Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons^™

The Development Of Corporate Responsibility/ Corporate Citizenship, Sandra Waddock

Organization Management Journal

This paper outlines the emergence of corporate responsibility/corporatecitizenship as part of corporate practice. The paper first defines the terms, then briefly focuses on the history of corporate citizenship and its evolution over time, highlighting the current popularity of the term both in academic and practice-based work. It turns next to an assessment of the current pressures and dynamics facing major corporations, highlighting the internalization of corporate responsibility practices into companies’’ business models, and a growing infrastructure that involves new standards and principles, the social investment movement, NGO pressures, multi-sector collaborations particularly around so-called bottom-of the pyramid strategies, internal and external …

Enabling The New Careers Of The 21st Century, Frieda Reitman, Joy A. Schneer

Organization Management Journal

The new careers of the 21st century are turbulent compared to the ideal corporate climb of the 1950s. Owing to the greater presence of women in the workforce, diminished job security, and increased focus on psychological aspects of success, many workers have moved onto non-traditional career paths. The new careers involve changing organizations, lateral rather than vertical moves, and often include interruptions in employment. The expectation is that employees will manage their own careers, choosing to work for companies that provide opportunities to meet their objectives. Organizations need to embrace the realities of 21st century careers and recognize the importance …

Identification Of Key Counseling Skills For Highly Effective School Administrators, Tonya Christman Balch

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative research study looked at the predictability oflndiana's Public Law 221 Status for the 2005 and 2006 academic years. The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, to determine if elementary administrators' key counseling skills and select demographics can predict Public Law 221 (PL 221) status in their respective schools; secondly, to develop a valid and reliable survey supported by strong psychometric properties that identifies key counseling. iii Quantitative analyses factored key counseling skills and tested the predictive nature of those skills as well as select demographic items (school locale, administrator gender and ethnicity, building-level administrator pre-service training institution, …

Leadership Orientation And Effectiveness Of Chief Student Affairs Officers On Coalition Of Christian Colleges And Universities Campuses, Brent A. Baker

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose ofthis study was to determine the leadership profile ofCSAOs at CCCU institutions and to determine whether multiframing was predictive of effectiveness as a manager and as a leader. Additionally, this study sought to determine if any particular frame was predictive of effectiveness as a manager and as a leader. To aid in the investigation of these issues, a demographic profile was created for further understanding ofCSAOs at CCCU institutions. This study was based on the organizational leadership theory ofLee Bolman and Terrence Deal and their four frame model. Their instrument, Leadership Orientations (Self), was administered to Chief Student …

The Pursuit Of Competitive Advantage And The Strategic Behavior Of Firms In Adopting Self-Service Technology, Timothy David Saur

Dissertations

In 2002 Zuboff and Maxim published their book titled The Support Economy. In the book the authors predict a new era of capitalism that holds great promise for companies and individuals who can design useful, usable, and desirable information systems, knowledge networks, and social software. Since the time of publication advances in technology have allowed the use of self-service products to expand into once unforeseen areas. Self-service technology is used by companies to lower cost, to increase market share, to develop new revenue streams, and to position their products as innovative. Yet the body of research surrounding the organizational strategy …

More Evidence On The Value Of Chinese Workers’ Psychological Capital: A Potentially Unlimited Competitive Resource?, Fred Luthans, James Avey, Rachel Clapp-Smith, Weixing Li

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

As China continues its unprecedented economic growth and emergence as a world power, new solutions must be forthcoming to meet the accompanying challenges. We propose a positive approach to Chinese HRM that recognizes, develops and manages the psychological capital (PsyCap) of workers. After providing a brief overview of hope, efficacy, optimism, resilience and overall PsyCap in today’s Chinese context, the results of a follow-up study provide further evidence that the PsyCap of Chinese workers is related to their performance. The implications that this evidencebased value of Chinese workers’ psychological capital has for China now and into the future concludes this …

Keeping Up With The Joneses: A Field Study Of The Relationships Among Upward, Lateral, And Downward Comparisons And Pay Level Satisfaction, Michael M. Harris, Frederik Anseel, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors examined the relationship between the direction of pay comparisons and pay level satisfaction. They hypothesized that upward pay comparisons would significantly predict pay level satisfaction, even when controlling for other comparisons. Results reported in 2 samples (U.S. sample, N = 295; Belgian sample, N = 67) generally supported this hypothesis. Analyses showed that individuals who were paid much less than their upward pay comparison were dissatisfied with their pay level. The highest levels of pay level satisfaction were observed when actual pay was congruent with the upward comparison pay level. There was also evidence that individuals who were …

