Do you trust your high level leaders? The answer to that question might influence how hard you work, or whether you eventually decide to quit your job. But how do you decide whether to trust someone who you have probably never even met? The answer has important implications for top leaders who want to make sure that their employees trust them.
How is shared leadership different from ordinary leadership? Traditional models of leadership involve a formal leader who holds authority and power and has a set of followers. The leader delegates, makes decisions, and holds followers accountable.
In contrast, the idea of shared leadership relies more on the sharing of authority, power, and influence. Teams that have more shared leadership still have a formal leader; however, their leader is willing to pass authority to the team when it is appropriate. Is shared leadership good for teams? If so, how do we transition from more traditional models of leadership to a model of shared leadership? Researchers (Chiu, Owens, & Tesluk, 2016) examined 62 teams across a variety of organizations in Taiwan to find out. […]
People enter the workplace with different experiences, personalities, and career paths. Organizations benefit from a diverse set of employees who bring different strengths and skill sets to work every day. Over time, certain employees begin to emerge as leaders and take on more responsibility. Are leadership teams just as diverse as the rest of the organization? Are there certain employees who are more or less likely to emerge as leaders? Researchers (Barling & Weatherhead, 2016) used data from over 4,000 American children and adults to understand why children exposed to poverty were less likely to emerge as leaders later in life. They found two reasons: a lack of quality education and a lack of personal mastery. […]
How does multi-source feedback differ from ordinary feedback? Traditionally, employees receive performance feedback from their supervisor once or twice a year in their performance review. […]
Unethical customers can cost organizations lots of money. For example, customers can steal, cheat, scam, defraud, hoodwink, or make up an overly dramatic story about how the soup of the day was far too salty so that they get a small discount. New research (Greenbaum, Quade, Mawritz, Kim, & Crosby, 2014) shows that there may be hidden costs to organizations that allow customers to consistently get away with these offenses. Specifically, it’s the employees who suffer.
Smart employees tend to be better at doing their jobs. This is considered one of the most important findings in the history of I-O research. Meta-analysis, which is a method of compiling results from many different researchers and studies, has shown that intelligence (or general mental ability) is associated with better job performance for basically any job. But there are other important components that make organizations successful besides narrowly-defined task performance (parts of a job that are in the job description). New research (Gonzalez-Mulé, Mount, & Oh, 2014) investigates whether intelligence can also predict other measures of workplace success.
When employees engage in unethical behavior, organizations suffer. For example, employee theft or dishonesty can hurt organizations both internally and in terms of public reputation. New research (Welsh, Ellis, Christian, & Mai, 2014) has identified several key links in understanding the dynamics that lead to employee deception, which is a type of unethical behavior.
Sleepiness is what happens when people feel a strong biological urge to sleep. Unlike fatigue, which usually occurs when becoming exhausted by hard work, sleepiness has several different causes. These causes include poor sleep quantity (not getting enough sleep), poor sleep quality (waking up often while trying to sleep or not achieving a deep level of sleep), a disruption to the circadian rhythm (a person’s natural sleep cycle), or through drugs or disorders that affect the central nervous system. A new review by Mullins, Cortina, Drake, and Dalal (2014) shows why organizations should care about employee sleepiness.
Organizations oftentimes use specific cognitive abilities to help select people for jobs. Selection itself is important because organizations can sometimes waste millions of dollars in training people who don’t have the right aptitude, aren’t motivated, or who don’t fit minimum requirements for the job. When an organization selects employees, it often uses an assessment process to try and find the “right people.” This assessment often involves tests of general cognitive ability, which is basically what we’d consider overall intelligence. What if organizations could fine tune these processes so that they were more successful in identifying those who may succeed in a training context or in a job? Recent research findings offer a possible way to do this.
When it comes to research on organizational climate, the concept called “climate uniformity” is the new kid on the block. In fact, new research by González-Romá and Hernández (2014) is the first to actually collect data and start to determine what this concept means for organizations. The results are intriguing, as they found that the degree of climate uniformity is related to communication, conflict, and even team performance. So now you might be asking, what in the world is climate uniformity?
Stereotypes are quite common, but they are not always bad. Sometimes, we can stereotype someone in a positive way, and sometimes stereotypes are helpful because they reduce the amount of critical thinking a person has to do. The danger is when stereotypes are inaccurate or negative. This can lead to discriminatory behavior in the workplace. Organizations spend large sums of money every year on reducing stereotyping with training that aims to raise awareness and minimize their negative effects. A recent study by Duguid and Thomas-Hunt (2014) investigated whether creating greater awareness of stereotyping and encouraging resistance to them was the best way of curbing their harmful effects.
