Business Commons^™

Social Networking Sites And Personnel Selection: An Initial Validity Assessment, Travis J. Schneider

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this dissertation was to add to the literature on the use of social networking sites (SNSs) for personnel selection. The first goal was to evaluate whether SNSs have the potential to be used as a valid source of information for selection. Specific SNS Indicator scales were created to test whether they have better validity evidence than the more traditionally-used Global SNS Rating. In a study of 141 undergraduate students at a large Canadian university, the Specific SNS Indicators demonstrated fairly weak evidence of interrater reliability, but some evidence of structural validity, and construct validity (convergent and discriminant). …

Using Technology To Improve The Interview As A Selection Tool, Brad A. Chambers, John D. Arnold

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Using the extant literature on best practices in the selection interview, this paper describes a technology-based selection interview system. The process includes interviewer training and certification, and the construction of standardized interview guides. Linked to a common set of human abilities and skills, answers to the questions and probes are evaluated using behaviorally anchored rating scales for each of a number of competency elements. The process described can be used to help ensure quality interviewing practices following these principles are used in organizations conducting multiple interviewers at different sites. How to use this process to address various research objectives is …

Assessment Of Personality Through Behavioral Observations In Work Simulations, Andrew B. Speer, Neil Christiansen, Christopher Honts

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

This study outlines the development of a rating scale designed to measure personality-related behavior in the context of work simulations. The tool, labeled the Work Simulation Personality Rating Scale (WSPRS), was validated in an assessment center by rating the personality of 123 assessment center participants. Scores from the WSPRS were correlated with corresponding traits from a self-reported personality inventory, and a Trait Activation Potential (TAP) framework was adopted to predict which traits would display best convergence based on assessment center observations. Correlations between the WSPRS dimensions and self-report trait scales ranged from .11 (Neuroticism) to .31 (Extraversion), with the rank-order …

Identifying The Strongest Or The Weakest Link: Effects On Subsequent Ratings, William S. Weyhrauch, Satoris S. Culbertson

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

The current study investigated the effect of a negative designation performance rating purpose in contrast to a positive designation purpose or a deservedness purpose on a) the ability of raters to differentiate amongst ratees at a later time and b) raters' tendencies to provide subsequently more severe or lenient ratings. Results from a laboratory study involving 102 participants indicated that positive designations tend to result in subsequently lenient ratings, while negative designations result in severe ratings. However, the nature of a rater’s previous decision had no discernable effect on the ability to differentiate levels of performance. Implications of these findings …

The Interactive Influence Of Ambition And Sociability On Performance In A Behavior Description Interview, Allen I. Huffcutt, Satoris S. Culbertson, Allen P. Goebl

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

The purpose of this study was to present and empirically test the potential influence on ratings in a behavior description interview (BDI) of the personality traits ambition and sociability, two facets of extraversion. Results suggest a relatively strong role for ambition in the administration and outcomes of BDIs in organizational selection, particularly when its interaction with sociability is taken into consideration. In a sample of 85 participants working in entry-level positions, the correlation with BDI ratings was .22 for ambition alone, which increased to .44 when sociability and its interaction with ambition were added. Adding sociability by itself to ambition …

The Validity Of Individual Psychological Assessments For Entry-Level Police And Firefighter Positions, Ilianna H. Kwaske, Scott B. Morris

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Although individual psychological assessment is widely used in employee selection, the empirical research on the validity of individual assessments is sparse. A multi-stage, multi-site study examined the validity of individual assessments for police officer and firefighter positions. Results showed that assessor judgments were largely unrelated to standardized test results, and that both assessor judgments and standardized tests were only weakly related to job performance ratings. Differences in validity across assessors were also found, with some assessors providing better predictions than others.

Cloud-Based Meta-Analysis To Bridge Science And Practice: Welcome To Metabus, Frank A. Bosco, Piers Steel, Frederick L. Oswald, Krista Uggerslev, James G. Field

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Although volumes have been written on spanning the science-practice gap in applied psychology, surprisingly few tangible components of that bridge have actually been constructed. We describe the metaBUS platform that addresses three challenges of one gap contributor: information overload. In particular, we describe challenges stemming from: (1) lack of access to research findings, (2) lack of an organizing map of topics studied, and (3) lack of interpretation guidelines for research findings. For each challenge, we show how metaBUS, which provides an advanced search and synthesis engine of currently more than 780,000 findings from 9,000 studies, can provide the building blocks …

Editorial: Why A New Journal?, Scott Edward Highhouse

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

No abstract provided.

