Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Representing Uncertainty: Beliefs And Habits In The International Development Evaluation Context, Christina Peterson

Doctoral Dissertations

Evaluation can be imagined as an uncertainty management strategy and evaluators as a class of professionals whose role is reducing uncertainty for decision-makers. In the development sector, uncertainty about the efficacy of various interventions exists and evaluations are needed to improve organizational resource utilization. Representations of uncertainty impact decision-making. Evaluator beliefs and routines regarding uncertainty representation in evaluation reports contribute to the ability of evaluation to influence decisions about development programs and policies. This study aimed to explore these beliefs and habits and to understand how they are influenced by the evaluation context. Social Representations Theory is used to situate …

Grit, Personality, And Job Performance: Exploring Nonlinear Relationships, Ellen Lovell

Doctoral Dissertations

Hiring employees suitable for specific jobs is a challenge facing organizations, as the cost of a poor hire is approximately 30% of that employee’s first-year earnings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Employers look to individual differences, such as cognitive ability and personality, to help match applicants with appropriate jobs, as they are supported by research evidence. However, some variance in job performance is explained by differing combinations of these variables, among others.

Research in education and psychology have recently highlighted grit as a potentially strong predictor of success in non-work contexts. Grit was introduced by Angela Duckworth, who …

Understanding Competing Climates: A Theoretical Framework For Examining Service And Ethical Climates, Cristopher T. Huynh

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of work climate has expanded our understanding of how context impacts individuals in the workplace. While most climate research has focused on single- or multi-faceted organizational climates and how they directly impact the individual employee, little has been done to understand the influence of multiple, competing work climates on employee behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the multiple, competing climates perspective (Schneider et al., 2013) to better understand the influence of context on an employee’s work-related attitudes. This dissertation begins with a brief review of the climate literature and its existing challenges, highlighting the importance …

How Tempered Radicals Pursue Ideological Change Within Their Organization, Saleh M. Bajaba

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizations that are adaptive, diverse, and socially responsible are often built by employees who are able to implement change “under the radar” of those in the organization who would ordinarily fight significant change. These “tempered radicals” are insider activists who serve as the catalyst for incremental constructive changes which, over time, build better organizations. Unfortunately, little is known about what motivates tempered radicals to enact changes within their organizations. In order to better understand the motives of these internal change agents, I develop a measure of tempered radical motives (TRM). In Study 1, I develop a measure of TRM by …

Validation Of External Organizational Justice Assessment Through Replication, And Examination Of Extraversion, Core Self-Evaluations, And Self-Monitoring As Moderators Of The Relationship Between External Organizational Justice And Organizational Outcomes: A Two-Part Dissertation, Clifton E. Luther

Doctoral Dissertations

In the first portion of this two-part dissertation, I attempted to replicate the findings published in Toaddy (2012), illustrating the relationships between External Organizational Justice (EJ) and a collection of organizational outcomes. In the second portion, I examined how the variables of Extraversion, Core Self-Evaluations (CSE), and Self-Monitoring (SM) moderate the relationships that were established in Toaddy (2012). The implications of this research attempted to illustrate the role that self-assessed personality factors can play in explaining and predicting the behavior of employees due to their perceptions of moral/immoral behaviors of their employers toward external entities. Cases that illustrate the importance …

The Moderating Role Of Culture In The Job Demands-Resources Model, James A. De Leon

Doctoral Dissertations

During the past few decades, occupational health researchers have examined the effects of work characteristics on job stress and employee wellbeing (Beehr & Franz, 1987; Caulfield, Chang, Dollard, & Elshaug, 2004; Jex, 1998; Jex & Britt, 2014; Schaufeli & Greenglass, 2001; Sparks, Faragher, & Cooper, 2001). With the help of the Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R model; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007; Bakker, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2003; Demerouti, Bakker, de Jonge, Janssen, & Schaufeli, 2001; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), researchers have been able to examine the impact of jobspecific work characteristics (demands and resources) on employee wellbeing. The work processes outlined in …

The Influence Of Regional Stereotypes In Employee Selection, Brittani E. Plaisance

Doctoral Dissertations

An individual’s social world is understood through categorizing other people as those within an individual’s own in-group and those without, or the out-group. Social cognitive theory suggests that individuals make decisions in social settings based on implicit social comparisons between these groups. Stereotypes are oversimplified beliefs about the members of a specific group and discrimination is the behavioral outcome based on held stereotypes. Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, age, and gender has dominated research in the realm of employee selection for the last twenty years. Researchers have demonstrated perceived and actual differences in various attributes by region of the United …

