Grok, Ethics, and Generative AI

Does A Company's Mission Matter To Job Seekers?

Purpose claims, mission statements, vision statements, and other indicators of company values, ideals, and belief systems have become increasingly common in the practice of recruitment and talent acquisition. These claims intend to galvanize applicants and stakeholders by articulating the reasons companies exist, going beyond selling products, providing services, and making a profit. In “The Authenticity of Purpose Claims: Firm Capacity and Job Seeker Responses to Recruitment Efforts,“ Oliver Hahl and his co-authors point out that these proclamations often suffer from a perception of cheap talk, or non-binding statements such as “we will change the world” that lack inherent credibility. The study concludes that, for any ambitious claims to land with any degree of authenticity, the audience must believe the company possesses the capacity to achieve it. In the corporate context, capacity is the knowledge and resources required to turn one of these aspirational statements into a reality. To test this, Hahl et al., performed a reverse engineering of thousands of job postings using topic modeling, which is a statistical method of word co-occurrence. The impact of corporate purpose on recruitment relies on a firm’s perceived capacity to achieve its stated goals. While large organizations with over one thousand employees experience a 50 percent increase in job applications when making bold purpose claims, smaller firms with fewer than 50 employees see only a marginal 10 percent gain, as their grander ambitions are often dismissed as inauthentic. This skepticism stems from the belief that more capacity is necessary to drive significant social impact; however, small firms can overcome this authenticity gap by signaling their competence through high-status affiliations. When small companies partner with prestigious entities like Harvard or the United Nations, they effectively borrow legitimacy, leading candidates to view their mission as credible and increasing their likelihood of applying. The paper suggests that authenticity is not just a matter of willingness or pure intention. Even a firm dedicated to the greater good will appear inauthentic if its ambitions exceed its means. For the practitioner, the lesson is one of alignment. A firm must pair its moral aspirations with tangible evidence of its power to act. Read the full paper: León Valdés, Trevor Young-Hyman, Evan Gilbertson, C. B. Bhattacharya, Oliver Hahl (2025) The Authenticity of Purpose Claims: Firm Capacity and Job Seeker Responses to Recruitment Efforts. Management Science 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03931 [https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03931]

"Who Knows What" in Emergency Teams Can Improve Outcomes for Trauma Patients

In trauma bays, a team’s collective mind often matters more than individual skill. A recent study by Tepper School Professor Linda Argote and colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh, the Virginia Hospital Center, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, and Washington University in St. Louis found that teams with a strong transactive memory system, which is a shared understanding of each member's expertise, significantly improve patient outcomes. By analyzing emergency video recordings, researchers discovered that teams accustomed to working together function as a synchronized unit, anticipating moves to reduce ICU stays by nearly two days and overall hospitalization by more than three. In short, knowing "who knows what" saves lives and speeds recovery. Read the full paper, "Transactive Memory Systems and Hospital Trauma Team Performance: Shared Experience in Action Teams [https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2024.19022]," in Organization Science Read the press release: Shared Experience in Trauma Teams Links Directly to Improved Patient Outcomes [https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/news/stories/shared-experience-improved-patient-outcomes] Visit Tepperspectives for more thought leadership. [https://tepperspectives.cmu.edu] ### The Tepperspectives Podcast received generous support from the MBA Class of 2016 Technology Fund.

Can AI Really Transform Supply Chains?

Tepper School Professor Sridhar Tayur and Tinglong Dai, Tepper School graduate and Johns Hopkins professor, join Emily DeJeu to discuss how AI can help improve supply chains, but also why it can't solve every problem.

Grok, Ethics, and Generative AI

What should users consider when using generative AI to create or manipulate images of other people? What policies should companies adopt to ensure that their products don't cause harm? Ethicist Derek Leben joins the Tepperspectives podcast to discuss. Links to news, ideas, and concepts in the episode: Derek Leben's book, AI Fairness: Designing Equal Opportunity Algorithms from MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552363/ai-fairness/ [https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552363/ai-fairness/] Center for Countering Digital Hate report: https://counterhate.com/research/grok-floods-x-with-sexualized-images/ [https://counterhate.com/research/grok-floods-x-with-sexualized-images/] Utilitarianism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/ [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/] Liberitarianism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/ [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/] The Nash Equilibrium: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nash-equilibrium.asp [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nash-equilibrium.asp] Parteto Efficiency/Optimality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency]

AI and Transactive Memory Systems

Tepper School doctoral student Pim Assavabhokhin speaks with Professor Emily DeJeu about how AI can enhance short-term decision accuracy and transactive memory systems to improve team speed, but over-reliance on technology can create a dependency. tepperspetives.cmu.edu [http://tepperspetives.cmu.edu] cmu.edu/tepper [http://cmu.edu/tepper]