Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons^™

From The Top-Down: Transformational Leadership Considerations For Health Care Organizations, Ericka Sanner-Stiehr, Clair Reynolds Kueny

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Nurse leaders can positively influence critical issues in healthcare by engaging in transformational leadership (TL) practices. High in humility, extraversion, self-efficacy, and emotional intelligence, transformational leaders focus on followers as individuals and inspire high goal attainment. Organizations can increase TL behaviors through top-down training strategies. This paper evaluates salient TL characteristics and considerations for organizations wishing to create positive organization-wide change.

Give And Take: Validity, Personality Profiling, And Individual Success, Sara Katarina Trané

Theses and Dissertations

This research addresses two critical aspects of organizational performance: (1) identification of individuals who have the potential to become the organization’s greatest assets and (2) identification of individuals who are likely to be the organization’s greatest liabilities. The greatest assets, contributing the most value to the organization, are proposed to be individuals with a predisposition to engage in a prosocial interaction style referred to as give. The greatest liabilities, engaging in behaviors contradicting organizational goals, are proposed to be individuals with an antisocial interaction style referred to as take. Although both givers and takers can be highly successful as individuals, …

Video Killed The Interview Star: Does Picture-In-Picture Affect Interview Performance?, Ryan G. Horn, Tara S. Behrend

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Although technology-mediated selection interviews have become more prevalent in practice, research on this phenomenon has failed to keep pace. One pressing need is to understand the dimensions upon which technology-mediated interviews might differ from one another. Particular aspects of synchronous video technology may negatively affect interviewees and those negative effects may be exacerbated by the evaluative nature of the interview. We explored this question by investigating the effects that one such aspect, the picture-in-picture window, has on interviewees. This study used a 2 (picture-in-picture vs. no picture-in-picture) x 2 (evaluative framing vs. non-evaluative framing) between-subjects experimental design to test the …

Timeliness Is Key To The Candidate Experience, Ann Marie Ryan, Abdifatah Ahmed Ali, Terry Hauer, Jillyan French-Vitet

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Effective talent attraction is a competitive advantage for organizations. This study examined the spillover effect of recruitment delays on signals important for organizational attraction. A diverse sample of 563 candidates evaluated their most recent recruitment experience. Using moderated regression and relative importance analysis, timeliness dissatisfaction dampened the positive effects of organizational prestige and opportunity to perform although these effects are greater earlier in the recruitment process. We discuss the contributions of this study and provide recommendations for recruitment practice.

Using O*Net To Develop A Framework Of Job Characteristics To Potentially Improve The Predictive Validity Of Personality Measures, Jeremy Burrus, Jason D. Way

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

It has long been theorized that we can improve prediction of job-related behavior from measures of personality by identifying job characteristics that allow for the expression of individual differences (e.g., Mischel, 1968). Using O*NET data, the current paper develops a framework for job characteristics that could improve the extent to which we can predict behavior from personality. More specifically, it investigates relationships between Work Styles, Generalized Work Activities, and Work Context variables. Job characteristics varied in importance as a function of four Work Styles composites: achievement, people orientation, stability, and attention to detail, and the relationships were largely …

Stop Interrupting Me! Examining The Relationship Between Interruptions, Test Performance And Reactions, Amie D. Lawrence, Ted B. Kinney, Matthew S. O'Connell, Kristin M. Delgado

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Unproctored testing (UIT) is common, and mobile testing is increasing rapidly, which means applicants are completing assessments in a variety of test environments. Little is known about how differences in the test environment affect candidate test performance and reactions. This study examines interruptions in the UIT test environment to better understand what interruptions candidates are experiencing and how they influence candidate outcomes. The results show that candidates are being interrupted in a UIT context. Interrupted candidates scored lower on test performance and reported less favorable applicant reactions. Interruptions happen and they do matter. Implications for organizations and practitioners are discussed.