A Model Of The Relationship Between Performance Feedback And Goal Setting: A Consideration Of, Affective Cognitive, And Psychological State Effects, Ann-Marie R. Castille

Doctoral Dissertations

Performance feedback meetings are often dreaded, perceived to be worthless, and de-motivating for employees (Culbertson, Henning, & Payne, 2013; Rock, 2008). Although they are intended to enhance motivation and performance (Erez, 1977; Kim & Hamner, 1976), over a third of feedback interventions backfire, resulting in lower rather than higher performance (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Motivational theories (i.e., behavioral motivation theory, organizational justice theory, reversal theory, goal setting theory, and theory of planned behavior) provide complementary explanations for the impact of feedback on performance. However, these explanations have not been subjected to comprehensive empirical scrutiny. The purpose of this dissertation was …

Understanding The Effects Of Regulatory Focus On Proactive Behavior, Brian P. Waterwall

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decade, motivation research has focused on what motivates employees to engage in behaviors that fall outside of ones' job/task requirements and bring about meaningful change in the organization's environment, proactive behaviors (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000). Recently, regulatory focus theory has received considerable research attention because of its potential to explain additional variance in behavior beyond other motivational constructs. Regulatory focus theory suggests that during goal striving, people will display behaviors associated with their current motivational state. Drawing from prior research examining motivation and behavior, I propose and test a model that examines the effects of …

The Development And Validation Of An Automatic-Item Generation Measure Of Cognitive Ability, Scott Hines

Doctoral Dissertations

Cognitive ability is perhaps the most studied individual difference available to researchers, being measured quickly and effectively while demonstrating a predictable influence on many life outcomes. Historically, the evolution of the psychometric study of cognitive abilities has pivoted on the development of new and better methodologies allowing for a more complete and efficient capture of intellect. For instance, recent advances in computer and Internet technology have largely replaced traditional pencil-and-paper methods, allowing for innovative item development and presentation. However, concerns regarding the potential adverse impact and test security of online measures of cognitive ability, particularly in unproctored situations, are well …

Using Latent Class Cluster Analysis To Identify And Profile Organizational Subclimates: An Exploratory Investigation Using Safety Climate As An Exemplar, Amy Frost Stevenson

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizational climate refers to the shared meaning organizational members attach to the events, policies, practices, and procedures they experience as well as to the behaviors they see being rewarded, supported, and expected (Schneider, Ehrhart, & Macey, 2011). Climate scholars have most frequently used referent-shift consensus and dispersion composition models (Chan, 1998) to conceptualize and measure organizational climate. Based on these models, climate emergence has been characterized by low variance or high consensus of individual-level climate perceptions (Chan, 1998; Ehrhart, Schneider, & Macey, 2013; Hazy & Ashley, 2011; Kuenzi & Schminke, 2009) within formally defined organizational groups (e.g., work teams).

Climate …

Evaluating Indicators Of Job Performance: Distributions And Types Of Analyses, Richard J. Chambers Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

Distributions of job performance indicators have historically been assumed to be normally distributed (Aguinis & O'Boyle, 2014; Schmidt & Hunter, 1983; Tiffin, 1947). Generally, any evidence to the contrary has been attributed to errors in the measurement of job performance (Murphy, 2008). A few researchers have been skeptical of this assumption (Micceri, 1989; Murphy, 1999; Saal, Downey, & Lahey, 1980); yet, only recently has research demonstrated that in certain specific situations job performance is exponentially distributed (Aguinis, O'Boyle, Gonzalez-Mulé, & Joo, 2016; O'Boyle & Aguinis, 2012). To date there have been few recommendations in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology literature about how …

Leader-Member Exchange As A Predictor Of Leaders’ Positive Work Outcomes: A Field Study, Matthew Jason Shaffer

Doctoral Dissertations

Prior research found that the quality of the working relationships between leaders and their followers, or Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) quality in leader-member dyads, predicts positive work outcomes for followers, including job satisfaction, engagement, and performance. Though leaders might be expected to receive similar benefits from high quality LMX with their followers, almost no published, empirical research to-date has reported benefits of LMX for leaders. The current study tested the relationships of LMX and positive work outcomes for leaders among middle managers and their direct supervisees in a large manufacturing company. Hypotheses predicted that average leader-rated LMX and average follower-rated LMX …

