Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

How Fun Are Your Meetings? Investigating The Relationship Between Humor Patterns In Team Interactions And Team Performance, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Joseph A. Allen

Psychology Faculty Publications

Research on humor in organizations has rarely considered the social context in which humor occurs. One such social setting that most of us experience on a daily basis concerns the team context. Building on recent theorizing about the humor—performance association in teams, this study seeks to increase our understanding of the function and effects of humor in team interaction settings. Specifically, we examine behavioral patterns of humor and laughter in real teams. We videotaped and coded humor and laughter during 54 regular organizational team meetings. Performance ratings were obtained immediately following the team meetings as well as at a later …

Suggested Practices For Making I-O Connections: Let’S Build Bridges And Grow I-O!, Joseph A. Allen, Tara S. Behrend, Suzanne T. Bell, Victoria J. Smoak

Psychology Faculty Publications

It may come as no surprise, but there are an awful lot of people who have no idea what I-O pychology is or what I-O psychologists do. Common reactions from new acquaintances include, “Ooo, I could really use some help organizing my home and be a more industrious person” or “Wow, that’s a mouthful” or “No really, what do you do for a living?” Perhaps even more alarming is the number of students across universities who aren’t introduced to I-O—even if they are psychology majors! We are struck by the number of prospective graduate students who tell us that they …

Linking Pre-Meeting Communication To Meeting Effectiveness, Joseph A. Allen, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, Nicole Landowski

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose – This study investigates the importance of communication that occurs just before workplace meetings (i.e., pre-meeting talk). We explore how four specific types of pre-meeting talk (small talk, work talk, meeting preparatory talk, and shop talk) impact participants' experiences of meeting effectiveness. Moreover, we investigate the role of participants’ personality in the link between pre-meeting talk and perceived meeting effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained using an online survey of working adults (N = 252). Because pre-meeting talk has not been studied previously, a new survey measure of meeting talk was developed.

Findings – Pre-meeting small talk was a …

Constructing Creativity: Wisdom In Everyday Problem Solving, Audrey Defrank, Nicholas J. Arreola, Roni Reiter-Palmon

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Creativity is conceptualized as an idea or product that is both original and high in quality (Amabile, 1996). Researchers have sought to better understand the creative process by examining predictors of creative outcomes. Wisdom may play a predictive role in this process. According to Webster (2003), wisdom is the competency in, and application of, critical life experiences to optimize development of the self, as well as others. Research has suggested that wisdom supports creativity at an implicit level (Sternberg, 1985, 1999), and contributes to creative achievements (Helson & Srivastava, 2002).

Process models of creativity have sought to demonstrate cognitive operations …

Understanding Workplace Meetings: A Qualitative Taxonomy Of Meeting Purposes, Joseph A. Allen, Tammy Beck, Cliff Scott, Steven G. Rogelberg

Psychology Faculty Publications

Purpose - Meetings are a workplace activity that deserves increased attention from researchers and practitioners. Previous researchers attempted to develop typologies of meeting purpose with limited success. Through a comparison of classification methodologies, we consider a taxonomy as the appropriate classification scheme for meeting purpose. The goal of our study is to propose a taxonomy of meeting purpose. We then utilize the developed taxonomy to investigate the frequency with which a representative sample of working adults engaged in meetings of these varying purposes. Our proposed taxonomy provides relevant classifications for future research on meetings and serves as a useful tool …