Communicating Criterion-Related Validity Using Expectancy Charts: A New Approach, Jeffrey M. Cucina, Julia L. Berger, Henry H. Busciglio

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

Often, personnel selection practitioners present the results of their criterion-related validity studies to their senior leaders and other stakeholders when trying to either implement a new test or validate an existing test. It is sometimes challenging to present complex, statistical results to non-statistical audiences in a way that enables intuitive decision making. Therefore, practitioners often turn to expectancy charts to depict criterion-related validity. There are two main approaches for constructing expectancy charts (i.e., use of Taylor-Russell tables or splitting a raw dataset), both of which have considerable limitations. We propose a new approach for creating expectancy charts based on the …

Multiple Roles In Later Life: Role Enhancement And Conflict And Their Effects On Psychological Well-Being, Emma D. Quach

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Holding both work and family roles can be a central experience for men and women, young or old. Yet, to date, the bulk of knowledge on holding roles in both domains is specific to young adults, a critical gap as conditions warrant longer work life. This inquiry thus focused on older working men and women (over 50 years of age) with at least one family role (spouse, parent of adult children, caregiver to an aging parent, or grandparent). With survey data from the Health and Retirement Study in 2010 and 2012, latent profile analysis, path analyses, and regressions were conducted …

Home As Workplace: A Qualitative Case Study Of Online Faculty Using Photovoice, Lee Stadtlander, Amy Sickel, Lori Lacivita, Martha Giles

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

The present study examined how online faculty members structure their workspace in their homes and how their work situation affects their home environment. The case study’s goal, guided by an extension of Vischer's user-centered model of the work environment, was to address this research gap through interviews and using PhotoVoice, a technique in which participants take photos and are interviewed about them. Eighteen faculty members from a large online university were recruited through ads in the faculty newsletter. The inclusion criterion was that the individual must only work online. Interested individuals completed an email interview and emailed a photo of …

A Phenomenological Case Study Of Transformative Learning In A Non-Traditional Diversity Training Program, Ame Lambert

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

Rapidly changing demographics and globalization has spurred a plurality of organizations to invest millions of dollars annually in diversity training, with the primary aim of improving the experiences of underrepresented employees. However, the results of diversity training to date have not proven encouraging. Positive outcomes of diversity training have generally been confined to increased awareness and improved attitudes towards diversity, with implicit and explicit prejudice and behavior remaining unchanged. The aim of this study was to understand the transformational learning experiences of participants in a non-traditional diversity training program and the impact of their transformational learning on their behavior.

A …

Unreplicable: The Unscientific Nature Of Science Journals, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Academia shapes the way our species looks at veracity and defines what is deemed as well-founded science. The platform for researchers to make their work known is academic journals. The prerogative of these journals is to disseminate technically sound work so that the public may be informed of up-to-date advances in scientific fields. However, these journals are products on the market whose ultimate purpose is to garner a following that will make the producers money. This results in research that does not have statistically significant findings, or replications of past experiments which are integral to supporting the findings of the …

How To Measure Well-Being At Work And Why It Matters, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Supported staff are key drivers of high performing workplaces

Future Directions In Personality, Occupational And Medical Selection: Myths, Misunderstandings, Measurement, And Suggestions, Eamonn Ferguson, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper has two objectives: (1) presenting recent advances in personality theory whereby personality traits are conceptualized within a framework that focuses on the dynamic interactions of behaviour, biology, context, and states, and (2) discussing the implications of these developments for measurement and medical selection. We start by presenting evidence that traits are no longer regarded as stable deterministic predictors of behaviour. Instead, traits are found to change across generations, the life span, and in response to environmental contingencies. Thus, there is an urgent need to explore how traits change as function of medical education. Second, drawing on recent theory …

The Phenomenon Of Teacher Burnout: Mitigating Its Influence On New Teachers, Kaila Sanford

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Burnout is a psychological condition with physical, emotional, and mental dimensions. Burnout often includes feelings of exhaustion, long-term fatigue, negative self-concept, despair or hopelessness, frustration, and a lack of productivity at work.

Teacher burnout is a well-known and researched field. It has been documented in the literature that teachers experience high levels of stress and emotional exhaustion, which leads to high levels of burnout and professional attrition. This study examined the incidence of burnout in new elementary school teachers and offered recommendations for changes to organizational structure that may reduce professional burnout.