What helps determine whether people pursue their sense of “calling”? The advice I always got was, “Work hard, get a respectable job in a stable industry and then pursue your passion on the side.” This shaped my extrinsic motivation, or the type of motivation that comes from outside a person, when pursuing a career. Others take to heart advice from notable public figures like the late Steve Jobs who said, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” This kind of advice fosters intrinsic motivation, or the type that comes from within a person, when pursuing a career. The pursuit of a career that meets at the intersection of these two approaches would be ideal, but often economic realities deter many. Recently, two researchers sought to understand what influences career decisions when these approaches clash.
Supervisor anger is a common workplace problem. This can include a supervisor who is angered too easily or a situation when the supervisor’s anger is disproportional to the situation at hand. This study explores the true reasons behind this anger, hypothesizing that a history of family aggression is the root of angry reactions and abusive supervision.
Research that investigates perceptions of fairness and justice-related behavior has normally focused on recipients. We still know relatively little about how justice affects the actors, for example the cost of being consistently fair to employees for those in leadership roles. Acting justly has always been considered beneficial but it is important to realize that this may come at a price for some people.
Nearly all companies and organizations use teams to get work done, but can negative relationships be preventing that from happening? As common as teamwork is, the dynamics that make a team actually work are often overlooked. Whether the team is temporarily thrown together or a permanent fixture, how the individuals get along is an essential factor in how well the team performs. Every individual has their differences, and frequently this can lead to disagreements or negative relationships amongst members of a team.
Employers assume that proactive employees are important for job success. Indeed past research shows that proactive employees, those who take initiative and champion change, perform better and earn more. However, proactive employees typically push the envelope, control their environment, and bring unexpected changes which may be viewed as threatening and distracting by others. A new study by Sun and van Emmerik (2014) introduces political skill as a factor that may reduce such concerns.
Flow at work is an enjoyable peak experience that happens when an employee feels completely engrossed in a challenging project or activity. Not surprisingly, this kind of experience means great returns from employees in terms of performance and productivity. Unfortunately for most, it is not a permanent experience, and instead varies considerable on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Earlier research suggests that flow starts out high, dips, and then increases again, within any given day. This research sought to determine whether this was the case and also explore what the possible predictors of optimal and decreased flow may be.
The typical workplace has many different personality types: Happy employees, charismatic employees, ambitious employees, egotistical employees, and many others. But have you ever thought much about employees who fear death? It’s not the kind of personality trait that you’d think has relevance in the workplace, but new research by Sliter, Sinclair, Yuan, and Mohr (2014) has shown that death anxiety has important implications on employee success.
High Performers are defined as the group of talented employees that increase both team and organizational performance.
Previous research has suggested that individuals high on cognitive ability are more likely to experience workplace victimization, and High Performers might be the target of interpersonal harm.
The current study by Eugune Kim and Theresa Glomb extends this line of research by examining the extent to which High Performers are victimized due to group members’ envy, and whether work group identification can reduce this potential negative consequence of high performance.
Both managers and employees sometimes act inappropriately in the workplace. For example, managers can excessively yell at, ridicule, or make fun of those working for them. We’ll refer to this as abusive supervision.
Similarly, employees can deliberately break rules and ignore norms, harming the organization they work for in the process. We’ll refer to this as organizational defiance.
Researchers have always believed that abusive supervision and organizational defiance often seem to occur in the same workplaces. But which one is the cause, and which one is the result?
In most work places, teamwork is a common feature that can have many benefits for organizational productivity and competitiveness.
But not all group dynamics are helpful or add value, so a fair bit of research has been done on the behaviors that produce desired outcomes. Much of it has looked at how someone’s personality affects whether they would be helpful or not. But few researchers have looked at the impact “team personality” has on individual actions.
The team of researchers behind a new study on teamwork and cooperation sought to examine the extent to which group dynamics ultimately influence individual behaviors.
In recent years organizations have recognized the importance of fostering workplace innovation and creativity. The problem is, how can they make it happen?
New research suggests that the key might be dependent on the size of team leaders’ social networks. By working with leaders who have substantial social networks within the organization, employees are granted access to more resources, ideas, and strategies to utilize in creative ways.
The term “Workplace Conflict” sounds ominous. It conjures up images of yelling, screaming, finger pointing and, in rare cases, hunkering down under makeshift table forts and lobbing used Styrofoam cups at rival camps.
But can workplace conflict occasionally be good? New research by Todorova, Bear, and Weingart (2014) has found that, under the right circumstances, frequent workplace conflict can lead to an exchange of valuable information and, eventually, to higher job satisfaction.
We have plenty of adages emphasizing the positive implications of starting the day early. Past research seems to suggest that elevated morning activity is seen as an indicator of being responsible, dutiful, and a hard worker.
In a series of three new studies, lead researcher Kai Chi Yam and his colleagues examine whether this pro-morning bias actually exists by examining how employee start time influences supervisor ratings of their job performance.
Bad boss alert! Let’s say your supervisor was incensed with the results of yesterday’s baseball or football game. As a result, today he’s been condescending, hypercritical, and an all-around sourpuss. Can he make up for it by being extra nice and helpful to you tomorrow?
