Category Archives: Culture

The relationship between job performance and turnover – It’s not as simple as we thought! (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Job Performance, Turnover, Culture
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2012)
Article: The effect of culture on the curvilinear relationship between performance and turnover
Authors: Michael C. Sturman, Lian Shao, & Jan H. Katz
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin

The relationship between job performance and turnover has long been thought to be curvilinear (U-shaped). In other words, the highest and lowest performers are most likely to quit their jobs. Numerous studies have replicated these findings, but these studies were almost entirely conducted in the United States. In a recent article, Michael Sturman and his colleagues investigated the effect that culture may have on the relationship between performance and turnover.

The authors analyzed data from employees in 24 countries. They compared the countries in terms of in-group collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. In a culture that is highly collectivistic, people have a strong desire to be part of a group, and group goals are more important than individual ones. Power distance refers to the extent that people in that culture are accepting of unequal power distribution, and uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which a culture’s members are comfortable with uncertainty and risk.

Sturman and his colleagues found that the curvilinear relationship between job performance and turnover didn’t really hold up in some cultures. The U-shaped relationship was weaker (in other words, it’s a much flatter U) for collectivist cultures and for cultures high in power distance and high in uncertainty avoidance. Voluntary turnover was less likely in those cultures than in cultures high in individualism and low in power distance and uncertainty avoidance. The relationship between performance and turnover was stronger (more U-shaped) in cultures that were high in performance orientation.

These findings are important because they indicate that the nature of the relationship between performance and turnover is not the same for all cultures. Therefore, the same HR practices used to reduce turnover may or may not be effective, depending on the country in which they’re used. HR practices (e.g., efforts to encourage turnover of low performers, retention of high performers) should be chosen based on the target culture.

Sturman, M. C., Shao, L., & Katz, J. H. (2012). The effect of culture on the curvilinear relationship between performance and turnover. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 46-62. doi: 10.1037/a0024868

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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Creating Happiness at Work! (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Culture, Employee Satisfaction
Title: The Science Behind the Smile
Publication: Harvard Business Review (FEB 2012)
Author: Gardiner Morse
Reviewed by: Liz Brashier

In a recent interview with psychologist Daniel Gilbert, Morse (2012) examines new research into an investigation of happiness from a scientific perspective.  Happiness, long considered to be a topic better suited for philosophers or writers, is now moving into the realm of data analysis and scientific query, and Gilbert fills us in on what this new work might mean for our understanding of happiness.

You might be wondering if it’s even possible to measure something as personal and subjective as happiness. Gilbert gives us a resounding “yes” before delving into various methodologies for assessment. Across the various academic disciplines researching happiness, including neuroscience and psychology, important findings appear to be emerging. On the whole, we don’t seem to be that good at predicting what will make us happy over time. As studies reveal, we tend to overestimate the value of “happy” events in making us happy while we overestimate the value of “unhappy” events in making us sad. A break-up, the start of an exciting job, or a failing grade on exam don’t make us anywhere near as happy or unhappy as we predict. So why is that? According to Gilbert, we are excellent at finding good in any situation – we are naturals at wanting to feel happy despite our circumstances. On the flip side, when great things happen, we’re good at “snapping back to reality” quickly, and we enjoy the moment while staying realistic.

Gilbert calls this concept of finding the best in bad situations a form of “synthetic happiness.” It’s what we create for ourselves when bad things happen; real, or natural happiness, is what we experience when good things happen. So what does all of this mean for an organization? Employees function best when they are challenged, which creates a sense of natural happiness and fulfillment. Reward and respect – not punishment – is best for producing happy employees. Also, the frequency, rather than the intensity, of our happy experiences is much more meaningful in creating happiness – focus on a constant stream of good experiences for employees instead of one big reward every so often.

So go to work with a smile, challenge and reward employees, and remember that the “bad” things we experience on the job will have much less of an effect on your happiness than you think!

Morse, G. (2012). The science behind the smile. Harvard Business Review, 90, 84-90.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

 

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When Does Conflict Improve Team Performance? (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Teams, Conflict, Culture, Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2012)
Article: Reaping the Benefits of Task Conflict in Teams: The Critical Role of Team Psychological Safety Climate
Authors: B.H. Bradley, B.E. Postlethwaite, A.C. Klotz, M.R. Hamdani, K.G. Brown
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

There’s a battle in the meeting room! Tempers flare, fists pound the table, insults are hurled, a chair flies through the air! No, this is probably not the best way to get things done. But what happens if team members engage in spirited debate that is strictly focused on the work at hand? Will that be productive? According to research by Bradley, Postlethwaite, Klotz, Hamdani, and Brown (2012), the answer depends on the type of team climate already in place.

First, the authors discuss the difference between relationship conflict and task conflict. Relationship conflict is when team members argue on a personal level, which only leads to tension and animosity. Task conflict is when team members express differences of opinion that relate only to work tasks. Past research has shown that task conflict may sometimes be beneficial and sometimes be detrimental to team performance.