Contemplating Mindfulness At Work: An Integrative Review, Christopher Lyddy, Darren J. Good, Theresa M. Glomb, Joyce E. Bono, Kirk W. Brown, Michelle K. Duffy, Ruth A. Baer, Judson A. Brewer, Sara W. Lazar

School of Business Faculty Publications

Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management research investigating a broad range of constructs. The framework identifies how mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being. Consideration of the evidence on mindfulness at work stimulates important …

Linking Ethical Leadership To Employee Performance: The Roles Of Leader-Member Exchange, Self-Efficacy, And Organizational Identification, Fred O. Walumbwa, David M. Mayer, Peng Wang, Hui Wang, Kristina Workman, Amanda L. Christensen

Kristina Workman

This research investigated the link between ethical leadership and performance using data from the People’s Republic of China. Consistent with social exchange, social learning, and social identity theories, we examined leader–member exchange (LMX), self-efficacy, and organizational identification as mediators of the ethical leadership to performance relationship. Results from 72 supervisors and 201 immediate direct reports revealed that ethical leadership was positively and significantly related to employee performance as rated by their immediate supervisors and that this relationship was fully mediated by LMX, self-efficacy, and organizational identification, controlling for procedural fairness. We discuss implications of our findings for theory and practice.

Leader Mistreatment, Employee Hostility, And Deviant Behaviors: Integrating Self-Uncertainty And Thwarted Needs Perspectives On Deviance, David M. Mayer, Stefan Thau, Kristina Workman, Marius Van Dijke, David De Cremer

Kristina Workman

Integrating self-uncertainty management and thwarted needs perspectives on leader mistreatment and workplace deviance, we examine when and why leader mistreatment is associated with workplace deviance. We propose that competence uncertainty strengthens the relationship between leader mistreatment and workplace deviance and that hostility mediates this interactive effect. Four field studies and one experiment support the hypotheses. The first two studies provide evidence for the predicted interaction between leader mistreatment and competence uncertainty, and the next three studies demonstrate that hostility mediates this interactive effect. We discuss an extended social exchange explanation of workplace deviance and highlight the psychological interplay between motives, …

Commentary On ‘Why Compassion Counts!’: Compassion As A Generative Force, Jane E. Dutton, Kristina Workman

Kristina Workman

[Excerpt] Twelve years ago, Peter Frost called upon us to consider why compassion counts. More than a decade later, we can see, feel, and understand why compassion counts both in the field of organizational studies and in our lives as scholars. As he was so many times during his career, Peter was prophetic in identifying and animating a core idea that is central to our field and to our lives. We approach this essay with three goals in mind, all focused on elaborating how compassion is a generative force. By generative, we mean that compassion as an idea opens up …

Compassion At Work, Jane E. Dutton, Kristina Workman, Ashley E. Hardin

Kristina Workman

Compassion is an interpersonal process involving the noticing, feeling, sensemaking, and acting that alleviates the suffering of another person. This process has recently received substantial attention by organizational researchers and practitioners alike. This article reviews what researchers currently know about compassion as it unfolds in dyadic interactions in work organizations. We begin by reviewing what we know about the benefits of compassion for the person who is suffering, for the provider of compassion, and for third parties who witness or hear about compassion at work. The heart of the article focuses on what research tells us about embedding compassion in …

The Brief Aggression Questionnaire: Reliability, Validity, And Structure, Gregory D. Webster, C. Nathan Dewall, Richard S. Pond, Timothy Deckman, Peter K. Jonason, Bonnie M. Le, Austin Lee Nichols, Tatiana Orozco Schember, Laura C. Crysel, Benjamin S. Crosier, C. Veronica Smith, Elizabeth Layne Paddock

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In contexts that increasingly demand brief self-report measures (e.g., experience sampling, longitudinal and field studies), researchers seek succinct surveys that maintain reliability and validity. One such measure is the 12-item Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ; Webster et al., 2014), which uses 4 3-item subscales: Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility. Although prior work suggests the BAQ's scores are reliable and valid, we addressed some lingering concerns. Across 3 studies (N = 1,279), we found that the BAQ had a 4-factor structure, possessed long-term test–retest reliability across 12 weeks, predicted differences in behavioral aggression over time in a laboratory experiment, …

The Development Of Job-Based Psychological Ownership, Robert B. Bullock

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

Psychological ownership has come to light as an important state with strong implications on employee attitudes and behaviors. However, relatively little attention has been paid towards the process by which employees come to develop feelings of psychological ownership towards their work, particularly regarding the role played by individual traits in this process. Ownership theorists claim that personality and disposition should matter (Mayhew, Ashkanasy, Bramble, & Gardner, 2007; Pierce & Jussila, 2011), yet these claims remain largely untested.

