Tag Archives: I/O psychology

Want to increase performance? Take a look at Psychological Capital

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Topic: Performance, Talent Management, Human Resource Management
Publication: Personnel Psychology (SUMMER 2011)
Article: Psychological capital and employee performance: A latent growth modeling approach
Authors: Peterson, S. J., Luthans, F., Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Zhang, Z.
Reviewed by: Alexandra Rechlin

You’ve probably heard about human capital being related to performance, but what about psychological capital? Human capital refers to the skills and knowledge that employees possess which are relevant to the organization. Psychological capital, however, is a higher-order construct consisting of efficacy (confidence), hope, optimism, and resilience. The study described in this article explores the variability of psychological capital within individuals and the relationship between psychological capital and performance.

Over a period of seven months, the authors assessed 179 financial advisors’ levels of psychological capital along with objective and subjective measures of performance. They found that participants’ levels of psychological capital changed over time, providing further evidence that psychological capital can be developed. The level of psychological capital was also significantly related to both the objective and subjective measures of performance; that is, performance increased as psychological capital increased, and performance decreased as psychological capital decreased. The authors also found support for psychological capital influencing performance, as opposed to performance influencing psychological capital.

This study indicates that if you want to improve employees’ performance, it is important to consider psychological capital. Organizations may want to consider including psychological capital development as part of a development and performance management program. How?  Training programs aimed at increasing psychological capital have already been developed and tested for both online and traditional workshop delivery. These programs help participants set goals in order to increase hope, and they teach participants to deal effectively with setbacks and create contingency plans, thereby increasing optimism. Through the use of positive feedback, vicarious learning, and modeling, training programs (and managers) can also increase employees’ efficacy.

Peterson, S. J., Luthans, F., Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Zhang, Z. (2011). Psychological capital and employee performance: A latent growth modeling approach. Personnel Psychology, 64, 427-450. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6570.2011.01215.x

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

Want to Accelerate Transition Into New Leadership Roles? Try this Five-Action Step Intervention

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Topic: Coaching, Leadership, Teams
Publication: Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (MAR 2010)
Article: New leader assimilation process: Accelerating new role-related transitions.
Authors: I.M. Levin
Reviewed By: Jailza Pauly

The first 90 to 100 days are crucial for those moving into new leadership roles. But why is this period so important?  Leaders in new roles are more likely to make errors such as acting too quickly without the necessary information and failing to build relationships and credibility.  To ensure accelerated assimilation and effectiveness into new roles, organizations can help their new leaders experience successful role transitions.

Levin recently proposed a five step structured intervention that combines executive coaching and team development.  Its purpose is to address two tasks that are critical to success in new leadership roles: information seeking about the context and challenges of the new role and relationship building with the new team of direct reports and peers.

Step 1 – Launch

A contracting process between a qualified coach (e.g., Levin recommends a consulting psychologist), the new leader, and key stakeholders outlining substantive task-related and socio-emotional issues associated with the transition into the new role.

Step 2 – Leader Preparation and Team interviews

A parallel process of data collection through individual interviews with direct reports and peers, as well as ongoing analysis of responses (conducted by the consulting psychologist).

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What the ambivalent can teach us about change

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Topic: Organizational Change
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: Ambivalence toward imposed change: The conflict between dispositional resistance to change and the orientation toward the change agent (NOV 2010)
Authors:  Shaul Oreg and Noga Sverdlik
Reviewed By: Bobby Bullock

As a business grows or shrinks, evolves or adjusts, one thing is always certain – change! Unfortunately, organizational change can be one of the most difficult things to deal with firsthand.  Even within one individual employee, feelings towards change can run the gambit from fierce resistance to strong support.  To address the issue of conflicting feelings towards change, Oreg and Sverdlik (2010) sought determine employees’ feelings towards (1) the concept of change and (2) how the change agent influences their reactions to imposed organizational change. 

The presence of ambivalence, as you may know, indicates both positive and negative reactions towards an object or event.  And because organizational change in itself can be quite complex, it makes sense that reactions to that change are also complex and often contradictory. 

