Matching the diversity of your people with the diversity of your customers (IO Psychology)

Topic: Diversity, Organizational Performance
Publication: Personnel Psychology (Spring 2012)
Article: Is there method to the madness? Examining how racioethnic matching influences retail store productivity
Authors: Derek R. Avery, Patrick F. McKay, Scott Tonidandel, Sabrina D. Volpone, & Mark A. Morris
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin

Does employee diversity lead to better organizational performance? In a recent article, Derek Avery and his colleagues argue that it can, but it’s not quite that simple. What is important isn’t so much the diversity, but the employees’ racioethnic representativeness of the customer base.

In this study, the authors looked at the racioethnic representativeness and productivity of 739 stores. They found that as representativeness increased, so did productivity. In addition, the authors found that productivity increased because representativeness led to customer satisfaction, which in turn led to productivity. This effect was largest for stores that had a higher percentage of minority customers.

The findings from this study indicate that it’s helpful for the racioethnicity of your personnel to be representative of your customer base. However, for legal reasons, it is important not to hire or promote people based on their race. It would be a good idea to assess the representativeness of your personnel, partly to determine if there is discrimination occurring, and partly because your company could be sending the wrong message to customers if your personnel are not representative.

Avery, D. R., McKay, P. F., Tonidandel, S., Volpone, S. D., & Morris, M. A. (2012). Is there method to the madness? Examining how racioethnic matching influences retail store productivity Personnel Psychology, 65, 167-199. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01241.x

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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My Ideas are an Extension of Me: Why Individuals Embrace or Resist Feedback (IO Psychology)

Topic: Decision Making, Change Management
Publication: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (MAY 2012)
Article: Blind in one eye: How psychological ownership of ideas affects the types of suggestions people adopt
Authors: M. Baer, G. Brown
Reviewed by: Kecia Bingham

Remember that time your polite suggestion to your loving partner on how he/she could pare down their “funny story” was met with an exaggerated eye roll? Or perhaps there was a time you suggested to your partner that he/she add a certain ingredient to their signature recipe and to your surprise they did. This study sought to understand why people at times seem open to feedback, while at other times seem to resist it. The authors proposed that psychological ownership (feeling a material or non-material object, such as an idea, is yours and is part of your extended self) and the nature of the change attempt determines how people respond to suggestions for change.

While most research focuses on the benefits of psychological ownership and encourages it, results across two studies in this article indicate that ownership can have both positive and negative implications for change. Specifically, participants who felt strong ownership of their ideas were more likely to adopt additive change (suggestions that built upon his/her idea) and less likely to adopt subtractive change (suggestions that eliminate aspects of his/her idea) compared to those who felt limited ownership of their ideas. The authors reasoned that additive change builds upon our ideas so people with strong psychological ownership were willing to adopt such changes for personal growth. In contrast, individuals with limited ownership tend to be less invested in their ideas and would not view additive change as a way of enhancing themselves. As expected, since subtractive change takes away from what individuals have attached themselves to, people with strong ownership in these situations experienced a greater sense of personal loss compared to participants with limited ownership. Results also indicated that personal loss was positively related to negative affect (e.g., being upset or frustrated), such that when feelings of personal loss were high, negative affect was also high. This finding is compelling since participants with high negative affect were less likely to adopt others’ suggestions for change. In sum, when people with psychological ownership of their ideas were presented with feedback that diminished their ideas, they were more likely to experience a sense of personal loss which then elicited elevated levels of negative emotions and reduced their adoption of subtractive changes. However, the reverse was true when participants with strong ownership were presented with feedback that enhanced their ideas.

Results imply that individuals with strong psychological ownership may selectively adopt feedback so that they are blind to suggestions that diminish parts of their idea, while being receptive to feedback that builds upon their idea regardless of the quality and usefulness of the feedback. To encourage collaboration and innovation the authors suggest organizations encourage collective vs. individual ownership of ideas and train employees on how to use techniques that foster a culture of openness and agreement (e.g., agree, accept, and add).

Baer, M., & Brown, G. (2012). Blind in one eye: How psychological ownership of ideas affects the types of suggestions people adopt. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 118, 60-71.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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Team Intimacy and Organizational Interventions: Emphasizing Team Cohesion May be More Effective (IO Psychology)

Topic: Teams, Development
Publication: Human Resource Management Review (JUN 2012)
Article: Too Close for Comfort? Distinguishing Between Team Intimacy and Team Cohesion
Authors: Rosh, L., Offermann, L. R., & Van Diest, R.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

Within IO psychology, research on teams has become increasingly important in recent years. As organizations have begun to use teams for a wider variety of roles and purposes, it has become necessary for both researchers and practitioners to gain a better understanding of how teams work and how they can be designed to operate most effectively. Two constructs that have received research attention in the realm of teams include team intimacy and team cohesion. Although these constructs may appear to be very similar from the outside, Lisa Rosh and colleagues argue that there are important differences between these constructs, and that they are best conceptualized as distinct constructs.

