Tag Archives: structured interview

Workplace Fairness: Crucial for Powerful Supervisors

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Topic: Decision Making, Fairness, Trust
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (May, 2010)
Article: The Role of Authority Power in Explaining Procedural Fairness Effects
Authors: M. van Dijke, D. De Cremer, D.M. Mayer
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

Of course it always pays to be fair to your employees, right?  Not always, suggests research by van Dijke, De Cremer, and Mayer (2010).  They explain that there are distinct advantages to treating people fairly, but only if the supervisor possesses a high level of power. If the supervisor possesses low power, it may not actually matter.

Here’s how it works.  When a supervisor makes decisions that seem fair, they will be seen as more trustworthy.  When that happens, employees will view the supervisor as more charismatic and as a more legitimate authority.  The employees will also be more motivated to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), which is when employees use extra effort to accomplish organizational goals.

But here’s the catch: this only applies to supervisors who seem powerful. Employees who feel they are treated unfairly might wonder if the supervisor could have done anything different. When the supervisor appears to be powerful, the answer is invariably yes.  If that happens, they will be less likely to trust the unfair supervisor who may seem exploitive and self-serving.

But if the supervisor does not appear powerful, employees may think the supervisor is merely following orders and therefore not to blame. In that case, they may trust the supervisor regardless of whether they are fair. The authors explain several important implications of this study.  First, power is not as bad as it is commonly portrayed.  Power can be used to help encourage organizational citizenship behaviors, and these behaviors will only decrease in response to unfairness.  Second, high power equals high stakes and high accountability.  Challenging conventional wisdom, this study suggests that people in powerful positions cannot do as they please, and are held to a higher standard.  On the other hand, supervisors who have relatively low power are not held to a high standard and have greater freedom.

Still, the researchers caution that low power supervisors should not take this as invitation to do as they please.  Low power supervisors may not receive as much feedback on the perceived fairness of their decisions and may not realize they are being unfair.  When job applicants or clients who are not familiar with the company mistake them for high power leaders, they will be ill-equipped to meet the higher standards expected of them.

Van Dijke, M., De Cremer, D., Mayer, D.M. (2010). The Role of Authority Power in Explaining Procedural Fairness Effects. Journal of Applied Psychology,95, 488-502.

Mercer asks 400 organizations about growth and talent management

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Topic: Talent Management
Publication: The Financial
Article: Employers reshaping talent management programs as economy shifts toward growth
Reviewed by: Sarah Teague

The success of an organization has proven to be largely contingent on the success of their employees. Indeed, the– see below for more info on this cornerstone article. A recent survey by Mercer sought to investigate the current status and practices of over 400 U.S. organizations.

One of the key findings shows that over half of the organizations surveyed are either in a growth stage or entering into one.  Not surprisingly, responses also indicate that an overwhelming majority are placing a great emphasis on talent management (TM), particularly leadership and succession planning, in order to prepare for a new, slower-growing economy. Unfortunately, only 5% of these organizations reported feeling confident in their ability to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of their TM strategies.

This is a huge opportunity for Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychologists and Human Resource (HR) professionals, alike.  As organizations begin to regroup from the recent economic downturn, the skill set possessed by I/O psychologists and HR professionals will likely be in high demand.  Mercer’s own Jason Jeffay said it best when he stated that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”  From both a research and practice perspective, this is a chance to replace fads and trends with evidence and measurement as the basis for organizational practices and TM decisions. And for those of you interested in early research linking talent management and organizational effectiveness, consider this:

The idea that “the people make the place” has received great support since Schneider first espoused his Attractions-Selection-Attrition (ASA) model (Schneider, 1987). The ASA model posits that applicants are attracted to organizations similar to them, that organizations select applicants whose skill sets are similar to their current employees, and that those employees who are least similar are most likely to leave.  Based on this theory, talent management (TM) can make or break an organization.

http://finchannel.com/Main_News/Business/65211_Employers_reshaping_talent_management_programs_as_economy_shifts_toward_growth/

When Performance Goals are a Must

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Topic: Feedback, Goals, Performance
Publication: Human Performance
Article: Achievement goals, feedback, and task performance
Authors: A.M. Cianci, J.M. Schaubroeck, and G.A. McGill
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

 

Although performance feedback is vital to effective job performance, employees can react
differently to the same feedback. For example, while some employees give up in the face of negative feedback about their performance, others persevere and actually improve their performance over time. Alternatively, when presented with positive feedback, some employees coast while others maintain their high levels of performance.  Cianci et al. recently showed that the type of goals that are set for employees help explain how they react to positive and negative performance feedback.