According to Oreg and Sverdlik’s (2010) research, employees’ feelings about the change agent (e.g., a leader who spearheads organizational change) moderated the relationship between their resistance towards change and experience of ambivalence.  For example, when employees had a positive orientation towards the agent of change (i.e., strong faith in management) and also had a dispositional resistance to change, their experience of ambivalence was high.

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Motivating GenY: Generational Differences in Work Values

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Topic: Motivation
Publication: Journal of Management (SEP 2010)
Article: Generational differences in work values: Leisure and extrinsic values increasing, social and intrinsic values decreasing
Authors: J. M. Twenge, S. M. Campbell, B. J. Hoffman, and C. E. Lance
Reviewed By: Lauren Wood

The U.S. workforce is primarily comprised of 3 generations of workers – Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964), GenX (1965-1981), and GenY (1982-1999). Although empirical research examining differences in generational work values is scarce, understanding differences between these 3 groups is important for organizations attempting to recruit and manage the youngest generation in the workforce – GenY.

The current study assessed generational differences in work values (leisure, social interactions, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, and altruism) which motivate employees to perform on the job. The results reveal that organizations may need to implement different strategies in order to successfully motivate GenY employees. For example, compared to Baby Boomers and GenX, GenY workers are more likely to value leisure activities (time off, work-life balance, flextime) and less likely to value social interactions (work friendships, team work). When examining workplace rewards, GenY seem to be are more motivated by extrinsic rewards (tangible rewards) than by intrinsic rewards (intangible rewards).

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Do Organizations Ask What They Shouldn’t Ask in Job Applications?

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Topic: Fairness, Recruiting
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (DEC 2010)
Article: Science-practice gap in e-recruitment
Authors: A.L. Garcia-Izquierdo, H. Aguinis, and P.J. Ramos-Villagrasa
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

The gap between the science of HR and its practice in actual organizations is well known.  Sometimes, the practice of HR outpaces the research (e.g., organizations implement systems that are “hot” in the popular press, but not well understood or under researched), while in other cases, the practice of HR lags well behind the research…and sometimes even the law!

In a recent study, Garcia-Izquierdo et al. (2010) analyzed online job applications of over 60 publicly traded organizations – first in Spain in 2005, and again in 2009.  According to the authors, Spain provides a natural setting to study the science-practice gap in IO psychology because employment legislation regarding Equal Employment Opportunity is still ongoing (unlike in the U.S.).  Specifically, these dates were chosen due to recent legislation changes in 2007 (e.g., an Act prohibiting sex-based discrimination).  

Common information that was required of job applicants included age or date of birth, nationality, gender, marital status and place of birth.  About 20% of companies in 2005 even asked job applicants for personal photographs (this increased to 25% in 2009).  Overall, the percentages of companies asking applicants for such information did not change significantly from 2005 to 2009. 

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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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Maximizing the Benefits of Autonomy in Teams

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Topic: Job Design, Teams, Performance
Publication: Journal of Organizational Behavior
Article: The impact of autonomy and task uncertainty on team performance: A longitudinal field study (FEB 2010)
Author: J. L. Cordery, D. Morrison, B. M. Wright, & T. D. Wall
Reviewed by: Sarah Teague

Modern jobs are becoming more interconnected every year. Where once we worked alone in our cubicles, we are now more likely to be part of a team collectively working toward some common goal. Additionally, the nature of work is increasingly reliant on employees’ ability to adapt to new and challenging situations. As such, much effort has gone (and continues to go) into the study of team effectiveness. Giving teams autonomy (freedom over the process through which they achieve their goal) is argued to be key in maximizing performance. However, results in the current literature have been mixed. Mixed results typically indicate the presence of some third important moderating variable that helps to explain why the relationship is different across time, people, or situations.

Accordingly, the current study sought to clarify the conditions under which team autonomy will lead to greater increases in performance. The authors identified task uncertainty (“the degree to which it is possible for a team to predict which tasks must be executed, when, how, and to whom) as a potential moderator and proposed three hypotheses. First, increased autonomy will be related to increased performance. Second, higher levels of task uncertainty will be related to decreased performance.