For the purpose of this study five new …

An Interrogation Of Turnover Antecedents At An Automobile Manufacturer In Northwest Ohio, Emily Boyle

Honors Projects

The manufacturing industry is one of the largest industries in Northwest Ohio. With the growing influence of Lean/Six Sigma manufacturing systems, the industry is becoming much more automated and team-oriented. The manufacturing facility in question is a Tier 1 and 2 automotive manufacturer that is a part of one of the largest global companies in this sector and uses many Lean and Six Sigma processes across three shifts. In recent years, this company has seen a trend of high turnover and it is a constant point of contention for both supervisors and Human Resources. The current study aimed to determine …

Factors In Public School Settings That Result In Teacher Agency, Jessica Hadid

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

A quality system for educating a nation’s youth depends upon a teaching force that continually learns, and applies its learning outcomes to active problem solving and development. Many current school and district models minimize teacher ability to engage in meaningful change, ultimately undermining the teachers’ sense of personal and professional agency. Literature suggests that internal forms of motivation are likely to result in the development of agency via self-determination of actions and behaviors. This mixed methods study examined five public schools in a small K-12 district through the lens of self-determination theory. An initial set of quantitative data were collected …

Employees Communicating Within Transportation And Logistics Organizations: What Studying Stress And Acts Of Incivility In The Workplace Reveals About The Industry, Elizabeth Munyak Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project investigates the relationship of workplace stress and workplace incivility in the context of transportation and logistics organizations. Informal, one-on-one interviews with transportation and logistics operations office employees are conducted to answer this study’s research questions that examine the commonality, perceived norms, and perceived emotional and physical effects of workplace incivility in response to stress within the transportation and logistics workplace. Using grounded theory analysis, it is revealed that acts of incivility amongst transportation and logistics operations office employees communicate the conflict occurring at the industry, organization, and workplace levels of the transportation and logistics industry. The ultimate …

The Role Of Sense Of Coherence In Stressor Appraisal, Lisa Brady

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

According to the transactional theory of stress, cognitive individual differences impact stressor appraisal. Sense of Coherence (SoC) refers to an individual’s generalized perception of environmental stimuli. Individuals with a strong SoC perceive the world as more comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful and may be more likely to appraise work-related stressors as having potential for opportunities (challenges) than for obstructing personal gain (hindrances) or causing harm (threats). This study assessed the role of SoC in the appraisal of work-related stressors as challenges, hindrances, and threats. Although an individual’s SoC remains relatively stable upon reaching adulthood, there is a positive association between age …

Assessing Cross-Cultural Competence: Evaluating The Psychometric Properties And The Nomological Network Of A Modified Version Of The Cultural Intelligence Scale, Kayitesi J. Wilt

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Effectively interacting with individuals in or from an unfamiliar culture requires cross-cultural competence and adaptability. The Cultural Intelligence Scale (Ang et al., 2007) is designed to measure an individual’s ability to adapt in a culturally unfamiliar environment. Studies using the CQS have mixed results regarding its dimensionality, construct validity, and its distinctness from other intelligences. Additionally, the phrasing of some of the items in the CQS require respondents to have been to a foreign culture to be able to answer. To address these critiques, I modified the CQS to accommodate individuals who have never been to a foreign culture. I …

What Makes A Business Person A Criminal: An Examination Through Academic Dishonesty, Dakota Lee Fraley

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the interaction between environmental and individual difference characteristics in predicting perceptions of white-collar crime and likelihood to engage in academic dishonesty. It adopted a cross discipline approach that pulls literature from criminology, industrial organizational psychology and academic dishonesty to create the theoretical framework for what causes a person to deviate. General strain theory, rational choice theory and social exchange theory were employed to explain how integrity, perceived stress and perceived injustice could predict likelihood to commit academic dishonesty and perceptions of white-collar crime. Additional analyses looked at how self-control might moderate the relationships between perceived stress …

Stable Inconsistency: A Study Of Response Inconsistency Over Time, James A. Nauert

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Personality measures are currently a popular method for selection in the business world, despite issues such as poor predictive ability and the potential for output manipulation by participants. Another issue with personality testing that is often overlooked is that individuals sometimes respond differently on test items that otherwise measure the same traits. This phenomenon has been called Response Inconsistency (Reddock, Biderman, & Nguyen, 2011). The focus of this study is to attempt to show the phenomenon as a measurable trait that is stable over time. The study administered two different Big Five Inventories to participants taken from a local university. …

Trust In Direct Leader And Employee Outcomes: The Moderating Effects Of Leaders’ Perceived Emotional Sincerity, Christopher Morgan

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Emotional sincerity, an emerging construct in the trust in leadership literature, refers to the congruence between emotions internally experienced and externally expressed. With regard to attribution theory, observers (employees) can use the emotional expressions of others (supervisors) as an information source for making judgments. Although previous research has examined the uniqueness and explanatory power of the leaders’ perceived emotional sincerity construct (LPES), relatively few studies have examined LPES as a moderator. The present study examined the moderating effects of LPES on well-established relationships between trust in direct leader (TDL) and several employee outcomes (i.e., turnover intentions, altruistic behaviors, and organizational …

