Category Archives: *Journal of Applied Psychology
Performance under fire (IO Psychology)
When you’re trying to complete a task, do you try to learn something new along the way or do you just try to get the job done and not embarrass yourself? For example, when you need to complete the task of baking a cake, do you try the latest recipe so as to learn something new and broaden your culinary skills? Or do you avoid any recipe that looks hard and pray that everything comes out right so that you don’t embarrass yourself at your next dinner party? If you chose the former, you have a mastery goal orientation, and if you chose the latter, you have a performance-avoidance goal orientation.
Now that you’re becoming more familiar with goal orientation, let’s throw in a twist. Imagine that you have one hour to bake the cake. In this scenario, would you adopt a mastery goal orientation or a performance-avoidance goal orientation? According to the study by
James Beck of the University of Waterloo & Aaron M. Schmidt of the University of Minnesota, when under time pressure, people do not utilize a mastery goal orientation and more frequently adopt a performance-avoidance goal orientation. This makes sense. If you have 30 minutes to bake a cake, you’re probably not going to try something new and instead rely on a recipe that you’ve done before. Going one step further, this study also found that goal orientation affects performance, as people with a mastery goal orientation typically performed better than those with a performance-avoidance goal orientation. So, in sum, time pressure affects goal orientation that in turn affects performance.
For this study, there was a sample of 111 undergraduates who indicated their sense of time pressure and goal orientation before four different exams during a semester. Questions such as “I am constantly running out of time for this class” and “I am working under excessive time pressure” assessed time pressure; questions such as “In statistics class, I look for opportunities to develop new skills and knowledge” and “I prefer to avoid parts of statistics class where I might perform poorly” assessed goal orientation; and scores on exams measured performance.
Are turnover rates and organizational performance related?
The relationship between turnover rates and organizational performance has been examined by various disciplines, such as industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, organizational development, and organizational management. Conveniently, Tae-Youn Park of Vanderbilt University & Jason D. Shaw of the University of Minnesota have summarized all of the literature related to this relationship, a process known as a meta-analysis. That was very nice of them. Instead of having to read the 100-plus studies that have been written on this topic, we just have to read one.
In this study, turnover can mean one of four things: voluntary turnover, which refers to employees choosing to leave the company; involuntary turnover, which refers to employees being forced to leave the company; reduction in force, which refers to a company’s decision to downsize its workforce due to the overall economy; and total turnover, which is the sum of involuntary turnover, voluntary turnover, and reduction in force. Simply put, voluntary turnover is quitting, involuntary turnover is being fired, reduction in force is losing your job because less people are buying the product that your company is selling, and total turnover is the sum total of these types of turnover.
In regard to organizational performance, there were many indicators including: financial performance, stock price, sales growth, revenue per employee, profit, customer satisfaction, operating expenses per employee, number of sales, and personnel costs over value added. These indicators were contingent upon the organization’s industry. For example, the organizational performance indicator for a call center could be customer satisfaction while the performance indicator for a retail company could be number of sales. So, with turnover and organizational performance defined, we can turn to the results of the study, and these, as you may have expected, indicated that turnover rates and organizational performance were negatively correlated. In other words, it was observed that as turnover rates increased, organizational performance decreased, and vice versa. Since this result was found from a sample size of over 300,000, it is considered strong to very strong.
Job Performance – Predictors of Mood
If you want happy employees, give them important tasks within their range of abilities, according to a study by Cynthia D. Fisher of Bond University, Amirali Minbashian of the University of New South Wales, Nadin Beckmann of Durham University, & Robert E. Wood of the University of Melbourne. More specifically, the results of the study indicated that the importance of a task and the employee’s confidence about completing the task predicted whether an employee would experience positive or negative emotions. If the task was important and the employee felt that she could complete it effectively, she had an increase in positive emotions. On the other hand, if the task was important and the employee felt that she could not complete it effectively, she had an increase in negative emotions.
This result was found on a study of 135 middle managers from airline, banking, broadcasting, insurance, and packaging industries. These employees reported the importance of the task that they were working on (e.g., “How important is it that you complete this task effectively?”), their confidence in being able to effectively complete the task (e.g., “How confident are you that you can complete this task effectively?”), and their current mood fives times per day for three weeks (e.g., happy, content, stressed, frustrated). Though these results are important for any employer to know, they are especially relevant for those in the fields of industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, organizational development, and organizational management.