So what determines when task conflict is productive? According to this study, it is the presence of something called psychological safety climate. The authors explain that safety climate occurs when team members are not afraid to speak up and offer dissenting opinions that challenge the status quo. If people believe that they will be attacked for expressing alternative viewpoints, the climate is said to have low psychological safety. In this case, the team could be in danger of groupthink, which is when reluctance to speak up leads to poor or catastrophic team decision making.

The authors found that under a psychologically safe climate, task conflict leads to better team performance. This is because team members feel secure with discussing differing viewpoints and they understand that these opinions are strictly related to the work at hand. Under these circumstances, the team will produce more ideas and engage in healthy debate to arrive at the best solution. When psychological safety is low, team members may interpret any type of dissent as personal and threatening, even when it is task related.

This study highlights the importance of maintaining a work environment that encourages people to speak up and does not punish people for offering alternative opinions. When this happens, conflict related to work tasks will become a conduit for improving team performance and not a potential pitfall.

Bradley, B.H., Postlethwaite, B.E., Klotz, A.C., Hamdani, M.R., & Brown, K.G.
(2012). Reaping the Benefits of Task Conflict in Teams: The Critical Role of Team Psychological Safety

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

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What are the performance implications of your organization’s culture?

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Topic: Culture, Human Resources, Organizational Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JULY 2011)
Article: Organizational Culture and Organizational Effectiveness: A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Competing Values Framework’s Theoretical Suppositions
Authors: Hartnell, C.A., Ou, A.Y., & Kinicki, A.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli

Try to define your organization’s culture in one word… The word you came up with may be a predictor of how your organization is performing. Although organizational culture is assumed to be a key component of organizational effectiveness, the theoretical connection between these two important concepts remains fuzzy. Hartnell, Ou, and Kinicki conducted a meta-analysis to explore how a prolific taxonomy of organizational cultures, called the competing values framework (CVF), may help connect our understanding of organizational culture to organizational effectiveness.

Briefly, the CVF arranges organizational cultures into four categories: clan (internal focus on human capital and membership), adhocracy (external focus on adapting through creativity, innovation, and gathering of resources), market (external focus on competitiveness and aggressiveness to meet customer demands), and hierarchy (internal focus on maintain predictability and performance through precise control and clearly defined roles).

After examining 84 studies across three dimensions of organizational effectiveness (employee attitudes, operational effectiveness, and financial effectiveness), the authors found that clan cultures were more positively associated with job satisfaction than were adhocracy cultures, subjective innovation was more strongly related to market cultures than adhocracy cultures, and market cultures had stronger positive relationships with financial effectiveness criteria than were clan or adhocracy cultures.

All that to say, each of the CVF culture types were related to organizational effectiveness criteria in varying ways; this highlights the importance of organizational culture’s role in predicting firm performance. However, the authors concluded that more work is needed regarding the CVF’s nomological validity—as researchers and practitioners look to “tried and true” methods of defining organizational culture, they must also be careful to not ignore both the role of culture in organizational functioning or the theoretical foundations of their taxonomies.

Hartnell, C.A., Ou, A.Y., & Kinicki, A. (2011). Organizational culture and organizational
effectiveness: A meta-analytic investigation of the competing values framework’s
theoretical suppositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 677-694.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

Organizational Attraction – It’s more than the Money!

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Topic: Staffing, Culture, Work Environment
Publication: Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2010)
Article: Fit with What? The Influence of Multiple Self-Concept Images on Organizational Attraction
Authors: K. P. Nolan, C. M. Harold
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood

What attracts a potential employee to a specific organization – salary, benefits, promotion opportunities? Yes, in part, but attraction also stems from something deeper – an employee’s own self-image. Self-image consists primarily of two parts: the actual self (or the compilation of traits and attributes that an individual believes him or herself to possess) and the ideal self (or the collection of traits and attributes that an individual would like to acquire).

According to image congruity theory, customers are likely to purchase products that reflect both their actual as well as ideal self-image. Expanding this theory, individuals on the job hunt should favor organizations that emphasize both actual and ideal self-image qualities of the candidate. But, these same candidates should be the most attracted to organizations which emphasize their ideal self-image qualities, because this should inflate self-esteem by making the candidate feel closer to achieving his or her ideal self-image.

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Perceived similarities make it easier for newbies to adjust. But how?…

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Topic: Diversity, Work Environment, Culture, Creativity
Publication: Journal of Vocational Behavior (APR 2011)
Article:Perceived similarity, proactive adjustment, and organizational socialization
Authors: J. D. Kammeyer-Mueller, B. A. Livingston, & H. Liau
Reviewed by: Charleen Maher

Organizational newcomers carry the stress of adjusting to their new jobs, working with new people, and learning the ins and outs of a new organization. Previous research has shown that when organizational newcomers engage in proactive adjustment behaviors (e.g. feedback seeking, relationship building), they are more likely to be committed to their new organizations and are more likely to be accepted by their coworkers.

This study sought to find out if perceived similarity to one’s new work group leads to more proactive adjustment behaviors and, in turn, has an effect on important work outcomes (e.g. creative performance, organizational citizenship behaviors). The authors examined the following aspects of perceived similarity: surface-level (similarity in age, education, race, gender) and deep-level (similar work style).  So, what is the relationship between perceived similarity and proactive adjustment behaviors?