Perceived Random Leader Selection In Work Groups, Daniel Marsh

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Different methods of selecting a leader for work groups have been shown to have significant effects on the group's overall performance (Henningsen, et al., 2004). It has been suggested that systematic selection of leadership is detrimental to a group's performance and cohesiveness in certain cases (Haslam et al., 1998). This has been supported by many studies (Haslam et al., 1998; Henningsen et. al., 2004). In such cases it may be more beneficial to pick a leader in a random fashion instead of picking one due to leadership abilities. It was hypothesized that it is even more beneficial in these cases …

Antecedents Of Entrepreneurial Orientation: A Contingency Approach, Laurent Stephane Josien

Doctoral Dissertations

This research was created in order to offer a better understanding of the entrepreneurial orientation construct. Based on the literature review several antecedents of the entrepreneurial orientation construct were identified: risk, achievement, innovation, locus of control, self-esteem, opportunity, autonomy, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness. Relying on the contingency theory developed by Burns and Stalker (1961), it was decided to use the Carland's trichotomy of entrepreneurs as a moderator variable between the antecedents and the entrepreneurial orientation construct. As a result, three main areas of research were identified. The first area deals with determining which dimensions are underpinning the entrepreneurial orientation construct, …

Effect Of Household Structure On Family-Friendly Benefit Utilization: Implications For Organizational Attraction And Workplace Withdrawal Behaviors Of Federal Government Employees, Sharyn J. Aufenanger

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examined the effect of household structure on utilization of family-friendly benefits in organizations, as well as the impact that family-friendly benefit utilization has on organizational attraction and workplace withdrawal behaviors among Federal government employees with children. Results showed that alternative work arrangements (e.g., compressed and flexible schedules) were popular among all employees who have children. Family-friendly benefit utilization rates were highest among single parent employees and lowest among traditional family employees. Single parent employees were more likely to use flexible schedules, part-time, compressed schedules, telework, and sick and annual leave. Dual income employees were more likely to use …

Configuration Of Market Oriented Culture, Organizational Structure And Business Strategy Types And Their Performance Implications In Service Organizations, Omer Gokus

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Understanding how organizations in service sectors create and sustain a competitive advantage in today's highly dynamic environment is of interest to both researchers and managers. It has been suggested that competitive advantages are achieved either by placing a renewed emphasis on delivering superior quality services to customers or by seeking efficiency through standardized practices aiming at the lowest overall cost for superior performance. This dissertation investigates how these strategies are implemented to produce enhanced organizational performance by utilizing both market oriented culture and organizational structure simultaneously. The model and the hypotheses are tested with data collected from 151 service businesses. …

Risk Propensity And Knowledge Sharing Intentions Of Individuals In A Downsized Organization, Ward G. Willis

Theses and Dissertations

Downsizing can be a traumatic event for any organization. Using Affective Events Theory (AET), this study examined how the emotional reactions of employees to downsizing can impact organizational outcomes. It concludes that the use of downsizing activities decreases organizational commitment while increasing perceived psychological contract violation. Further, it shows that these constructs have a respective positive and negative relationship with knowledge sharing behavior. It also concludes that these relationships hold true not only for individuals most vulnerable to downsizing, but also for those who the organization would consider immune to such actions. These results suggest that organizational downsizing activities not …

Project Manager Personality As A Factor For Success, John D. Bedingfield

Theses and Dissertations

Much has been written regarding project success, and one of the factors contributing to project success is the role of the project manager. Furthermore, project success can be enhanced by selecting the best project manager, and by assigning project managers whose attributes best align with project type. We investigated the role of the project manager's personality on project success using the "Big Five" personality model. We surveyed United States Department of Defense project managers to determine specific "Big Five" personality traits which were more likely to positively predict project manager success. The findings indicate conscientiousness and openness to experience were …

Establishing The Human Firewall: Reducing An Individual's Vulnerability To Social Engineering Attacks, Jamison W. Scheeres

Theses and Dissertations

Hackers frequently use social engineering attacks to gain a foothold into a target network. This type of attack is a tremendous challenge to defend against, as the weakness lies in the human users, not in the technology. Thus far, methods for dealing with this threat have included establishing better security policies and educating users on the threat that exists. Existing techniques aren’t working as evidenced by the fact that auditing agencies consider it a given that will be able to gain access via social engineering. The purpose of this research is to propose a better method of reducing an individual’s …

How A Multidimensional View Of Perceived Organizational Support Impacts Self-Efficacy And Task Understanding During Training For Boundary Spanning Tasks, R. Scott Wallace