Examining The Impact Of Selection Practices On Subsequent Employee Engagement, Sofia N. Rodriguez

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Employee engagement is often defined as the vigor, dedication, and absorption one feels about and/or displays within their job. It has long been asserted that engagement is highest for employees who “fit” better with their work. Applicants determine their anticipated levels of fit throughout the selection process. Therefore, it is crucial that the information organizations provide will allow applicants to make accurate assumptions of fit to increase the probability that the vacancy will be filled by an applicant best suited for the position. This study was designed to identify if the practices used during organizations’ selection processes influence the accuracy …

The Effects Of Goal Systems On Performance In Youth Baseball, Joshua A. Leet

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis explores the relationship of multiple goals set by youth baseball players with past and present performance. Core to this investigation was the complexity, content, and number of distal and proximal goals reported by players who wrote their goals for an upcoming season. Results showed that players with a greater number of process goals (compared to performance or outcomes goals) and individual goals (compared to team goals) received higher ratings of performance by their coaches. Analyses also revealed that age significantly influenced aspects of goal structure and content for goal reported by players. That is, older players reported having …

Expressing Pride: Effects On Perceptions Of Agency And Communality Based On Race And Gender, Rosalyn A. Miles

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This study investigated how the expression of pride shapes perceptions of agency and communality, and how those perceptions differ when the pride expresser is of a certain gender and race. Participants were primed with a scenario featuring a picture of a target varying in race and gender. Participants were then invited to complete a survey assessing their perceptions of agency, communality, leadership competence, and ascribed interpersonal hostility. It was hypothesized that the expression of pride over happiness would rank someone as being more or less agentic, communal, competent in leadership, or interpersonally hostile. It was also hypothesized that black targets …

Construct-Driven Sjts: Toward An Agenda For Future Research, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A common theme running through recent research on Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) and this special issue is the aim to improve the measurement of constructs via SJTs. Construct-driven SJTs differ from traditional SJTs in that they present a trait activating situation to test-takers and a more unidimensional set of response options that depict different trait levels. In this commentary, I frame the different papers of this special issue into a research agenda related to construct-driven SJTs. Specifically, I posit that future research should examine whether construct-driven SJTs lead to more unidimensionality at the item level, cleaner measurement of the constructs, …

Incremental Strategy-Oriented Feedback Promotes Positive Leadership Perceptions And Feedback Reactions, Lauren D. Murphy

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

In our lab experiment, participants who received negative strategy-oriented feedback associated with an incremental theory had more positive perceptions of a feedback deliverer and the feedback itself compared to recipients of comfort-oriented feedback associated with an entity theory.

Analyzing Organizational Commitment And The Effect On Job Turnover In Nurse Residents, Cory D. Church

Nursing Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of psychosocial concepts related to the experiences of a vital health human resource, newly licensed registered nurses. Newly licensed registered nurses are at risk for leaving their first job within the first year due to the difficulty of transitioning to practice. The pressure to gain competence and deliver quality care, all while navigating the workplace environment, can impact their commitment to an organization and the profession. The reader will notice these concepts threaded throughout the dissertation. While these concepts are explored in other nursing workforce populations, the researcher determined a gap in the research on …

The Dynamics Of Gender Identity And Implicit Bias Impacting Women's Executive Leadership Development Programs And Female Executive Leadership Coaching, Emelina Belle

M.A. in Leadership Studies: Capstone Project Papers

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

The implicit gender bias and stereotypes in our society continue to impact gender diversity in executive leadership roles within organizations. The critical demand of high-potential talented female leaders to fill the gap in the corporate pipeline of senior executive positions continues to increase in our global world. Our technologically advanced society impacts this demand, the global climate of organizational change, the competition in products and services, and the impact of implicit bias and gender stereotypes influence …

A Comprehensive Computer Aided Tool For Evaluating Mid-Level Managers, Ryan Hankins

Honors Projects

This project is a case study for a tool which would test and evaluate users on managerial skills and industrial-organizational psychology concepts. The tool developed during this project is a proto-type for a virtual assessment center which would offer a lower cost alternative to in-person assessment centers. The virtual assessment center evaluates users on process skills and soft skills that have been shown to be associated with successful mid-level managers. The proto-type has a business game to measure process skills and two situational judgment tests to measure two dimensions related to soft skills. To implement the business game, the proto-type …