HR practices, levels of commitment, and firm performance (Human Resource Management)
Performance-oriented human resource (HR) practices increase firm performance by increasing managerial affective commitment, according to research by Yaping Gong of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kenneth S. Law and Song Chang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, & Katherine R. Xin of the International Institute for Management Development. In this study, the follo¬wing eight HR performance practices were categorized as either performance oriented or maintenance oriented: employment security, reduction of status distinctions, selective hiring, participation in decision making through teams, performance appraisal, comparatively high pay contingent on performance, extensive training, and career planning. Performance-oriented HR practices are aimed at developing, motivating, and effectively utilizing human resources, and six of the eight HR practices were categorized as such and are as follows: selective hiring, participation in decision making through teams, performance appraisal, comparatively high pay contingent on performance, extensive training, and career planning. The remaining two HR practices – employment security and reduction of status – were categorized as maintenance-oriented, and this type of HR practice is aimed at establishing employee security and equality.
After this categorization, the authors next investigated the impact of performance-oriented and maintenance-oriented HR practices on firm performance. In this study, indicators of firm performance were the firm president and vice presidents’ rankings on the following dimensions: profit, total sales growth, market share, total asset growth, after-tax return on total assets, after-tax return on total sales, and labor productivity. Results indicated that performance-oriented HR practices positively affected firm performance whereas maintenance-oriented HR practices did not. In taking this investigation one step further, the researchers sought out the mechanism by which the performance-oriented HR practices affected performance. In other words, they knew that A led to C, but they were unsure of what B was.
In line with the authors’ hypothesis, step B was related to managerial affective commitment – which refers to a manager’s emotional connection, involvement, and identification with the firm. In sum, the authors conclude that performance-oriented HR practices increase managerial affective commitment that in turn increases firm performance.
Bad Behavior At Work: Are Managers Asking For It? (IO Psychology)
Topic: Counter-Productive Work Behavior, Leadership, Job Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (January, 2013)
Article: Blaming the Organization for Abusive Supervision: The Roles of Perceived Organizational Support and Supervisor’s Organizational Embodiment
Authors: M.K. Shoss, R. Eisenberger, S.L.D. Restubog, T.J. Zagenczyk
Reviewed By: Ben Sher, M.A.
Counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) occur when employees do things that go against organizational goals. For example, stealing, bullying, unnecessary absence, swivel chair racing, beer pong in the break room, and assaulting the copy machine with a baseball bat when it is out of toner are all classified as counterproductive work behaviors. I-O psychology research has typically tried to predict which type of person will engage in these devious behaviors. However, a recent study by Shoss, et al. (2013) has found that certain organizations may also be causing an increase in bad behavior.
What do organizations do that leads to these detrimental outcomes? The study found that abusive supervision by bosses is to blame. Abusive supervision occurs when managers belittle their employees or treat them badly. When this happens, employees have lower perception of organizational support, meaning employees do not feel that the organization cares about them or values their contributions. The feeling that the organization doesn’t care was exacerbated when employees think that the abusive supervisor embodies the entire organization’s attitudes about employees, and is not merely driven by independent personal motives.
So if abusive supervision makes employees believe the organization does not care about them, what happens then? Employees may choose to engage in behavior that is counterproductive to the organization as a means of revenge against the organization. The study also found that job performance may decrease. This includes lower performance for parts of the job that are formally included in job requirements (in-role performance) as well as parts of the job that are not included in job requirements (extra-role performance). Once again, when employees perceive that the abusive supervisor embodies the entire organization, these findings were all strengthened.
What can we learn from this? Organizations that want to reduce counterproductive work behavior and improve their employees’ performance should not view these outcomes as being entirely dependent on the employees. Organizations play a large role in fostering the kind of behavior that they seek. This study highlights the detriments of abusive supervision, especially when it appears that the supervisor who delivers the abuse is representing the organization as a whole. For best results, leaders should strive to emphasize that abuse is not valued by the organization and that abusive supervisors will not be tolerated.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
source for picture: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Business_People_g201-Stressed_Man_Portrait_Isolated_On_White_Background_p76018.html
Get Ahead by Getting Emotional (IO Psychology)
Topic: Leadership, Emotions
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2012)
Article: Looking Down: The Influence of Contempt and Compassion on Emergent
Leadership Categorizations
Authors: S. Melwani, J.S. Mueller, J.R. Overbeck
Reviewed By: Ben Sher, M.A.
Do you want people to think of you as a leader? Do you want to cultivate and mobilize hordes of dedicated minions in pursuit of world domination? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you are in the right place. New research by Melwani, Mueller, and Overbeck (2012) has provided new insight into why certain people are perceived as leaders. Unlike past research, which has focused mainly on personality traits, this study found that certain emotions can be influential as well.
In three separate studies, the researchers found that people who display two types of emotions are more likely to be perceived as leaders. These two emotions are contempt and compassion. Even though contempt seems like a bad emotion and compassion seems like a good one, these two emotions have something in common. Both involve making a downward social comparison. This means that someone who displays these emotions appears to be better off than the target of the emotions. For example, you might show contempt for someone who has failed in some way that you have not. Similarly, you might show compassion for someone when some element of their life is worse than yours.