Rosh and her colleagues explored the literature surrounding group intimacy and group cohesion, noting that, although there are areas of overlap between the constructs (e.g. interpersonal attraction), there are also key differences between them. Specifically, group intimacy necessarily requires some level of group cohesion, while a group may have high levels of cohesion without the added elements (e.g. interpersonal affection) of intimacy.

The authors suggest that, to date, many team-building initiatives in organizations have been designed to foster team intimacy, not cohesion. Noting that the link between intimacy and team performance has not been well-established, the authors suggest that practitioners shift their focus towards team-building interventions that focus, not on intimacy, but rather on the “work-focused” purpose of the group, such as the group’s commitment to their task and the task-based collective efficacy of the group. However, the authors do not discount the importance of intimacy entirely; indeed, they note that group intimacy is likely to become more common as teams take on more and more sophisticated projects in organizations; as such, they argue that additional research and examination of group intimacy is needed so that practitioners will be equipped to address this component of life in teams.

Rosh, L., Offermann, L. R., & Van Diest, R. (2012). Too close for comfort? Distinguishing between team intimacy and team cohesion. Human Resource Management Review, 22, 116-127.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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Predicting someone’s propensity to morally disengage (IO Psychology)

Topic: Assessment, Personality, Ethics, Counter-Productive Work Behavior, Workplace Deviance
Publication: Personnel Psychology (SPRING 2012)
Article: Why employees do bad things: Moral disengagement and unethical organizational behavior
Authors: Celia Moore, James R. Detert, Linda Klebe Treviño, Vicki L. Baker, & David M. Mayer
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin

Organizations obviously want their employees to be ethical. While there are existing measures that are used to predict who will act immorally, the authors of this paper proposed a new construct that they called an individual’s propensity to morally disengage – an individual difference in how people think about ethical decisions and behavior that allows them to act unethically without feeling bad about it.

Celia Moore and her colleagues developed a measure of an individual’s propensity to morally disengage. In a series of studies, they then validated the measure for working adults by showing that the propensity to morally disengage was positively related to unethical behavior after accounting for a number of other related traits, orientations, and emotions. Predicted outcomes included self-, supervisor-, and coworker-reported unethical behavior, decisions to commit fraud, and self-serving decisions in the workplace.

You may be wondering how this paper is relevant to practitioners. This new measure of the propensity to morally disengage predicts unethical behavior, and it is short – it only includes eight items. While it has yet to be validated for employee selection, this measure certainly shows promise for its ability to predict unethical behavior. The authors also found that this measure had a low correlation with social desirability, so it seems to be fairly resistant to test-takers faking their responses to receive a good score. If your organization is using a lengthy integrity test in the selection process for the sole purpose of predicting those who would conduct unethical behavior, then this new measure may be something your organization might want to consider using instead.

Moore, C., Detert, J. R., Treviño, L. K., Baker, V. L., & Mayer, D. M. (2012). Why employees do bad things: Moral disengagement and unethical organizational behavior. Personnel Psychology, 65, 1-48. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01237.x

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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So you think they are a bunch of dumb jocks?

Topic: Selection
Publication: PLoS ONE (2012)
Article: Executive functions predict the success of top-soccer players
Authors: T. Vestberg, R. Gustafson, L. Maurex, M. Ingvar, & P. Petrovic
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin, M.A.

What do sport announcers mean when they say that an athlete does or does not have
the mental game? Personally, I think that announcers use this term as a catch-all to describe any attribute or characteristic that is not physical or visually perceivable. This vagueness may represent the lack of understanding of the exact mental characteristics and abilities that are necessary for elite sport performance. The exploration of these characteristics and abilities has been limited at best, and more resources are being devoted to formal investigations as of late.
In Sweden, a study was recently published in which the investigators assessed the
cognitive abilities of 57 male and female professional, Swedish soccer players. The cognitive tests measured the ability to visually problem solve in a timed setting, the capacity to inhibit impulses, and the ability to remember visual images and patterns. It was found that soccer players in the most elite division in Sweden had higher cognitive abilities than players in lower divisions, and that both groups performed better than a control group. Further, a positive correlation between cognitive ability and the number of goals scored was found. In other words, the higher the cognitive ability, the more goals scored, and vice versa.
Employers might want to consider this information when deciding which employees to
select. Though neuropsychological tests can be expensive and cost thousands of dollars for each assessment, the money spent may be less than the money saved. Costs associated with a bad hire include that employee’s salary and the potential decrease in production associated with that employee’s less than stellar performance. After all, an ounce of prevention can be worth more
than a pound of cure.