There has been a surge of interest in research on employee victimization in the last few years, both because the phenomenon is on the rise and because of the negative effects it has on both a personal and organizational level. Employee victimization has many causes and takes many forms, from aggressive incivility and bullying to general mistreatment.
Although previous studies investigated the situational and personal factors that precipitate victimization, little research has been focused on the behaviors that may lead to someone getting targeted.
Teamwork plays an essential role in the success of many organizations. But what factors determine whether work teams will succeed or fail?
This question is an important one for I-O psychologists, and research by Chun and Choi (2014) has provided new insights into how managers can form successful work teams by considering the role members’ needs and intragroup conflict play in overall group performance.
Have you ever woken up to the sound of rain and thunder outside your window, with the decisive thought that it would be a lazy day?
Although inclement weather might not necessarily be the best thing for putting you in a great mood in the morning, a recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology suggests that those thunderstorms just might enable you to get more work done.
Many of us can’t imagine going a day without our caffeine of choice—coffee, energy drinks, tea, soda, or any number of others. A recent study cited in this article claims that 90% of Americans ingest some form of caffeine daily in order to overcome the effects of sleep loss. But did you know that caffeine could also help you maintain better self-control?
Abusive supervision is a serious issue, and much more prevalent than you might realize.
A lot of research has been done on this topic– partly because it is on the increase, but also because of its devastating effects on morale and productivity.
In looking at personality and the choice of coping strategies, new research reveals insights that can help employees maintain performance while surviving an abusive supervisor.
Many researchers believe that leadership is a skill learned through experience—specifically, through overcoming challenging experiences.
Studies show that challenging leaders is beneficial, because it causes them to demonstrate more engagement, skill, motivation, and transformational leadership behaviors.
However, the fact is that leaders occasionally respond negatively to challenges. But this outcome is rarely studied within the usual theories of leader development.
High performers– that is, employees who work harder and accomplish more than the average– are typically highly valued by employers. Unfortunately, this advanced performance level can cause overachievers to be noticed and even targeted for bullying by their peers, who may be envious of the attention or rewards they’re given.
Such victimization can result in decreased performance, or increased turnover, in an organization as high performers that feel targeted move on to other employment opportunities.
Understanding the relationship between leadership and team effectiveness in the workplace has always been important. Recently, a new type of leadership known as Shared Leadership has become more widely used.
The business world is always evolving, from technology to everyday work requirements. So being able to adapt to changes in the workplace quickly is incredibly valuable for employers.
Evolutionary theory has put forward certain personality traits as better predictors of effective adaptation in various areas of our lives. But the difficulty in evolving within the organizational environment lies in the fact that adaptation in a work setting isn’t about adjusting to a stable environment, but to one that is constantly changing.
Today’s workplace can be precarious, with the increasing prevalence of organizational restructuring and downsizing leading to tougher competition for jobs. As a result, ensuring each employees’ person-job fit has become crucial to organizations as they strive to hire and retain top performing employees and avoid turnover.
But this begs the question, how can organizations and their employees improve person-job fit? The answer lies not solely in the hands of organizations, but also in the hands of the employees themselves.
New job roles can be a daunting prospect for anyone. There are contrasts with old responsibilities, new expectations, and all sorts of surprises that pop up along the way. Adjusting quickly to the demands of a new position is important for productivity. But how can organizations fast-track transitioning leaders to help them gain the knowledge and skills they need?
Organizations need corrective feedback when policies or practices are not working effectively. This feedback often comes from employees who notice something amiss, and have the guts to bring it to the attention of their employers.
Previous studies on organizational attachment have looked at the role of positive relationships on the attitudes of employees. But, for the most part, they have ignored the impact negative relationships can have.
To examine the influence of negative relationships, authors Venkataramani, Labianca, & Grosser (2012) conducted a study on employees in a midsize manufacturing company and a product development firm.
Research in I-O psychology suggests that, when leaders and their employees share similar attitudes about how work should be done, it creates positive outcomes in the workplace.
When it comes to problem solving at work, it doesn’t necessarily matter what you know as much as who you know.
Employees who work directly with products or customers have first-hand experience with some of their company’s biggest issues. But many don’t have the influence or resources to solve those problems without assistance from organizational leaders. Who they turn to for help is often more about their relationships with the various leaders than on the person’s position, or company protocol.
Leaders and I-O Psychologists are always trying to discover new ways to improve team performance. New research by Ellis, Mai, and Chrisitan (2013), has found an interesting new way to do this for creative tasks. When team members have different approaches to achieving goals, team performance may improve.
In a complex and competitive business world, many organizations seek to recruit a diverse workforce. This diverse workforce is often sought through the use of the Internet, as most modern day jobseekers turn to company websites to learn about organizations and their opportunities. But with so many websites available to jobseekers, how can an organization present itself online in order to make sure minority individuals remember it?