The purpose of the current investigation is to address these gaps by exploring how employee disposition and job design contribute to the development …

Employee Behavioral Intention And Technology Use: Mediating Processes And Individual Difference Moderators, Robert Conrad Brusso

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Considering the substantial amount of time and organizational resources that are involved in the development and implementation of end-user technology (e.g., communication software platforms, social networking sites) within organizations, it is imperative to understand the factors that best predict use of end-user software. Although technology acceptance models, grounded in broader theories of behavior, do exist, these models fall-short in determining the most proximal antecedents of actual behavior. Currently, the majority of the research in the information technology arena posits behavioral intention as the most proximal antecedent of technology use. Behavioral intention does explain variance in use, but this relationship has …

An Evaluation Of Game Fiction-Enhanced Training: Using Narrative To Improve Trainee Reactions And Learning, Michael Beaumont Armstrong

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Gamification is growing in popularity in instructional contexts like education and workplace training, but it is unclear which game elements are specifically conducive to improve learning outcomes. Narratives, which represent one way the game element “game fiction” is commonly implemented, have been used to improve learning outcomes over expository texts in the context of psycholinguistics, whereas the Technology-Enhanced Training Effectiveness Model (TETEM) proposes that certain individual differences impact the relationships between technology-enhanced training and learning outcomes. From this theoretical basis, this study gamified a training session with game fiction in order to improve reactions to training and learning over the …

Understanding The Building Blocks Of Selection Procedures: Effects Of Response Fidelity On Performance And Validity, Filip Lievens, Wilfried De Corte, Lena Westerveld

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study aims to advance our conceptual understanding of selection procedures by exploring the effect of response fidelity (i.e., written constructed response vs. behavioral constructed response) on test performance, validity, and applicant perceptions. Stimulus fidelity (multimedia stimulus) was kept constant. In a field experiment, 208 applicants for entry-level police officer jobs completed a multimedia situational judgment test with written constructed responses and behavioral responses. We hypothesized the behavioral response mode (a) to be a better predictor of police trainee performance one year later, (b) to be less cognitively saturated, (c) to exhibit higher personality (extraversion) saturation, and (d) to be …

Thinking About You: Perspective Taking, Perceived Restraint, And Performance, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

Conflict often arises when incompatible ideas, values or interests lead to actions that harm others. Increasing people’s willingness to refrain from harming others can play a critical role in preventing conflict and fostering performance. We examine perspective taking as a relational micro-process related to such restraint. We argue that attending to how others appraise events supports restraint in two ways. It motivates people to act with concern and enables them to understand what others view as harmful versus beneficial. Using a matched sample of 147 knowledge workers and 147 of their leaders, we evaluate the impact of appraisal-related perspective taking …

Affect, Emotion And Emotion Regulation In The Workplace: Feelings And Attitudinal Restructuring, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

[Excerpt] Almost 40 years after publishing A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations in 1965, the fields of negotiations and organizational behavior experienced an “affective revolution” (Barsade, Brief and Spataro 2003). Although Walton and McKersie could not have predicted the widespread academic and public interest in emotion and emotional intelligence, they foreshadowed this affect-laden direction in the section of their book on attitudinal structuring, which identified the dimension of friendliness-hostility as a critical aspect of the relationship between negotiating parties in the workplace and other settings.

Generational Diversity Can Enhance Trust Across Boundaries, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

In interorganizational project teams, generational diversity among team members undermines the experience of trust within demographically similar dyads but enhances the experience of trust within demographically dissimilar dyads.

The Complexity Of Role Balance: Support For The Model Of Juggling Occupations, K Evans, J Millsteed, Janet Richmond, M Falkmer, T Falkmer, S Girdler

Janet E Richmond PhD

Objective: This pilot study aimed to establish the appropriateness of the Model of Juggling Occupations in exploring the complex experience of role balance amongst working women with family responsibilities living in Perth, Australia. Methods: In meeting this aim, an evaluation was conducted of a case study design, where data were collected through a questionnaire, time diary, and interview. Results: Overall role balance varied over time and across participants. Positive indicators of role balance occurred frequently in the questionnaires and time diaries, despite the interviews revealing a predominance of negative evaluations of role balance. Between-role balance was achieved through compatible role …

Being Trusted: How Team Generational Age Diversity Promotes And Undermines Trust In Cross-Boundary Relationships, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

We examine how demographic context influences the trust that boundary spanners experience in their dyadic relationships with clients. Because of the salience of age as a demographic characteristic as well as the increasing prevalence of age diversity and intergenerational conflict in the workplace, we focus on team age diversity as a demographic social context that affects trust between boundary spanners and their clients. Using social categorization theory and theories of social capital, we develop and test our contextual argument that a boundary spanner’s experience of being trusted is influenced by the social categorization processes that occur in dyadic interactions with …