Implementing Universal Social And Emotional Learning Programs: The Development, Validation, And Inferential Findings From The Schoolwide Sel Capacity Assessment, Cheyne A. Levesseur

Doctoral Dissertations

In order to effectively transport universal social and emotional learning (SEL) programs into natural settings, it is important to understand implementation barriers that may hinder the likelihood of successful outcomes (Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005). The current study is primarily based on the notion that within the planning phase of implementation, few technically adequate assessment measures targeting both organizational capacity (OC) and provider characteristics (PC) for SEL programming actually exist. The purpose is to extend the SEL implementation assessment literature by developing a new rating scale designed to measure SEL implementation barriers (School SEL Capacity Assessment [SSCA]) and …

An Investigation Of Key Personality Traits Of Managers And Executives, Kanwarjit Pahwa

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study examined the key personality traits of executives and managers, and its relationship with their career satisfaction. Executives and managers consists of the top management and their personality has important implications for the performance and development of an organization. The present study attempted to understand the commonalities and differences between the broad and narrow personality traits of executives and managers. Archival data on personality traits and career satisfaction of executives and managers working in different industries around the United States was extracted from eCareerfit.com. Data was analyzed using Independent t-test, Pearson correlation and Fisher’s Z test. The overall …

Mechanisms Of Change In An Organizational Culture And Climate Intervention For Increasing Clinicians’ Evidence-Based Practice Adoption In Mental Health, Nathaniel J. Williams

Doctoral Dissertations

Objective: Increasing the adoption of evidence-based practices (EBPs) is a focus of national and international efforts to improve the quality and outcomes of mental health services for youth; however, few studies have examined the multilevel change mechanisms that explain how successful implementation strategies increase EBP adoption. Identifying these mechanisms is necessary to develop more effective and efficient strategies. This study tested the multilevel mechanisms that link an empirically supported organizational implementation strategy called ARC (for Availability, Responsiveness, and Continuity) to increased EBP adoption.

Method: In a randomized controlled trial, 14 outpatient children’s mental health clinics in a large Midwestern city …

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 …

Crystallized Intelligence And Openness To Experience: Drawing On Intellectual-Investment Theories To Predict Job Performance Longitudinally, Christopher B. Patton

Doctoral Dissertations

Various approaches to conceptualizing and measuring intelligence have been utilized throughout history. Despite the plethora of intelligence theories, the field of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology has been largely dominated by the psychometric tradition of intelligence and Spearman's general factor theory of intelligence (g). Moreover, other approaches to intelligence (e.g., the developmental perspective) have generally been ignored by I-O psychology. This is puzzling given the widespread acceptance among I-O psychologists of intelligence's substantial and increasing importance in the modern workplace.

Supported by a vast amount of research, g has often been recognized as the single best predictor of …

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 …

Job Analysis: Measuring Accuracy And Capturing Multiple Perspectives, Deann H. Arnold

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizations rely on job analysis to provide information about the work performed and requirements needed for a position. The use of inaccurate information may have negative outcomes, such as the misallocation of human resources or inefficient training programs. Many job analysis techniques rely on averaging responses, which may oversimplify the results. Preserving idiosyncratic variance, which reflects differences in the ways in which respondents experience and evaluate the job, may increase job analysis accuracy. To assess overall accuracy, the job analysis data in the present study was examined utilizing a practical model of accuracy (Prien, Prien, & Wooten, 2003). To detect …

Supportive Leadership, Employee Engagement And Occupational Safety: A Field Study, Lauren Elizabeth Baxter

Doctoral Dissertations

This archival field study examined the relationships of supportive leadership, employee engagement, and safety outcomes in order to address the current knowledge gap regarding these concepts and also to test predictions of and extend the Job Demands-Job Resources Model. Participants were 3,312 employees from multiple departments located at 11 different locations of a large southeastern utility company. Data were collected on supportive leadership, employee engagement, and safety climate using archival data from self-report questionnaires. Recordable injuries and first-aid instances were collected through the organization’s archival safety records. Three consecutive years of data were included in the study. As expected, supportive …

The Effects Of Procedural Injustice, Rebecca B. Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to test for the existence of procedural injustice (PIJ) in the audit environment and its effect on junior auditor's reporting of time and level of skeptical action. This dissertation theorizes that the conflicting forces between junior auditors' ethical beliefs, formal firm policies forbidding the underreporting of chargeable time (URT), and implicit encouragement from managers to engage in URT result in a unique aspect of the audit environment, PIJ, because entry-level auditors perceive these conflicting beliefs and messages as unfair. In this study, PIJ is defined as the inverse of procedural justice, which is the …

Emotional Labor And Authentic Leadership, John E. Buckner V

Doctoral Dissertations

Organizational research has begun to once again focus on the importance of emotions in the workplace. In particular, the concept of emotional labor, the management of emotions at work to influence clients and customers, has recently received much attention. While research has addressed the impact of emotional labor on both employees and clients or customers, research has not examined emotional labor within the context of leadership.