In general, Cianci et al. found that those who were assigned a learning goal for a complex computerized task (“your goal…is to learn how to approach this kind of task as well as possible”) outperformed both those who were assigned a performance goal (“your goal…is to perform as well as possible, achieving the highest score possible”) and those assigned no goal at all.  What’s interesting is that following positive performance feedback, those assigned performance goals boosted their performance while negative feedback was detrimental to future performance on the task. The opposite trend was apparent for those assigned learning goals (i.e., negative feedback was beneficial and positive feedback was detrimental to performance).

Cianci and colleagues also investigated how peoples’ beliefs about their ability impact how they respond to performance and learning goals.  More specifically, the authors discussed two overarching beliefs about one’s ability: (1) ability is fixed and CANNOT be improved over time and (2) ability is incremental and CAN increase over time.  They found that the latter view was generally beneficial to performance, especially for those assigned performance goals.

In general, Cianci et al.’s findings suggest that assigning learning goals to employees leads to superior performance. However, there are times in which it is beneficial or necessary to set performance goals.  In these cases, managers should ensure that they include positive performance feedback (particularly if it must sandwich constructive feedback) throughout the project/assignment and encourage employees to view their abilities as improvable over time.

Cianci, A.M., Schaubroeck, J.M., & McGill. G.A. (2010). Achievement goals,
feedback, and task performance. Human Performance, 23(2), 131-154.

The Good News about Structured Interviews

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Topic: Staffing
Publication: Personnel Psychology (SUMMER 2010)
Article: Are highly structured job interviews resistant to demographic similarity effects?
Authors: J.M. McCarthy, D.H. Van Iddekinge, and M.A. Campion
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Interviews are by far one of the most commonly used personnel selection tools and for good reason: They work (at least when they’re structured)!

One potential problem with interviews is that irrelevant personal characteristics of interviewees (i.e., gender, race) may affect interview ratings; interviewees who are similar (race, gender) to interviewers will receive higher ratings in an interview than those who are dissimilar to the interviewers.  This can ultimately lead to illegal practices and failing to hire the best applicants. This potential problem is known as demographic similarity.  The underlying reason this may occur is that people view others who are similar to themselves more favorably than those who are different (e.g., She is just like me so she must also be awesome!).

McCarthy, Van Iddekinge and Campion (2010) explored the existence of demographic similarity effects in highly structured interviews, which are known to be more valid than unstructured interviews.  McCarthy et al. found that the demographic similarity effect was completely non-existent in highly structured interviews.  In fact, their results suggest that there is no such thing as a demographic similarity effect when highly structured interviews are used.

Impressively, McCarthy et al.’s study was conducted on a total of 207 interviewers and nearly 20,000 entry level employees applying for professional level positions with the U.S. government.  Moreover, McCarthy et al.’s findings were consistent across three common types of structured interviews: (1) past-behavioral based interviews, (2) interviews focusing on a person’s past experiences and education, and (3) situation-based interview (e.g., In hypothetical situation “X,” what would you do?).

So not only are highly structured interviews legally defensible and able to effectively target high future performers and weed out poor performers (i.e., criterion validity), we now know that they are highly resistant to demographic similarity effects! So here are a few quick tips for ratcheting up the structure of a job interview: (1) keep the questions of all applicants consistent and avoid shooting from the hip, (2) base interview questions off of a formal job analysis, (3) include ratings that have anchors with behavioral examples, (4) have interviewers take thorough notes during an interview, (5) avoid discussing applicants between interviews, and (6) include a panel of interviewers/raters as opposed to a single interviewer. For more information on how to increase the structure of a job interview, see the comprehensive list presented in McCarthy et al.’s article.

McCarthy, J.M., Van Iddekinge, C.H., & Campion, M.A. (2010). Are highly structured
job interviews resistant to demographic similarity effects? Personnel Psychology, 63(2), 325-359.