audience reactions like a social-media seismograph—who writes in, how long they write, and which emoji fly.

And the punchline? Tone and trajectory matter, and different mixes cue different responses. Down-keyings (the raw, heavy ones) pull the most written engagement and empathetic, person-to-person replies—often including the precious “you’ve got this, try again” legitimacy signal. Upturns (sadness alchemized into lessons) attract the most quick, positive taps—the thumbs-ups and little hearts that say, “We like this” even if they’re less personal. Up-keyings keep things sunny and inspiring (“what a ride!”), but the crowd’s comments tend to applaud the narrative craft more than the human at the center. In other words: if you want real encouragement to move on, vulnerability pays; if you want applause, inspiration works; if you want both, ending on learning (Education+) is a savvy bridge between grief and growth.

Zooming out, the study argues that “keying” is the entrepreneur’s narrative toolkit for public legitimacy work. These keys let founders tell a failure story that’s faithful enough to be believable yet reframed enough to be hopeful—and they do it in interactive spaces where audiences don’t just consume meaning, they help co-create it. Practically speaking: founders, incubators, and ecosystem folks can coach toward clearer keys and conscious layering (e.g., Adventure → Education) to invite empathy, learning, and credible second chances. The moral of the story? You can’t rewrite the ending of a failed venture—but you can retune the score so the audience hears not a dirge, but an overture.

Giving Organization Stakeholders Better Help: A Taxonomy for Making Sense of Workplace Mental Health Offerings

Ever wished for a simple treasure map through the jungle of workplace mental health offerings—where X marks the spot for “what will actually help”? In this paper, Benjamin Thomas, Kayla B. Follmer, and Patricia Meglich create that map, with a friendly compass to boot. The authors start with a very human puzzle: everyone says mental health matters, employers are spending more than ever, and yet employees still struggle to find—and trust—the right support. Enter a three-dimensional taxonomy that sorts the chaos into something navigable: first, what’s the purpose of an offering (to restore someone to baseline, or to enrich well-being for anyone); second, where it’s delivered (by internal people/processes at work versus external providers); and third, whether it’s mandatory or voluntary for employers to provide. Think of it like a neat, labeled spice rack for HR and employees: chili flakes (restorative), cinnamon (enriching), pantry vs. delivery, required vs. chef’s choice. The payoff? Clearer choices, clearer expectations, and a better shot at real help instead of wellbeing-washing.

The motivation is as urgent as a ringing phone at 9 a.m.: record levels of worry and need, ambitious employer investments, and yet a big, messy disconnect between what’s offered and what workers actually use or believe in. The paper argues our collective literacy is low—people don’t always know the difference between, say, accommodations versus mindfulness, or which one matches their moment. Meanwhile, organizations send powerful signals: legally required offerings set a baseline promise, and discretionary offerings can shout “we genuinely care”—but only if workers trust the system and feel safe to step forward. That’s why the authors ground their taxonomy in psychological contract and organizational support theories, with trust as the crucial bridge: if employees fear stigma or exposure, even free support can look like a trapdoor. In short, meaning beats menu size—structure and trust help people pick and actually use support.

To make the categories pop, the authors tour common offerings—from health insurance, accommodations, and return-to-work programs (largely restorative), to stress management, mindfulness apps, and e-counseling (often enriching), with delivery that ranges from inside the company to outside specialists. The heart of the paper is a picture worth a thousand HR emails: the taxonomy diagram (see the figure on page 20), which plots offerings along the “Purpose” axis (restoring ↔ enriching) and “Delivery Agent” axis (internal ↔ external), with “Latitude” (mandatory ↔ discretionary) contextualizing expectations. It’s the kind of graphic leaders can drop into a deck, HR can update annually, and employees can scan to find “what fits me right now.”

The main findings are less about experiments and more about clarity that changes practice. First, framing matters: a shared language helps everyone—from a confused employee to a pressed-for-time manager—compare options apples-to-apples. Second, expectations matter: mandatory offerings anchor the psychological contract; voluntary offerings, when communicated well, can turbocharge perceived organizational support. Third, trust is the gatekeeper: internal offerings may be convenient but ask for more vulnerability; external ones can lower disclosure risk but may feel distant. The taxonomy spotlights those trade-offs so leaders can invest wisely, managers can implement credibly, and employees can choose safely. Finally, the authors tee up two research quests: map the prevalence, costs, and outcomes of offerings (so leaders know what’s “normal” and what works), and uncover the helpers and hurdles to actual use (from literacy and messaging to stigma, supervisor behavior, and health climate). In other words, we don’t just need more programs—we need better pathways into them. With this taxonomy, the office jungle looks less like a thicket and more like a garden with signposts: restore or enrich, inside or outside, promised or above-and-beyond. Pick your path—and get better help.