Cultural Context's Influence On The Relationships Between Leadership Personality And Subordinate Perceptions, Victoria J. Smoak

Doctoral Dissertations

Fascination with leadership and the pursuit of its understanding have been common across disciplines throughout history (Bass & Stogdill, 1990). Studying leadership in an organization provides value in understanding its relation to outcomes such as employee attitudes (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996), individual performance (Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999) and organizational performance (Day & Lord, 1988; Sully de Luque, Washburn, Waldman, & House, 2008). Leadership is suggested to be the underlying human factor key to organizational effectiveness (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). In spite of the vast body of literature, much remains to be understood, especially understanding context (McCall & Hollenbeck, …

Bright Or Dark, Or Virtues And Vices? A Reexamination Of The Big Five And Job Performance, Christopher M. Castille

Doctoral Dissertations

Personality research in industrial/organizational psychology has been dominated by the description of personality traits and outcomes as either bright or dark. Unfortunately, research has shown that bright traits have dark outcomes and vice versa, suggesting that a paradox is plaguing the literature. To resolve this paradox, I propose that a different heuristic stemming from positive psychology be utilized: virtues and vices. Virtues refer to exercises of human excellence while vices refer to actions of human failure. Drawing on the virtue ethics concept of the Aristotelian mean, dark traits are viewed as extreme or elevated levels of bright personality traits, allowing …

Development And Test Of An Integrative Model Of Job Search Behaviour, Greet Van Hoye, Alan M. Saks, Filip Lievens, Bert Weijters

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research on job search and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) has identified job search attitude, subjective norm, and job search self-efficacy as the most proximal determinants of job seekers' search intentions and subsequently job search behaviours. However, we do not yet know how more distal individual differences (e.g., personality) and situational factors (e.g., social context) might help to predict these key TPB determinants of job search behaviour. In an integrative model of job search behaviour, we propose specific relationships between these distal variables and the TPB determinants, which in turn are expected to mediate the effects of individual differences …

Individual Adaptability As A Predictor Of Job Performance, Stephanie L. Murphy

Doctoral Dissertations

In the new global economy, organizations frequently have to adjust to meet challenging demands of customers, competitors, or regulatory agencies. These adjustments at the organizational level often cascade down to employees, and they may face changes in their job responsibilities and how work is performed. I-ADAPT theory suggests that individual adaptability (IA) is an individual difference variable that includes both personality and cognitive aspects and has both trait- and state-like properties. As a result, IA may be an acceptable alternative for traditional, stable selection tests for operating within unstable environments. The present paper examined the relationship of individual adaptability, cognitive …

The Interplay Of Elicitation And Evaluation Of Trait-Expressive Behavior: Evidence In Assessment Center Exercises, Filip Lievens, Eveline Schollaert, Gert Keen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In assessment centers (ACs), research on eliciting candidate behavior and evaluating candidate behavior have largely followed independent paths. This study integrates trait activation and trait rating models to posit hypotheses about the effects of behavior elicitation via situational cues on key assessor observation and rating variables. To test the hypotheses, a series of experimental and field studies are conducted. Only when trait-expressive behavior activation and evaluation models work in conjunction, increases in observability are coupled with increases in the interrater reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and accuracy of AC ratings. Implications of these findings for AC theory and practice are …

Embracing The "Two-Body Problem": The Case Of Partnered Academics, Cynthia Fisher

Cynthia D. Fisher

Extract: The focal article has given examples of children, other relatives, and friends as potential beneficiaries of preferential treatment and has discussed the counterbalancing likelihood of organizational gain from(properly) employing individuals who already share social connections. Surprisingly, there is minimal mention of spouses or domestic partners. From the 1970s through the 1990s, a number of articles were published on the legal and practical issues of applying antinepotism policies to spouses, but since 2000, the literature has been almost entirely silent. This is surprising given that, in 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 47.4% of U.S. families involve husbands …

Squeezed In The Middle: The Middle Status Trade Creativity For Focus, Michelle M. Duguid, Jack Goncalo

Jack Goncalo

Classical research on social influence suggested that people are the most conforming in the middle of a status hierarchy as opposed to the top or bottom. Yet, this promising line of research was abandoned before the psychological mechanism behind middle status conformity had been identified. Moving beyond the early focus on conformity, we propose that the threat of status loss may make those with middle status more wary of advancing creative solutions in fear that they will be evaluated negatively. Using different manipulations of status and measures of creativity, we found that when being evaluated, middle status individuals were less …