One of the newest concepts that people are talking about (at least here in Colorado) is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a state in which you pay attention to the present without making judgments, negative or positive, about the feelings or thoughts you have. You’ve probably heard of it, and maybe you’re a little bit skeptical. Very few studies are out there that investigate mindfulness in the workplace, but a team of researchers in the Netherlands, led by Ute Hülsheger, recently set out to determine the benefits of mindfulness at work.
New research by Tse, Lam, Lawrence, and Huang (2013) has discovered what happens when leaders have better relationships with some employees and worse relationships with others. The results are discouraging. When leaders do not treat employees equally, many problems arise, and ultimately job performance may suffer.
Typically, when an employee and an employer enter into a work agreement, the employee has pre-defined responsibilities. For instance, an employee must complete tasks a, b, and c during a specified time period in a specific location. A marketing manager, for example, must develop the company’s marketing strategy over two months, while working at an office in San Francisco. However, there are exceptions to this typical work arrangement. An employee may be assigned additional roles or tasks that make a flexible schedule or alternate work location more appropriate. Despite the fact that the employee was originally expected to work eight hours a day from the San Francisco office, the employer agrees to allow this employee to work from any location. These exceptions to employer-employee work arrangements are known as idiosyncratic deals or “i-deals.”
Ideally, when we test prospective employees, we gather valuable information that will help us determine if a candidate is suitable for a given job. But that’s not all. We also create an impression in the candidate’s mind about our company, its culture, and its values. Research has found that candidates’ reactions to selection testing do affect their attitudes. For example, candidates may react anxiously or perceive unjust treatment. These reactions can influence a candidate’s view of an organization, as well as determine whether they would recommend it to others. New research (McCarthy, Van Iddekinge, Lievens, Kung, Sinar, & Campion, 2013) explores the possibility that selections tests could also be influencing subsequent job performance.
When attending a dinner party, you would not show up an hour late, remark that the food was cold, and blithely inform the hostess that she appears to be carrying an extra 10-20 pounds since you last saw her. Well, most wouldn’t. Most people are aware of what is expected of them at a dinner party. At some point they learned the manners and etiquette required, and they perform accordingly. Most are able to learn the situational demands of different environments and apply them appropriately. So, how does this relate to job performance?
When employees appear destined for top-level management but are never actually chosen, they are said to suffer from the “glass ceiling effect”. Traditionally, research has documented a glass ceiling effect for women, but other groups are similarly discriminated against. Although research has shown that people speaking with a foreign accent are subject to discrimination, little is known about why this occurs. New research by Huang, Frideger, and Pearce (2013) seeks to explain why.
Previous research (e.g., Chang, Ferris, Johnson, Rosen, & Tan, 2012) has shown that core self-evaluation – an umbrella term that includes self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability – predicts job satisfaction. Simply put, if an employee thinks highly of herself, she tends to be satisfied with her job. Furthermore, these investigators found that if an employee feels good about herself and has success at work, she is even more satisfied with her job.
Let’s imagine that you are learning a new skill, and in honor of the end of summer, let’s say that skill is sunbathing. Assuming that you want to be an expert sunbather, your path to greatness will depend on the type of practice that you do. If you spend 15 minutes by the pool with heavy cloud coverage, your practice intensity would not be as high as someone baking for six hours under direct sunlight during a day that is nearly 100 degrees. Which person, the former or the latter, will be Mr. or Mrs. Hawaiian Tropic? If you said the latter, as in the person who puts in six hours of intense and difficult practice, then you’d be correct. This observation – that the intensity and difficulty of practice relate to performance – was empirically supported by a study by researchers from the University of Oklahoma, though their subjects were learning how to play a video game instead of sunbathing.
Talk about demanding work! In addition to their typical job duties, like waiting on tables, making sales, or assisting customers, customer service professionals must also perform emotional labor. When employees smile cheerfully at the end of a grueling shift, they are performing something called surface acting, which is a type of emotional labor. Research has shown that emotional labor can lead to psychological strain and fatigue. The current study (Beal, Trougakos, Weiss, & Dalal, 2013) has made advancements in this area of research by scrutinizing a new variable, called “affect spin”.
This study examined the effective decision-making of 103 military leaders. The authors hoped to discover what mental techniques made some leaders more successful decision makers than others.
In a series of four studies, Van Kleef, Steinel, and Homan show that status in a group, either as an insider (i.e., a group member) or as an outsider (i.e., not a group member) is related to the ability to negotiate. For example, if you are a woman in a group of four men, you are considered on some level you are an outsider; you are different in some aspect from the majority of the group. This status as an outsider relates to your ability to perform skills that are important in a negotiation process. Outsiders experience heightened sensitivity to social cues, increased motivation to process incoming information, improved recall of information acquired, and an ability to achieve win-win solutions. So, if you an in a situation in which you are outnumbered four to one, you can take solace in the fact that being on the outside makes you a better negotiator.