Perceived similarity in age, race, gender, and education predicted perceived similarity in work-style. Similarity in age actually decreased the chances that organizational newcomers would engage in proactive feedback seeking.  Similarity in education increased the likelihood that newcomers would socialize with coworkers. 

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Group Culture and Speaking Up

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 Topic: Culture, Teams, Leadership
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2011)
Article: Speaking Up in Groups: A Cross-Level Study of Group Voice Climate and Voice
Authors: E.W. Morrison, S.L. Wheeler-Smith, & D. Kamdar
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

Think of the last time you had an important suggestion to make while at work.  Did you say it?  According to research by Morrison, Wheeler-Smith, and Kamdar (2011), the answer may reveal as much about the beliefs of the people you work with as it does about you. 

Research has traditionally focused on employee voice from the perspective of the individual.  Employee voice means the willingness to make extra suggestions or comments to help improve something.  For example, researchers have always wondered what motivates people to speak up more often, and what factors people consider when deciding if they should voice their opinions.  This new research goes one step further.  It says that employee voice will be more likely to occur when certain beliefs are shared by the entire work group as a whole.

After conducting a survey of distinct work groups within a single company, the authors identify two factors that create a group voice climate, or the type of setting which will encourage employees to speak their minds.  The first factor they call group voice safety beliefs.  This is whether all people in the group feel safe to voice controversial opinions, or if they fear punishment for doing so. 

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Organizational Culture: Attracting Job Applicants by Advertising the “Softer Side”

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Topic: Culture, Recruiting, Gender
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (WINTER 2010)
Article: The impact of organizational culture on attraction and recruitment of job applicants
Authors: D. Catanzaro, H. Moore, T.R. Marshall
Reviewed By: Rebecca Eckart

As top talent becomes sparse but human capital continues to be a chief competitive advantage, the ability to recruit highly skilled applicants is paramount. Additionally, modern organizations have the added hurdle of attracting job applicants that also fit well with the values of the organization. Organizational culture is typically described as the collective set of values and norms shared by members of an organization. Recently, researchers have started to categorize organizational cultures as either being “supportive” or “competitive” in nature. Supportive cultures value collaboration, equality, supportiveness, and work-life balance, whereas organizations with a competitive culture typically value individualism, ambition, rewards, and a focus on one’s career.  

In a recent study, Catanzaro, Moore, and Marshall (2010) examined how beliefs about the organization’s culture impacts male and female applicants’ job pursuit, organizational preference, and organizational choice. They found that both men and women would rather pursue a job with a supportive organization, even if that meant accepting less compensation. However, when presented with a job in a competitive organizational culture, men are more likely than women to pursue the job.

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Are Muslim Employees Targets of Workplace Discrimination?

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Topic: Culture, Diversity
Publication: Personnel Psychology (WINTER 2010)
Article:  An experimental field study of interpersonal discrimination toward Muslim job applicants
Authors: E. B. King and A. S. Ahmad
Reviewed By:  Kerrin George

A recent New York Times article (Greenhouse, 2010) reported rising discrimination against Muslim employees at work related to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 tragedy and the friction created over the building of an Islamic Center near the site.  Such discrimination ranges from overt attacks (e.g., calling Muslim employees terrorists) to preventing them from wearing religious garb or taking prayer breaks at work.   Although explicit religious discrimination in the workplace is illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the interpersonal experiences of Muslim Americans may still be affected by negative stereotypes of this group as “dangerous”. 

In two studies, King and Ahmad (2010) examined how religious discrimination towards Muslim Americans may manifest itself in the job application process, via in-person applications at a retail store and in hypothetical paper-based applications.  They compared the experiences of job applicants of different ethnicities dressed in traditional Muslim attire (e.g., hijab, abbaya) or not. While they found that there were no differences in whether these applicants experienced formal discrimination (e.g., recommended for a position, offered an interview, likelihood of being hired), applicants dressed in Muslim attire did experience more interpersonal discrimination (i.e., less helpfulness, less eye contact; or more attempts to end interactions, rudeness, hostility, etc.). 

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Exhausted Employees? They May be Reacting to Your Goal-Oriented Leadership

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Topic: Employee Satisfaction, Culture, Personality
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2010)
Article: The Downside of Goal-Focused Leadership: The Role of Personality in Subordinate Exhaustion
Authors: S.J. Perry, L.A. Witt, L.M. Penney, and L. Atwater
Reviewed By: Mary Alice Crowe-Taylor

The heart of goal-focused leadership (GFL) is to elicit goal-oriented behavior from employees by emphasizing goal achievement. In theory, GFL should contribute to employee’s resources for handling stress at work by clarifying goals, suggesting ways to achieve goals, structuring tasks and verifying attainment. However, depending on the employee’s personality, this emphasis on goal achievement may or may not be perceived as supportive.

In employees who are less conscientious (less achievement oriented), can GFL cause exhaustion? Yes, if these employees also have low emotional stability. That is, if they are more often distracted by worry and are prone to pessimism. Inherently, these employees have the least “resources” to assist them, and goal-focused leadership may produce exhaustion, through an inability to cope with the stress demands.

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