Vestberg, T., Gustafson, R., Maurex, L., Ingvar, M., & Petrovic, P. (2012). Executive functions predict the success of top-soccer players. PLoS ONE 7(4): e34731. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034731

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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When It Comes to Employee Health, More than an ‘Apple a Day’ is Needed (IO Psychology)

Topic: Health & Safety, Organizational Justice, Fairness, Burnout, Stress
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: Perceived Unfairness and Employee Health: A Meta-Analytic Integration
Authors: Robbins, Jordan M.; Ford, Michael T.; Tetrick, Lois E.
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood, M.S.

Practitioners and employers alike have expressed concern around the effects of poor employee heath. When employees are not well, the organization can not only incurs costs due to direct medical expenses, but can also pay for poor employee health in the form of absenteeism, decreased productivity and moral, and even turnover.

Recent research has linked employee perceptions of organizational unfairness to employee health. There are four ways in which perceptions of unfairness are thought to be experienced. These are through feelings of distributive injustice (i.e., fairness of outcomes of decisions), procedural injustice (i.e., fairness of the process of the decisions), interactional injustice (i.e., fairness of the exchanges between individuals in the organization), and psychological contract breach (i.e., failure of the organization to live up to the expectations of the employee).

In general, perceived organizational unfairness was found to be associated with poor employee health indicators such as mental health conditions, physical health conditions, and number of absences. Moreover, unfairness was most strongly related to more proximal health indicators such as employee feelings of burnout, negative mood, and job related stress.

Additionally, the four types of unfairness were related to different health related indicators. For instance, procedural justice was more strongly related to physical health problem, while distributive justice was more predictive of mental health issues. Psychological contract breach was most strongly associated with employee perceptions of burnout. Of the four, interactional justice was the least predictive of the health indicators.

What can be done to promote employee health and well-being in the workplace?Well, one good thing is that perceptions of fairness are malleable aspects of the workplace, meaning that organizations have a great deal of control managing fairness (and unfairness) perceptions. To increase feeling of distributive justice, organizations should strive to make policies with outcomes that are the same for all employees regardless of gender, race, and tenure. While, increasing perceptions of procedural justice can be accomplished by insuring that decision-making processes treat all employees equally. Finally, to increase perceptions of a sturdy psychological contract, openly and clearly communicate to employees, provide them with information, direction, and support in times of change, and treat employees with respect.

Robbins, J. M., Ford, M. T., & Tetrick, L. E. (2012). Perceived unfairness and employee health: A meta-analytic integration. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 235-272. doi: 10.1037/a0025408

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Want increased performance? Provide social support (IO Psychology)

Topic: Development
Publication: Journal of Applied Sport Psychology (2009)
Article: An Intervention to Increase Social Support and Improve Performance
Authors: Paul Freeman, Tim Rees, and Lew Hardy
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin, M.A.

Can social support improve performance? According to Rees and Hardy, the four types of social support are emotional support, which refers to listening and talking things through; esteem support, such as emphasizing the positives; informational support, which includes advice and feedback; and tangible support, such as money and resources.

In investigating the relationship between social support and performance, Freeman, Rees, and Hardy tested the efficacy of increased social support on the performance of three golfers. It was found that social support increased the performance of all of the golfers. Though this study had a very small sample size, the results may still be helpful. For example, if employers ask how their employees are doing, congratulate them after their successes, and encourage them after their failures, they may see an increase in the performance of their department and ultimately the company’s bottom line.

Freeman, P., Rees, T., & Hardy, L. (2009). An intervention to increase social support and improve performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 21(2), 186-200.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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Job-Relevant Prediction: Cognitive Ability Tests with High Criterion and Content Validity

Topic: Selection
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (MAR 2012)
Article: Cognitive Tests Used in Selection Can Have Content Validity as Well as Criterion Validity: A Broader Research Review and Implications for Practice
Authors: Frank L. Schmidt
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

It is a well-known fact in IO psychology that cognitive ability is the one of the single best predictors of job performance, in a vast array of occupations. As such, cognitive ability tests are commonly created and used as a personnel selection tool for organizations. Such tests are typically validated using a criterion-related validity strategy, meaning that the usefulness of the test for predicting subsequent job performance is assessed. However, content validity, another important “type” of validity that refers to the extent to which a test can be considered to adequately sample the domain of interest, is often ignored in the validation process. In a recent article, Frank Schmidt argues that both types of validity can (and should) be assessed when creating a new cognitive ability measure.