A job furlough is when an employee is temporary laid off. For example, an employee who typically works five days a week is placed on furlough, and as a result, she is now only allowed to work four days per week. During the Great Recession of 2008, when companies sought ways to cut costs, furloughs became a popular technique. Since furloughs became so common, researchers Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben, Anthony R. Wheeler, and Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl felt it important to understand the effects of furloughs on job performance. According to their results, the authors discovered that, in addition to the loss of salary, furloughs affected the emotions and job performance of the furloughed employees. When furloughed, employees became emotionally exhausted. Further, their performance declined. They were less able to complete assigned responsibilities and were more careless with company property.
In the movie Office Space, Peter Gibbons, a programmer at a software company, shows up late to work, takes his boss’s parking spot, and disregards requests from his supervisor. Despite this behavior, the human resource consultants hired to assist with the company’s downsizing promote Peter, because, by being frank about the company’s problems, he makes a positive impression on them. Thanks to Junqi Shi of Sun Yat-sen University, Russell E. Johnson of Michigan State University, Yihao Liu of the University of Florida, and Mo Wang of the University of Florida and Peking University, this type of promotion behavior is now scientifically supported. Supervisor rewards (or recommendations for rewards) were linked to the number of times an employee interacted with a supervisor at work, their political skills, or the ability to make a good impression on colleagues and supervisors. Specifically, a subordinate with greater political skill was likely to interact with their supervisor more frequently. Unsurprisingly, supervisors tended to recommend rewards more for those subordinates with whom they interacted with most often.
When companies decide whom to hire, a process known as selection, they typically look at the personality of the applicant, among other factors. When evaluating the personality of an applicant, companies frequently look at the Big Five personality factors. These dimensions are extraversion, which relates to how outgoing someone is; openness, which relates to a person’s level of curiosity; agreeableness, which relates to someone’s levels of compassion and warmth; conscientiousness, which refers to a person’s drive to succeed; and neuroticism, which relates to how secure someone feels.
We can all agree that leaders are more effective when they engage in behavior that benefits the team, instead of self-serving behavior that benefits nobody but themselves. How do we inspire the leadership behavior that we desire? One popular way to curb self-serving leadership behavior is by increasing accountability, or the extent to which leaders will have their actions made public, and will be required to stand behind these actions. New research (Giessner, van Knippenberg, van Ginkel, & Sleebos, 2013) shows that this approach may lead to mixed results.
Your ability to not think about work during leisure time is related to your romantic partner and kids, according to a study by Verena C. Hahn of the University of Muenster and Christian Dormann of Ruhr-University Bochum. Specifically, your ability to not think about work during leisure time is related to the following conditions:
Let’s play a game. In a workplace setting, do you think women or men give more charitable contributions? Similarly, do you think whites or ethnic minorities give more charitable contributions? In providing the answers to these two questions, we look to Lisa M. Leslie, Mark Snyder, and Theresa M. Glomb of the University of Minnesota: women donate more than men, and whites donate more than ethnic minorities. How’d you do?
The demands of a mother’s job and the health of her child are related, according to a study by Ryan C. Johnson and Tammy D. Allen of the University of South Florida. The more demanding the mother’s job, the worse the health of the child. More specifically, the more demanding a mother’s job is, the less that she is able to engage in physical activity. The child, in seeing his or her mother not engage in exercise, also does not engage in much physical activity, and as a result, his or her health declines.
We all like to think that our values influence our behavior. However, situational factors often have greater influence over how we will act. A recent I-O psychology study by Grant and Rothbard (2013) found that the degree of workplace ambiguity plays a strong role in influencing and predicting employee behavior.
Service climate refers to “employees’ consensual perceptions of organizations’ emphasis on service quality” (p. 237). Antecedents of service climate include human resource practices and leadership, and consequences of service climate include employee attitudes (e.g., job satisfaction and organizational commitment), service performance, customer satisfaction, and financial outcomes, according to an investigation by Hong, Liao, Hu, and Jiang. In diagram form, the results are as follows:
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.
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.
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.
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 following 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Topic: Personality, Selection
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (AUTUMN 2012)
Article: A matter of context: A meta-analytic investigation of the relative validity of contextualized and noncontextualized personality measures
Authors: J. A. Shaffer & B. E. Postlethwaite
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin
Whether or not you agree with it, your organization likely uses personality assessments as part of the selection process. Personality assessments do appear to be valid predictors of job performance, but can we do anything to make them be even better predictors? Recent research indicates that the answer is yes.
Topics: Teams, Personality, Selection
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2012)
Article: Ready to rumble: How team personality composition and task conflict interact to
improve performance.