But even if people who display contempt and compassion look better by comparison, why does this make people view them as leaders? The researchers found that displaying contempt and compassion make people look smarter by comparison. Why has the other person failed at something and you have not? Perhaps it is because you are smarter. Why has something bad happened to the other person and has not happened to you? Perhaps it is because you are smarter. This fits with past research that shows that people who seem to be smart are also identified as leaders.
So there you have it: If you want to gain influence over others, you need to display the right kind of emotions. It doesn’t matter if they are good emotions like compassion or bad emotions like contempt. As long as your emotions make you seem better than the target of your emotions, you have a chance to affect the way people think of you and increase your perceived leadership abilities. As devious as this sounds, this study gives us greater understanding about how leaders emerge. Armed with this knowledge, we are in a better position to select and train leaders who will be successful at earning the respect of followers.
Melwani, S., Mueller, J.S., & Overbeck, J.R. (2012). Looking down: The influence of contempt and compassion on emergent leadership categorizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(6), 1171-1185.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
With OCBs and Justice For All (IO Psychology)
Topic: Organizational Justice, Teams, Citizenship Behavior, Performance Appraisal
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2012)
Article: Examining Retaliatory Responses to Justice Violations and Recovery
Attempts in Teams
Authors: J.S. Christian, M.S. Christian, A.S. Garza, A.P.J. Ellis
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
Should managers deal fairly with their employees? Well yes, of course, if they are concerned about being nice people or perhaps want to be told the correct location of the
holiday party. But what if managers are only concerned with bottom-line organizational effectiveness, profit, and ruthless getting-ahead in life? For these types, research by
Christian, et al. (2012) has shown that treating employees unfairly can lead to certain negative workplace outcomes.
The authors conducted an experiment with teams of simulated employees and found
that employees who are treated unfairly respond in two harmful ways. The first is that
these employees engage in fewer organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). This
refers to things that an employee might do to help out at work, but are not technically
considered part of the employee’s job. The second thing that employees do in
response to unfair treatment is give supervisors lower performance ratings.
But worse than that, these retaliatory behaviors may not be confined to the individuals
who were treated unfairly. The authors found that entire teams of employees banded
together and performed fewer OCBs as a response to a teammate’s unfair treatment.
When teammates perceive that someone is getting treated unfairly, they may have an
emotional response of moral outrage that moves them to supportive action.
Another interesting discovery is that these findings do not work equally for all people.
The authors describe “strategic core” employees, or employees whose work is
instrumental for team success, and who encounter more problems and a heavier
workload than the typical employee. When these employees are treated unfairly,
they respond with even fewer OCBs than ordinary employees would under similar
circumstances. Also, teams more drastically reduced their OCBs when a strategic core
employee was wronged.
This research shows the importance of treating employees fairly. But what can
managers do if they have already behaved unfairly toward an employee? Luckily
this study provides a solution. “Recovery” is an attempt to atone for past injustice
by correcting the injustice or showing genuine remorse. Recovery was successful
at raising levels of OCBs as well as improving subsequent performance ratings of
managers. In this situation, the wronged employee’s teammates also increased OCBs
and managerial performance ratings. In other words, don’t underestimate the power of
simply saying “I’m sorry”.
Christian, J.S., Christian, M.S., Garza, A.S., & Ellis, A.P.J. (2012). Examining retaliatory
responses to justice violations and recovery attempts in teams. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 97(6), 1218-1232.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
Can Personality Become a Better Predictor of Performance? (IO Psychology)
Topic: Personality, Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (NOV 2012)
Article: Implicit motives, explicit traits, and task and contextual performance at work
Authors: Lang, J. W. B., Zettler, I., Ewen, C., and Hulsheger, U. R.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli
In the world of selection, personality has often been looked at as a useful predictor of job performance. But what if current personality measures are missing an important part of someone’s personality and an opportunity to be a better predictor of performance? Some research suggests that the missing piece of the personality pie is our implicit motives, or our wishes and desires, which are typically boiled down to three main areas: affiliation, power, and achievement.
When we look at how these inner motives are expressed, or “channeled”, by the explicit personality traits, such as extraversion or agreeableness, we are able to get a more complete picture of how personality shapes behavior. Lang et al., tested whether considering this channeling approach when measuring personality would increase its usefulness as a predictor of work performance.
For example, extroverted people with a high inner motive for affiliation might have increased work performance through the building of strong working relationships and the desire to meet expectations. In other words, their extroverted personality channels their motive in a way that results in a beneficial outcome at work.