Authentic leadership, an emerging construct in the study of leadership, is proposed to relate to emotional labor. Leaders' authentic behavior has been shown to positively impact followers, such as increasing trust in their leader …

Personality, Organizational Commitment, And Job Search Behavior: A Field Study, Cynthia Ward Hackney

Doctoral Dissertations

This field study examined the relationships among the personality traits conscientiousness and openness to experience; organizational commitment; and job search behaviors in a work environment, to test hypotheses about the relationships of three types of commitment – affective, normative and continuance – with the personality traits and search behaviors, using established measures. Participants were 282 employees of cell phone sales organization located in the Southeastern United States, who completed on-line surveys. As hypothesized, individual conscientiousness showed a strong positive relationship with affective, normative and continuance commitment and a strong negative relationship with job search behaviors. Openness to experience showed the …

Integrity, Self-Control, And The Impact Of Ego Depletion On Counterproductive Behavior, Joshua D. Bazzy

Doctoral Dissertations

Although integrity has been found to significantly predict job performance and counterproductive behaviors, the constructs that underlie it have remained unclear. Personality, specifically conscientiousness, has been linked to integrity most consistently, but only accounts for a small amount of integrity’s variance. Research points to a relationship between integrity and self-control, but this has not been investigated.

The present investigation examined the nature and implications of this relationship. Results found that self-control contributed significantly to the variance in integrity beyond conscientiousness and the other dimensions of personality. Indeed, the addition of self-control to the model, essentially eliminated conscientiousness as a significant …

The Relation Between Globalization And Personal Values Across 53 Countries And 28 Years, Irina Florentina Cozma

Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this research is to examine the relation between the change in globalization and change in personal values (work and general life values). An analysis across 28 years and 53 countries suggests that changes in different personal values have different relations with the change in globalization. Moreover, this relation is influenced by the demographic characteristics of the sample. The present research contributes to the literature in the following ways: 1) linking globalization (an economic concept) and personal values (a psychological concept), 2) providing an analysis of the relation between the change in personal values and the change in …

Relationships Between Externalization Behaviors And Team Cognition Variables In Distributed Teams, Lisa Ann Delise

Doctoral Dissertations

Members of distributed teams often have difficulty sharing unique information with their teammates during decision making tasks. These communication problems may hinder the development of cognitions that allow team members to reach a similar understanding of the content and structure of task information. The C-MAP intervention (Rentsch, Delise, & Hutchison, 2008) was designed to assist team members in sharing their information through behaviors that convey the content and structure of information by using specific communication behaviors and developing a knowledge object. In the present study, the knowledge object took the form of a white board where information was posted and …

Temporal Patterns Of Functional And Dysfunctional Employee Turnover, Matthew Scott Fleisher

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined temporal patterns in collective employee turnover over a 75 month interval. Time series models were fit to subgroups of functional and dysfunctional turnover. Dysfunctional turnover was defined as voluntary separation among high and average performers and functional turnover was defined as voluntary separation of low performers. Results provided support for the hypothesis that temporal patterns of functional and dysfunctional turnover differ. Patterns among high and average performers were similar, such that employee turnover across several global regions increased during or near July. In contrast, employee turnover among low performers tended to spike during or soon after October. …

Two Essays On Managerial Incentives, Hui Liang

Doctoral Dissertations

Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Jensen (1986) argue that the separation of ownership and control may generate agency problems between managers and shareholders. The equity-based compensation, by tying managerial wealth to firm long-run stock performance, can incentivize managers to be more receptive to undertaking value-increasing financial policies and to improving firm performance therefore can be used as an effective tool to achieve consonance between managers actions and shareholders interest. Over the last two decades, the increased prevalence of equity-based compensation in the form of stock and options, is partially due to an increased acceptance of the alignment effect of equity-based …