Authors: Bret H. Bradley, Anthony C. Klotz, Bennett E. Postlethwaite, & Kenneth G. Brown
Reviewed By: Aaron Manier
Team members need to get along in order to perform well. Unfortunately, we’re all different people, so sometimes conflict arises. Often this conflict arises around different takes on the team’s task. However, scientific understanding of the relationship between task conflict and effective team performance has been inconclusive.
Topic: Job Attitudes, Turnover
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: When and How Is Job Embeddedness Predictive of Turnover?
A Meta-Analytic Investigation
Authors: Jiang, K., Liu, D., McKay, P. F., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli
Have you ever had a job where you felt like you were stuck? Like if in a perfect world you might leave, but your work obligations, salary, family needs, or community ties didn’t allow you to? If you’ve ever felt this way you’ve demonstrated what researchers call job embeddedness, or the integrated reasons employees become stuck or caught in a job. This idea is important when it comes to understanding turnover.
Topic: Stress, Wellness
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JUL 2012)
Article: Academics’ Experiences of a Respite From Work: Effects of Self-Critical Perfectionism and Perseverative Cognition on Postrespite Well-Being
Authors: Paul E. Flaxman, Julie Menard, Frank W. Bond, and Gail Kinman
Reviewed By: Isaac Sabat
For once, researchers and employees agree—it is absolutely necessary to take a vacation. If employees are not given breaks from work, they experience physical and mental fatigue, which puts them at risk for a variety of other more serious health problems. Vacations offer many important benefits to employees, such as the ability to recharge their batteries and increase their happiness. These effects have also been found to carry over into the subsequent work-weeks following vacations.
However, it has recently been found that not everybody is able to reap these same lingering benefits that vacations have to offer!
Topic: Employee Satisfaction, Personality
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEPT 2012)
Article: Why Does Service With a Smile Make Employees Happy? A Social Interaction Model
Authors: E. Kim, D.J. Yoon
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
If your job requires you to interact with customers, it’s probably a good idea to smile. Nobody wants to do business with someone who looks annoyed, irritated, sad, or like they just found out that their hard drive crashed. But did you know that smiling at customers can actually make you happier?
Topic: Fairness, Organizational Justice, Organizational Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: Fairness at the collective level: A meta-analytic examination of the
consequences and boundary conditions of organizational justice climate.
Authors: Whitman, D. S., Caleo, S., Carpenter, N. C., Horner, M. T., and Bernerth, J.
B.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli
Organizational justice, or how fairly an organization treats its workers, is a big deal to employees. To an individual employee, organizational justice helps determine his or her attitude about the job and as well as his or her productivity. But this perception doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Because this perception is often shared with co-workers and team members, called justice climate, Whitman and his co-authors conducted a meta-analysis to summarize and clarify how organizational justice climate exists at the team (unit) level and can influence team effectiveness.
Topic: Personality
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JUL 2012)
Article: On the Value of Aiming High: The Causes and Consequences of Ambition
Authors: T.A. Judge, J.D. Kammeyer-Mueller
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
Are you striving for money than Donald Trump, more cars than Jay Leno, more medals than Michael Phelps, or an even louder stereo than the one my neighbor plays at 2am? If so, it sounds like you might be ambitious. But how exactly do we define ambition? And where does it come from? That’s trickier. Luckily, a recent study by Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller (2012) explains what ambition really is, where it comes from, and what it leads to.
Topic: Human Resource Management
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JUL 2012)
Article: Employees’ Behavioral Reactions to Supervisor Aggression:
An Examination of Individual and Situational Factors
Authors: M. Mitchell, M. Ambrose
Reviewed By: Chrystal Ensey
It’s no secret that supervisor aggression is a serious issue facing many organizations with a wide range of consequences from retaliation and turnover to lawsuits. However, little attention has been given to the reasons why employees react differently to perceptions of supervisor aggression. While it is unlikely that all instances of supervisor aggression will completely stop within any given organization, it is possible to help shape how employees will react to those situations. Most research focuses on the deconstructive reactions (e.g., getting even with their boss or taking it out on a co-worker) with less emphasis on the constructive reactions (e.g. finding an effective solution to the problem). So, what factors come into play that causes an employee to have a constructive or deconstructive reaction to their boss’ aggressive behaviors?
Topic: Counterproductive Work Behavior
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: A Meta-Analysis of the Dark Triad and Work Behavior: A Social Exchange Perspective
Authors: Ernest H. O’Boyle Jr., Donelson R. Forsyth, George C. Banks, Michael A. McDaniel
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood, M.S.
Research identifying, examining, and defining positive work behaviors (e.g., transformational leadership behaviors, prosocial behavior) have been conducted since the beginning of I-O Psychology. Notably, one broad conclusion can be drawn—increasing positive work behaviors leads to positive work outcomes (e.g., job performance, OCB, profitability, return customers). In addition to studying positive work behaviors and outcomes, the “dark side” of work has been gaining much attention recently. Indeed, counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) like employee theft, leader derailment and organizational politicking are all powerful, negative workplace behaviors that confirm a darker side of employee behavior—one which could have deleterious consequences for organizations in terms of performance, profit, and reputation.