Schmidt suggests that, in addition to taking advantage of the existing literature concerning the predictive power of various selection methods, practitioners should conduct well-designed content validation studies when creating a cognitive ability test for an organization. Such a validation would typically consist of a job analysis to identify both the narrower cognitive skills and broader learning capabilities that employees need to be successful. A test can then be designed that will assess cognitive ability using questions that are related to the actual mental qualities that an employee will be using on the job if they are hired.

In summary, Schmidt argues that a content validity model can be applied to cognitive ability tests in addition to a criterion-related validity model. As Schmidt notes, the strengths of this framework are considerable, in that a cognitive ability test validated in this way is more legally defensible and professionally satisfying. In addition, applicant reactions to a content-valid cognitive ability test are likely to be higher than they would be a more generic cognitive ability test that is not built with an eye towards the job in question.

Schmidt, F. L. (2012). Cognitive tests used in selection can have content validity as well as criterion validity: A broader research review and implications for practice. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20, 1-13.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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Are Five Choices Better Than Three? (IO Psychology)

Topic: Selection, Testing
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment
Article: The three option format for knowledge and ability multiple-choice tests: A case
for why it should be more commonly used in personnel testing
Authors: Edwards, B. D. Arthur, W. Jr., and Bruce, L. L.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli

When it comes to deciding how many response options should be given on a multiple choice test, many might argue that three versus four or five options is splitting hairs. But, Edwards, Arthur, and Bruce would argue this issue is a perfect example of the gap between science and practice in I-O psychology.

According to their review of the response option literature, most of the previous studies on this issue have discovered that three-response options is preferable for a number of practical and empirical reasons. For example, tests with three response options take less time to complete, are less susceptible to “testwise” test takers, take less time and resources to develop, and have equal psychometric characteristics like reliability, discriminability, and difficulty. Similar measurement characteristics and lower time requirements mean more bang for the buck when administering these tests. In other words, test takers can be tested on a wider body of knowledge when using three options.

Given that three-option tests measure knowledge or traits just like their four and five-option
cousins with less hassle, the authors questioned why practitioners have yet to broadly accept three-option tests. Guessing that practitioners still have concerns about test-taker reactions, criterion-related validity, and subgroup differences, the authors tested the assumption that there are no differences among the response-option types on these variables.

Edwards et al. gave groups of students either three-option or five-option items from the ACT college-entry test and compared students’ perceptions, race and age differences, and the test score relationship with GPA. Not only were the three-option equivalent to the five-option on their measurement characteristics, three-option tests were perceived to be just as fair, had similar correlations with GPA, and did not differ on their magnitude of race or gender-based differences. Perhaps these findings can help put practitioner fears to rest when considering the practical, financial, and administrative benefits of three-option multiple choice tests.

Edwards, B. D. Arthur, W. Jr., & Bruce, L. L. (2012). The three option format for
knowledge and ability multiple-choice tests: A case for why it should be more commonly
used in personnel testing. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 20(1), 65-
81.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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I Don’t See It That Way: The Role of Individual Differences in Perceptions of Fairness (IO Psychology)

Topic: Fairness
Publication: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (MAY 2012)
Article: In the Eyes of the Beholder? The Role of Dispositional Trust in Judgments of Procedural and Interactional Fairness
Authors: Bianchi, E. C., & Brockner, J.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

Scholars and practitioners in IO psychology have known for some time that organizational fairness, in all its forms (i.e. procedural fairness, interactional fairness, etc.), is relevant in the study of a wide array of organizational phenomena, including employee engagement, turnover, and performance. However, studies of the factors that impact fairness perceptions have typically been limited to environmental or organizational factors. That is, the role of employees’ characteristics has been neglected in the study of organizational fairness; as a result, differences in individuals’ perceptions of fairness have primarily been ascribed to environmental or organizational influences.

In their new paper, Bianchi and Brockner looked at employee characteristics (specifically dispositional trust), hypothesizing that higher dispositional trust would be associated with more positive perceptions of fairness. They also hypothesized that perceptions of procedural and interactional fairness would mediate the relationship between dispositional trust and job outcomes, such as organizational commitment. Across three studies (two survey studies and one experiment), the authors found overall support for their hypotheses, which may help explain why different employees in an organization can have dramatically different fairness-related reactions to policies, initiatives, and organizational change. Although all employees may be operating in the same environment, it is possible that individual differences (specifically dispositional trust) may account for the varying reactions that different employees can have to organizational policies and decisions. Thus, while having consistent organizational procedures that are carried out similarly for everyone is undoubtedly important, such consistency may not ensure that all employees have universally positive reactions to such procedures, due in part to the influence of individual differences.

Bianchi, E. C., & Brockner, J. (2012). In the eyes of the beholder? The role of dispositional trust in judgments of procedural and interactional fairness. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 118, 46-59.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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