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Managing Assessors’ Workloads in Assessment Centers

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Topic: Assessment, Staffing
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (SEP 2010)
Article: Do assessors have too much on their plates? The effects of simultaneously rating multiple assessment center candidates on rating quality
Authors: K.G. Melchers, M. Kleinmann, and M.A. Prinz
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Assessment centers (ACs) usually consist of several job-related exercises that tap competencies necessary for the job.  ACs are most often used by organizations to select, promote and develop their employees.  Like many employee selection and assessment methods (e.g., interviews), ACs require a scorer or assessor to provide an evaluation of candidates’ performance.  But here’s where it gets tricky.

In two studies, Melchers et al. found that assessor ratings of candidates decrease in accuracy as the number of candidates they assess simultaneously increases.  While this finding may seem like a “no-brainer”, meta-analytic research (Woehr & Authur, 2003) has demonstrated that ACs with higher candidate-to-assessor ratios (i.e., fewer assessors evaluating more candidates) tend to be more valid than ACs with lower candidate-to-assessor ratios.  However, as Melchers et al. point out, the candidate-to-assessor ratio in an AC is not the issue here, its how many candidates an assessor must observe and evaluate simultaneously that apparently decreases rating accuracy.

Unfortunately, Melchers et al. do not provide specific recommendations for the ideal number of candidates assessors should be assigned to assess simultaneously in an AC exercise. 

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How Important are First Impressions at the Job Interviews?

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Topic: Interviewing, Recruiting, Staffing
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (AUG 2010)
Article: Initial Evaluations in the Interview: Relationships with Subsequent Interviewer Evaluations and Employment Offers
Authors: M.R. Barrick, B.W. Swider, and G.L. Stewart
Reviewed By: Allison B. Siminovsky

The answer:  Very!  And in today’s increasingly competitive job market, candidates are constantly trying to make themselves stand out as being the best of the bunch.  Considering the challenge in answering interview questions well, it’s easy for a candidate to forget about the impression that he or she makes during the first few minutes of small talk with the interviewer.  However, this seemingly idle chat might have more of an effect on employment decisions than one might think. 

In a recent study, Barrick, Swider, and Stewart (2010) examine whether the first impressions that interviewers get while exchanging pleasantries with candidates have any relationship with the likelihood of being called back to a second interview or later receiving a job offer.  The researchers found that interviewers’ initial impressions of candidate competence, perceived similarity to the candidate, and the degree to which they find the candidate likable are predictive of future employment outcomes.  As likability and similarity may not be not job-related, it is clear that factors other than competence weigh into whether a candidate gets called back for a second interview — or even gets a job offer.

With this information in mind, should interviewers be barred from chatting with job candidates about life, the weather, and yesterday’s big game?  No, according to the researchers. 

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How Might Trainers Be Contributing to the Transfer Problem?

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Topic: Training
Publication: Human Resource Management (JUL/AUG 2010)
Article: A missing link in the transfer problem? Examining how trainers learn about training transfer
Authors: H.M. Hutchins, L.A. Burke, and A.M. Berthelsen
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

There are many reasons why employees often don’t transfer their training to the job.  At a high level, these reasons can include personal attributes of learners, characteristics of the work environment, and the level of supervisory support.  Hutchins et al. note, however, that trainers themselves play an important role in determining if employees transfer what they learn on the job.  These authors speculate that the ways trainers learn about transfer may be a possible contributor to the transfer problem? 

Hutchins et al. surveyed 139 members of the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) about their preferred methods of learning about training transfer.  According to their results, training practitioners tend to use informal methods to learn about training transfer (e.g., learn through experience on the job, talk with other training professionals, search relevant websites, etc.).  A relatively smaller percentage of professional trainers reported using more formal approaches such as attending conferences and practice-based and academic courses.  However, the practitioners surveyed reported preferring more formal approaches due partly to their credibility.

Training practitioners also reported learning about training practices by reading the practitioner-based training publications such as Training and Training and Development (T+D). 

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