Topic: Leadership, Culture, Health & Safety
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JUL 2012)
Article: Aversive workplace conditions and absenteeism: Taking referent group norms
and supervisor support into account.
Authors: M. Biron, P. Bamberger
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
Why do people play hooky from work? The stress-free paradise of a day at the beach, great seats for a baseball game on a perfect summer afternoon, that irresistible allure of Olympic equestrian as it airs live on TV… these are all possible reasons. But what
about workplace dangers? Is it possible that people avoid work because they are afraid of getting injured while doing dangerous jobs? Actually, research has found mixed results. Sometimes workplace danger means more absenteeism and sometimes it means less absenteeism. What explains this? Recent research by Biron and Bamberger (2012) has provided an interesting answer to this question.
Topic: Power
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: Does power corrupt or enable? When and why power facilitates self-interested behavior
Authors: DeCelles, K. A., DeRue, D. S., Margolis, J. D., Ceranic, T. L.
Reviewed by: Larry Martinez
It’s the plot of half the movies you’ve ever seen: an individual gains great power and (seemingly as a result of the power itself) becomes evil. Thus, power has come to be known as something that is both alluring and very dangerous. Within organizations, those with power can have enormous impact on the future of the company (by definition). However, each individual with power is faced with an important choice: use the power for the common good of the organization, or use it for one’s personal gain. This is the topic of research by DeCelles and colleagues (2012).
Topic: Motivation
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: Future Work Selves: How Salient Hoped-For Identities Motivate Proactive Career Behaviors
Authors: Karoline Strauss, Mark A. Griffin, Sharon K. Parker
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood, M.S.
In the recent past, organizations were primarily responsible for managing their employees’ career trajectories. However, with changes to the psychological contract (i.e., the unwritten reciprocal relationship between an employer and employee), employees are taking the lead in defining and determining their own career paths. And, as a result, the increasing popularity of boundaryless careers, job hopping, and self-directed lateral moves have lead to a new norm of non-linear career trajectories in many industries.
Topic: Selection, Measurement
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: The Criterion-Related Validity of Integrity Tests: An Updated Meta-Analysis
Authors: Van Iddekinge, C.H., Roth, P.L., Raymark, P.H., & Odle-Dusseau, H.N.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli
According to a recent meta-analysis by Van Iddekinge and colleagues, integrity tests may not be as predictive of job performance as once thought. Integrity tests have become popular with organizations and practitioners due to their high correlations with job performance and few differences between groups (based on race, gender, etc.). But, Van Iddekinge et al. were concerned that past meta-analytic results drew too heavily on unpublished studies authored by test publishers. In fact, only 10% of one meta-analysis’ sample was made up of studies published in peer-reviewed journals (pro-tip: we like things that are peer reviewed).
Topic: Culture, Self-Efficacy, Job Attitudes, Citizenship Behavior
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (MAY 2012)
Article: Doing the right thing without being told: Joint effects of initiative climate and general self-efficacy on employee proactive customer service performance.
Authors: S. Raub, H. Liao
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
In the customer service division, men and women of the proactive service performance unit go above and beyond the call of duty. Their efforts often lead to increased customer satisfaction. These are their stories…
Topic: Burnout
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: Job burnout and depression: Unraveling their temporal relationship and considering the role of physical activity
Authors: Toker, S., & Biron, M.
Reviewed by: Larry Martinez
Feeling stressed? Tired? Depressed? Burnt out at your job? Conventional wisdom would suggest that you need more sleep or at least a more tranquil environment. However, research by Toker and Biron (2012) would suggest a very different and somewhat more surprising prescription: physical exercise.
Topic: Performance, Human Resources, Culture, Business Strategy
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: Impact of High-Performance Work Systems on Individual- and Branch- Level Performance: Test of a Multilevel Model of Intermediate Linkages
Authors: Samuel Aryee, Fred O. Walumbwa, Emmanuel Y. M. Seidu, & Lilian E. Otaye
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood, M.S.
With the rapid growth of global competition and the speed with which competitors can imitate products and technology, organizations are turning to human capital to differentiate themselves. As such, researchers and practitioners have stressed the value that employees play in creating and sustaining an organization’s competitive edge. As a result, many organizations have implemented high-performance work systems (HPWS), which are HR programs closely linked to the goals and culture of the organization that are designed to develop employee skills and organizational commitment in order to create a self-sustaining competitive advantage.
Topic: Turnover
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (online pre-publication)
Article: When and how is job embeddedness predictive of turnover? A meta-analytic investigation
Authors: Jiang, K., Liu, D., McKay, P. F., Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R.