Along with supervisor ratings of task and contextual performance, Lang et al. gathered explicit worker personality traits and used IRT to determine implicit motives from coded responses to free response narratives. They discovered that inner motives worked together with explicit personality traits to explain 8% more variance in performance ratings.
Lang et al. understand that there are practical measurement issues for practitioners to consider the channeling effects of inner motives, but they note that as measurement methods improve it should be more feasible to use both to increase the predictability of personality.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
A Breath of Fresh AER for Leadership Development! (IO Psychology)
Topic: Leadership, Coaching, Personality
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2012)
Article: A Quasi-Experimental Study of After-Event Reviews and Leadership
Development
Authors: D.S. DeRue, J.D. Nahrgang, J.R. Hollenbeck, K. Workman
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
How can we train people to become better leaders? New research by DeRue, et al.
(2012) has identified the benefits of a strategy called after-event reviews, or AERs.
What are AERs, and when will they work best?
The authors explain that leadership is difficult because it involves high pressure and
high uncertainty. Even in hindsight, complex situations make it difficult to know if
leaders performed well or made good decisions. In order to improve leadership skills,
leaders must reflect on what happened, and analyze their decisions and the outcomes
that they led to. An AER is a technique that provides structure for this kind of analysis.
An AER has three steps. In the first step, leaders must explain what they did and
how this contributed to the outcome. This is called self-explanation. In the second
step, called data verification, leaders consider other possible explanations for how
their decisions led to the outcome. Finally, leaders provide themselves with a type of
feedback by considering how changes in their behavior can lead to future improvement.
The authors conducted a quasi-experiment involving emerging leaders in a
business school and found that using the AER technique led to improved leadership
development. This is because AERs provide needed structure to the reflection process,
and force leaders to truly deconstruct and consider their actions. Generic reflection
processes are not as effective because they allow people to reflect in an automatic and
superficial way.
When do AERs work best? The authors found that several different types of people
gain more from AERs. People who are conscientious benefit more from AERs, as
do people who are emotionally-stable, and people who are open to new experiences.
If you think about it, this makes sense. These kinds of people will be more likely
to dutifully, objectively, or readily consider alternative explanations that may prove
useful to their development. The authors also found that people who have already
experienced some kind of leadership development gain more from AERs than people
without this past experience.
What does this all mean? First, AERs are a great way to provide needed structure to
the leadership development process. They are cheap, easy, and they work! Second,
the authors explain that leadership coaching is great way to improve and develop
leaders. But the presence of a coach is not a cure-all. Coaches will be most successful
when they utilize strategies that are supported by research.
DeRue, D.S., Nahrgang, J.D., Hollenbeck, J.R., & Workman, K. (2012). A quasi-
experimental study of after-event reviews and leadership development. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 97(5), 997-1015.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
When Customers Attack: Verbal Aggression and Employee Performance (IO Psychology)
Topic: Job Performance, Training, Conflict
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEPT 2012)
Article: When Customers Exhibit Verbal Aggression, Employees Pay Cognitive Costs
Authors: A. Rafaeli, A. Erez, S. Ravid, R. Derfler-Rozin, D.E. Treister, R. Scheyer
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
What happens when customers get angry? For starters, they may yell, scream, pound their fists, emit a plume of smoke from their ears, and occasionally rip off their t-shirts like Hulk Hogan. But then what happens to the employees? Research by Rafaeli, et al. (2012) examines the negative effect this kind of behavior has on the people working behind the counter.
The researchers conducted four experiments and found that employees’ performance suffers when customers become verbally aggressive. Under these circumstances, employees will have a harder time remembering things and have worse perception. Why? Exposure to anger requires people to make sense of why someone is angry. It also requires people to plan a response to dealing with the anger. These processes use up valuable mental resources, which are best reserved for focusing on the job at hand.
Another reaction that anger causes is a state of arousal, which happens any time people are faced with a threat. When this happens, employees focus their attention on the angry customer and lose sight of the task at hand. When people perceive a threat, they also may be more likely to retaliate, even when it is not a beneficial reaction.
These findings became even stronger when customers were considered high status. This means that employees became even more distracted by aggression from the biggest-spending customers, arguably the people whose satisfaction is most important. On the other hand, the findings of this study became weaker when employees were able to engage in “perspective taking”, which is the ability to consider and understand the viewpoint of another person. In this situation, understanding why the customer is angry leads to patience, while also freeing up mental resources.
What can be done to counter the harmful effects of customer aggression? The researchers emphasize the importance of training to deal with verbal aggression. They say that training to deal with anger needs to occur at the same time employees train for other job components. This makes the anger training more naturalistic. Treating anger as a separate topic with no context might be ineffective when real-life situations arise. Finally, training may want to include strategies for perspective-taking, which might be the best antidote for the angry customer.
human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management