Theses and Dissertations

Perceived organizational support (POS), defined as how much employees feel the organization they work for cares for them and assists them in their needs, has been traditionally characterized in a single dimension. This study examines the implications of a multidimensional view of POS. POS was separated into three different dimensions based on the organizational level from which support can be viewed to originate: corporate headquarters, the home office, or the training environment. These dimensions of POS were tested to discover their effect on the self-efficacy and task understanding of individuals training for boundary-spanning tasks. These tasks are those that place …

What Does Exercise-Based Assessment Really Mean?, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

My commentary addresses Lance’s (2008) recommendation to reorient assessment center (AC) practice away from dimensions toward exercise-based assessment. As exercise-based assessment is dealt with only in general terms in Lance’s article, I aim to delineate what exercise-based assessment really means. Two points are made. First, I arguethattakingdimensionsawayfromACs does not mean that assessee behavior is no longer determined by latent traits because behavior is inherently trait determined. Second, I elaborate on the practical and research implications of exercise-based assessment because these implications are underdeveloped in Lance.

A Cross-Nations, Cross-Cultures, And Cross-Conditions Analysis On The Equivalence Of The Balanced Inventory Of Desirable Responding (Bidr), Andrew Li, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article examines measurement equivalence of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) across two nations (the United States and Singapore), two cultural values (horizontal individualism and horizontal collectivism) and two motivational conditions (standard and faking). One sample of undergraduate students from each country (N Singapore = 158, N United States = 166) participated in this study, and a within-subject experimental design is used. Specifically, at Time 1, participants were simply asked to respond to the BIDR and the INDCOL (standard condition). At Time 2, the participants were instructed to engage in social desirability (faking condition). Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses …

The Relative Importance Of Task, Citizenship And Counterproductive Performance To Job Performance Ratings: Do Rater Source And Team-Based Culture Matter?, Filip Lievens, James M. Conway, Wilfried De Corte

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study contributes to our understanding of which factors predict raters' policies for combining performance components into an overall job performance rating. We used a work-roles framework to examine the effects of rater source and team-based culture. The sample consisted of 612 individuals in three job categories (3 17 nurses, 168 personnel recruiters and 127 sales representatives). Respondents rated employee performance profiles that were described on task, citizenship and counterproductive performance. Raters' weights differed by (a) organizational culture (low- vs. high-team-based); (b) rating source (supervisor vs. peer) and (c) job. In a team-based culture, more weight was given to citizenship …

A Closer Look At The Frame-Of-Reference Effect In Personality Scale Scores And Validity, Filip Lievens, Wifiried De Corte, Eveline Schollaert

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article contributes to the understanding of why the use of a frame-of-reference leads to increased criterion-related validity of personality inventories. Two competing explanations are described and tested. A between-subjects (N = 337) and a within-subject (N = 105) study are conducted to test the hypothesized effects of use of a frame of reference on reliability and validity. Regarding the effects on reliability, use of a frame of reference reduces within-person inconsistency (instead of between-person variability) in responding to generic items. Use of a frame of reference further leads to higher validity as a result of the reduction of between-person …

Regret Aversion And Decision Process Quality: Effect Of Regret Salience On Decision Process Carefulness, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A considerable amount of past research has examined the effects of regret aversion on which options decision makers choose. However, past research has largely neglected to address the effect of regret aversion on the decision process. We conducted five experiments to examine the effect of making regret salient on decision process quality. We predicted that increased regret aversion would lead to more careful decision processing. The results consistently supported this prediction across the different decision situations, incentive structures, regret salience manipulations, and dependent variables used. In all experiments making regret salient led decision makers to take significantly longer to reach …

Quanttalent Management, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Since structured products are a major profit engine on the trading floor of most banks, this demand represents a strong pull factor for quants from competing institutions. There is nothing much that most financial institutions can do about this pull factor, except to pull them back in with offers they can’t refuse.

How Friendly Is Too Friendly?, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Being a boss is tough and being a good boss is a tricky balancing act. One issue many bosses face is: How friendly can they become with their team?

The Dark Side Of Authority: Antecedents, Mechanisms, And Outcomes Of Organizational Corruption, Ruth V. Aguilera, Abhijeet K. Vadera

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corruption poisons corporations in America and around the world, and has devastating consequences for the entire social fabric. In this article, we focus on organizational corruption, described as the abuse of authority for personal benefit, and draw on Weber's three ideal-types of legitimate authority to develop a theoretical model to better understand the antecedents of different types of organizational corruption. Specifically, we examine the types of business misconduct that organizational leaders are likely to engage in, contingent on their legitimate authority, motives, and justifications. We conclude by suggesting managerial implications of our theoretical model and propose directions for future research. …

Measuring Work Preferences: A Multidimensional Tool To Enhance Career Self Management, G. Ronald Gilbert, Ravipreet S. Sohi, Adriana G. Mceachern

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a multidimensional work preference research instrument, and to relate scores on these dimensions with subjects' real world work choices.

