Co-Chaired Symposium: Scrutinizing I-deals and Its Impact Beyond the Focal Employee

Despite recent scholarly interest in idiosyncratic deals (i-deals), it has received little critical attention or considered perspectives beyond employees who receive i-deals (i.e., focal employee). This symposium aims to, first, evaluate the i-deals concept and, second, examine how i-deals affect and are affected by parties in addition to the focal employee. The first presentation critically evaluates i-deals theory and research and identifies definitional features that require greater clarity as well as concerns about underlying causal mechanisms. The subsequent presentations address concerns raised by the first presentation and in particular examine the inherent role of parties beyond the focal employee in this process. The second presentation investigates potential downsides of i- deals by focusing on co-workers’ reactions to i-deals, taking a justice perspective; the third presentation differentiates between negotiated and obtained i-deals over time, looking at supervisors’ emotional reactions to i-deals as an influencing factor; the fourth paper analyzes outcomes of i-deals for team performance, investigating whether the effects of i-deals extend to clients. The discussant, Denise Rousseau, who proposed and developed the i-deals concept, will discuss each paper’s contributions and consider future research directions. Overall, the symposium raises and begins to address some critical challenges for i-deals theory and research.