Reviewed by: Larry Martinez
Turnover is a huge concern for most organizations. The cost of recruiting, hiring, training, and replacing employees can be astounding. It’s much cheaper to just keep the employees you have for as long as possible (unless, of course, they are terrible).
So, what can organizations do to try and prevent the good employees from leaving? This is what Liu and colleagues have investigated by collecting data from 65 studies and nearly 43,000 individuals.
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.
Topic: Learning, Personality, Job Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (MAR 2012)
Article: The Impact of Help Seeking on Individual Task Performance: The Moderating Effect of Help Seekers’ Logics of Action
Authors: D. Geller, P.A. Bamberger
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
Help, I need somebody! When employees get stuck trying to complete a task, asking for help seems to be the surest way to solve the problem. But does asking for help lead to better job performance? According to Geller and Bamberger (2012), the answer is that it depends on who you are and why you are asking for help in the first place.
Topic: Selection, Personality
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (2012)
Article: An Empirical Investigation of Dispositional Antecedents and Performance-
Related Outcomes of Credit Scores
Authors: Bernerth, J.B., Taylor, S.G., Walker, H.J. and Whitman, D.S.
Reviewer: Neil Morelli
You’ve no doubt heard the catchy jingles asking you to check your credit score. You may have also heard that a bad credit score could potentially cost you a new job, but have you wondered if companies should actually be looking at applicant credit scores? Recognizing that “60% of employers conduct credit checks of at least some of their new hires”, according to a recent SHRM poll, Bernerth and colleagues investigated if credit scores are indeed related to dispositional traits and job performance—as many organizations assume.
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.
Topic: Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP/OCT, 2011)
Article: Antecedents and Consequences of Psychological and Team Empowerment in
Organizations: A Meta-Analytic Review
Authors: Scott E. Seibert, Gang Wang, and Stephen H. Courtright
Reviewed By: Mary Alice Crowe-Taylor, Ph.D.
Are you a manager or an HR professional who thinks that your workplace is a pretty good place to work for your employees? Think that your employees are empowered? Well, see how well your organization measures up against 30 years of research into what empowerment looks like!
Topic: Interviewing, Fairness
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (MAR 2012)
Article: Discrimination Against Facially Stigmatized Applicants in Interviews:
An Eye-Tracking and Face-to-Face Investigation
Authors: J.M. Madera, M.R. Hebl
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
It’s easy to imagine reasons why a job interviewer might be distracted: Workplace politics, trouble at home, unnecessarily detailed fantasies of winning the lottery, March Madness. But according to troubling new research by Madera and Hebl (2012), we can add one more thing to that list. If the person interviewing for the job has a facial scar, it could be enough to distract the interviewer and cause negative outcomes.
Topic: Employee Satisfaction, Motivation, Performance
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2012)
Article: Fuel of the Self-Starter: How Mood Relates to Proactive Goal Regulation
Authors: U.K. Bindl, S.K. Parker, P. Totterdell, G. Hagger-Johnson
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
What could go wrong when you are in a really bad mood? For starters, maybe nobody will like you and you will have no friends. Now that’s bad. But it gets worse: According to research by Bindl, Parker, Totterdell, and Hagger-Johnson (2012), you also may miss
out on opportunities to be proactive at work. Now that’s really bad.
Topic: Work-Life Balance, Turnover
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2011)
Article: Health and Turnover of Working Mothers After Childbirth Via the Work-Family Interface: An Analysis Across Time
Authors: Dawn S. Carlson, Joseph G. Grzywacz, Merideth Ferguson and Emily M. Hunter, C. Randall Clinch and Thomas A. Arcury
Reviewed By: Mary Alice Crowe-Taylor
It has been shown that certain resources in jobs such as supervisor and coworker support decrease turnover of new mothers, but little research has been done on other positive aspects of jobs like skill discretion, job security and schedule control, and how they affect the work – family relationship.
Topic: Personality, Organizational Commitment
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JAN 2012)
Article: When Feeling Bad Leads to Feeling Good: Guilt-Proneness and Affective Organizational Commitment
Authors: F.J. Flynn, R.L. Schaumberg
Reviewed By: Ben Sher
Is it good to be guilty? If you have just been accused of being a lousy tipper, being a nosy neighbor, or stealing candy from an actual baby, then the answer is unequivocally no. But if instead we’re referring to a personality type that is generally prone to feeling guilty, then it may be good after all. New research by Flynn and Schaumberg (2012) has surprisingly found that guilt-prone people feel more organizational commitment.
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.
Topic: Employee Satisfaction, Sexual Harassment
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2010)
Article: Comparing Victim Attributions and Outcomes for Workplace Aggression and Sexual Harassment
Authors: Hershcovis, M. S., & Barling, J.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada
Sexual harassment is a common, negative component of organizational life that has received a good deal of research attention in IO psychology in recent years. However, while understanding this phenomenon is undoubtedly important, there remain other forms of organizational misconduct that can also have a substantial negative impact on organizations and their employees.