Design/methodology/approach: Repeated samples of 1,002 and 975 adult subjects were used to identify 17 empirically derived constructs, using both EFA and CFA statistical applications. The CFA revealed measurement invariance among the predicted and measured constructs. The 17 validated constructs were culled from career development-related psychology that has variously been identified with learning styles, work interests, work values, and temperament. Using a third sample of 590 subjects, MANOVA analyses of work preference scores …

Court Of Public Opinion In And For The State Of Uncertainty, Kevin Farmer, Kathleen Kane, Steven Meisel, Joseph Seltzer

Organization, Leadership, and Communication

Our session has two goals. First, we aim to stimulate debate over a ubiquitous, yet largely unchallenged, instrument that purports to operationalize Jungian personality theory (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). Second, we suggest a platform for teaching management theories, the mock-trial, which manifests active learning as well as critical thinking and has been successfully utilized in other disciplines. With contributors playing key roles in the trial and volunteers from the audience serving as potential prosecution and defense witnesses as well as the jury, we hope the discourse on substantive theory and teaching process will provide the jolt OBTC 2008 envisions.

Cheating With Honor, Christian A. Pfeiffer

Business and Economics Honors Papers

The intent of this paper is to understand what leads a student to cheat within the context of a small (enrollment below 2,000 students) liberal arts college. The development of a model will examine cheating from three categories highlighted in the literature: demographics, college culture, and the perception of cheating. Demographics capture relevant personal attributes of a student such as gender, GPA, and major. Cultural variables include variables for the presence of an honor code and participation in a sport or social organization, which provide that student with a unique cultural experience. Perception variables deal with the perceptions the students …

Organizational Conflict Within The Department Of Homeland Security, M. Katherine Manderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to explain why the Department of Homeland Security had difficulty fulfilling its roles when it was formed, specifically its role as grant administrator. Role theory surmises that conflict arises from unclear expectations, conflicting expectations, and too many roles. This study utilized various public testimonies, legislation, and other government documents to examine how the missions of the twenty-two agencies that were merged together to make up DHS changed. Even though DHS has changed continually over the five years since its existence most employees seem to be clear on the mission of the organization in which they work. However, …

Organizational Culture In A Terminally Ill Hospital, Alberto Coustasse, Douglas A. Mains, Kristine Lykens, Sue G. Lurie, Fernando Trevino

Management Faculty Research

This study analyzed an organizational culture in a community hospital in Texas to measure organizational culture change and its impact on Patient Satisfaction (PS). The study employed primary and secondary data, combining quantitative and qualitative methods for a case study. Participant observation was used and archival data were collected to provide a better understanding of the organizational culture and the context in which change was taking place. This study also applied a “Shared Vision” of the organization as the central process in bringing forth the knowledge shared by members of the community hospital who were both subjects and research participants. …

Sex Differences On Elementary Cognitive Tasks Despite No Differences On The Wonderlic Personnel Test, Bryan Pesta, S. Bertsch, Peter J. Poznanski, W.H. Bommer

Business Faculty Publications

Whether males and females differ in general mental ability (GMA) remains an open question. Complicating the issue is that standardized IQ tests are constructed to minimize sex differences. We propose a potential solution whereby GMA is measured via performance on elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs). ECTs assess basic information-processing ability, yet correlate moderately highly with GMA. Toward this end, we had male (n = 218) and female (n = 226) undergraduates complete the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT), and two ECTs: inspection time (IT) and reaction time (RT). The sex difference on the WPT was non-significant (d = .17), but small differences …

Actor-Network Theory And Organizational Forming: An Amodern Path Dependence Perspective, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

The organizational theory literature has identified the emergence and evolution of organizational forms as a critical issue to be addressed, yet new ways of looking at organizational form have yet to be addressed and there are concerns about the largely ahistorical and aprocessual character of much organizational theorizing. While path dependence, as conventionally conceived, presents an avenue for overcoming the lack of historical contingency in mainstream organizational theories, it does not maintain an opening for forming. Here is where actor-network theory comes in to not only argue that organizational forming is ongoing, but also show how it is made unrecognizable …