Day: May 25, 2009

How Do You Say “Stress” in Mandarin?

Topic: Stress Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology Article: Theories of job stress and the role of traditional values:  A longitudinal study in China. Blogger: Larry Martinez Here’s an ultra-brief but necessary synopsis of stress theory:  difficult, restrictive jobs create stress, and stress is bad for your health.  Researchers suggest mediating the negative effects of

Watch Your Head! Ceteris Paribus is Falling!

Topic: Decision Making, Judgement Publication: Academy of Management Article: Resolving the commitment versus flexibility tradeoff: The role of resource accumulation lags. Blogger: Katie Bachman Ceteris paribus—all else equal—is the economist’s favorite term. It covers all manner of sins because, as we know in psychology, nothing is ever equal or same or whatever. It is the assumption of no variance and it is the mark of an economics article, which is

Fostering Fairness in the Workplace: Why it’s so worth it!

Topic: Citizenship Behavior, Organizational Justice Publication: Journal of Organizational Behavior Article: Meta-analytic tests of relationships between organizational justice and citizenship behavior: Testing agent-system and shared-variance models. Blogger: Benjamin Granger Leaders are recognizing that organizations, employees, and customers benefit from non-required cooperative behaviors that go on in the workplace.  These behaviors are referred to as

If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours – unless your hands are covered in thorns.

Topic: Change Management, Job Attitudes, Organizational Performance Publication: Journal of Business Research Article:  Exploring civic virtue and turnover intention during organizational changes.  Blogger: LitDigger If you buy me a coffee, I’ll tell you what I know. If you cover my shift, I’ll cover yours next week.  If you buy me dinner,

Believe in yourself and someone just might drive a dump truck full of money to your house

Topic: Job Performance Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology Article: How the Rich (and Happy) Get Richer (and Happier): Relationship of Core Self-Evaluations to Trajectories in Attaining Work Success. Blogger: Rob Stilson OK, the scope of this article is beyond this blog (or perhaps the blogger), but I will give you the highlights and

The Early Bird Gets the Worm, but the Confident Bird Gets Two

Topic: Motivation Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology Article: Self-efficacy and resource allocation: Support for a nonmonotonic, discontinuous model. Blogger: Benjamin Granger Imagine a football game in which you have the inside scoop on the competing teams’ overall self-efficacy for performing well in the upcoming game. Team A is highly confident that they will perform well and

Catching the Creativity Bug

Topic: Creativity Publication: Journal of Management Article: Multiple tasks’ and multiple goals’ effect on creativity:  Forced incubation or just a distraction? Blogger: Benjamin Granger There’s no doubt that organizations value employee creativity. Researchers Madjar and Shalley (2008)  wanted to identify factors that influence creativity at work. Specifically, they wanted to find out the following: