Tag Archives: Johnson

Career success? The differences are Black and White

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Topic: Diversity
Publication: Journal of Vocational Behavior (online pre-publication)
Article: Evaluating career success of African American males: It’s what you know and who you are that matters.
Authors: Johnson, C. D. & Eby, L. T.
Reviewed by: Larry Martinez

Little research has specifically examined what makes African American males successful.  This research has been done with respect to Caucasian workers, but are the things that are related to success for Caucasians also related to success for African Americans?  Are there other things that might be related to success for African Americans in particular that has not been examined with respect to Caucasians?  These questions formed the basis of research by Johnson and Eby (in press).

Specifically, these authors examined four broad dimensions of characteristics that might be related to success for African Americans: human capital (e.g., education, work history, training), social capital (e.g., informal networks, professional associations, club memberships), individual differences (e.g., motivation, conscientiousness, ambition), and demographic attributes (e.g., marital status, age, skin tone).  In a sample of 247 African American males, these authors found that some characteristics that were related to success in Caucasians were also related for African Americans.  Specifically, human capital and demographic attributes were the most related, while social capital and individual differences were much less related. 

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Predicting Job Performance with Implicit Words Games?

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Topic: Personality, Measurement, Job Performance
Publication: Personnel Psychology (SPRING 2010)
Article: We (sometimes) know not how we feel: Predicting job performance with an implicit measure of trait affectivity
Authors: R.E. Johnson, A.L. Tolentino, O.B., Rodopman, and E. Cho
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

In the world of emotions, trait affect refers to the predisposition some people have to generally experience positive or negative emotions.

Trait affect is often broken up into Negative Affect (NA) and Positive Affect (PA). While high levels of NA are associated with negative emotions such as fear and anxiety, high levels of PA are associated with positive emotions such as excitement and joy.  It should not come as a surprise that PA tends to relate favorably to work performance whereas the opposite is true for NA.

Recently, Johnson, Tolentino, Rodopman, and Cho (2010) suggested that because trait affect (e.g., PA & NA) operates outside of employees’ conscious awareness, it is more appropriate to measure it at the unconscious or implicit level.  This is in stark contrast to the self-report, explicit measurement of trait affect that is typically used when explicitly asking people to rate the extent to which they feel certain emotions across many different situations.

But how in the heck would you measure trait affect implicitly?  Johnson et al. used a word completion task that presented word fragments to employees for which they were required to complete to create a meaningful English word.  The following are actual examples of word fragments used by Johnson and colleagues:

F E _ _ (NA = FEAR, or neutral = FEEL, FEED) S M _ _ _ (PA = SMILE, or neutral = SMART, SMOKE)

A person’s level of trait NA and PA were determined by the relative amount of NA-related and PA-related word fragments completed by employees, respectively.  But, don’t worry if you are a bit skeptical; this is not exactly your everyday personnel survey!

Nevertheless, Johnson and colleagues conducted two independent pilot studies that supported the validity of their word fragment approach. Ultimately, Johnson and colleagues demonstrated that implicit measures of trait affect are important predictors of task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), even more so than the conscious/explicit measures that we are more accustomed to. Johnson et al.’s study highlights an interesting way to measure employees’ predispositions to experience positive and negative emotions.

Moreover, while employees can easily misrepresent themselves on explicit personality measures, this is likely not possible for implicit measures.

Johnson, R.E., Tolentino, A.L., Rodopman, O.B., & Cho, E. (2010). We (sometimes) know not how we feel: Predicting job performance with an implicit measure of trait affectivity. Personnel Psychology, 63 (1), 197-219.

 

Is it Fair to Include “Citizenship” in Performance Appraisals?

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Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Performance Appraisal
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (DEC 2009)
Article: Organizational citizenship behavior in performance evaluations: Distributive justice or injustice
Authors: S.K., Johnson, C.L. Holladay, & M.A. Quinones
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) are volitional work behaviors that go above and beyond the call of duty and are intended to benefit the organization and/or its members.  Though OCBs are not  formally required of employees (e.g., don’t show up in the job description), they are highly valued by organizations. Thus, supervisors (and peers) often consider employees’ OCBs in formal performance appraisals.  But, how do employees feel about this?  In other words, since OCBs are not absolutely required of employees, do employees find this practice fair?

Johnson, Holladay, and Quinones (2009) investigated the extent to which employees consider including OCBs in formal performance appraisals fair. The authors conducted two separate experiments, one employing a sample of 78 employees from diverse organizations and industries and the other employing a large sample of undergraduate students.  In general, the findings of both studies were similar.

Overall, employees reported that it is fairer to include OCBs in performance appraisals than to not include them. Importantly, employees felt that it is most fair to include OCBs in performance appraisals when they constitute about 30 – 50% of the total performance rating (While the remaining represents Core Task Behaviors).

Johnson et al. also found that while females generally preferred higher weightings of OCBs (between 25 and 50%) men found a 20 – 30% weighting of OCBs to be most fair. Johnson et al. speculated that the findings for gender represent differences in the typical gender roles of males and females. For example, they suggested that in general, females are expected to engage in more helping behaviors (i.e., OCBs) than men at work and they want their performance ratings to account for this. 

Whether this is true or not (and we welcome your personal insight on this matter!), it is clear that employees  consider OCBs to be an important and rate-able portion of their job performance. Ultimately, employees do find it fair to include OCBs in performance appraisals, but the extent to which OCBs makeup the total performance appraisal depends largely on gender.

Johnson, S.K., Holladay, C.L., & Quinones, M.A. (2009). Organizational citizenship behavior in performance evaluations: Distributive justice or injustice. Journal of Business and Psychology, 24, 409-418.