Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons^™

Transformational Leadership In The World Of Sales, Dalton R. Barnes

CMC Senior Theses

It takes a very specific type of person to be successful in sales; this makes recruiting and retaining effective employees a difficult task for companies in this field. Because finding and training these people is such a challenging task, it is in the best interest of companies to invest in training and developing their employees to be successful and avoid burning out. Bass and Riggio (2006) would note that in a field with such a high burnout rate, a transformational sales leader is important because they are generally able to build stronger follower loyalty, commitment, and satisfaction than their non-transformational …

A Computational Model Of The Temporal Processing Characteristics Of Visual Priming In Search, Jordan M. Haggit

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When people look through the environment their eyes are guided in part by what they have recently seen. This phenomenon, referred to as visual priming, is studied in the laboratory through manipulations of stimulus repetition. Typically, in search tasks, response times are speeded when the same target is repeated relative to when it is changed (e.g., Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Although priming is thought to be based on a memory mechanism in the visual system, there is a debate in the literature as to whether such a mechanism is driven by relatively early (e.g., feature-based accounts) or later (e.g., episodic …

Assessing The Effect Of Personality Characteristics Of Minnesota Golfers On The Brand Equity Of Golf Drivers, Eric Schinella

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Although many researchers have focused on the attributes of a product that affect brand equity, this study focuses on the attributes of the consumer that affect brand equity. More specifically, the current study examines how a variety of golfer personality characteristics affect the equity they assign to various brands of golf equipment. The results of the survey showed that as golfers are more skilled, they are willing to pay a higher premium for their preferred driver. This may be because golfers who are more skilled tend to take the sport more seriously and will probably have no problem spending more …

Right-Wing Aauthoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, And Workplace Implications, Devin S. Burnell

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Workplace bullying is a recently recognized problem within organizations. Two personalities may be theoretically related, and may be able to predict this aggressive behavior: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. However, it is still unclear how to measure right-wing authoritarianism as a construct. Two surveys were distributed. The first was to assess the factor structure inconsistency among the literature. A three-factor operationalization was supported. Analysis of the second survey examined the relationship between the aggression dimension of right-wing authoritarianism, dangerous worldview and workplace bullying; as well as the relationship between social dominance orientation and competitive worldview on workplace bullying. No …

Weight Discrimination Through Social Networking Sites: The Moderating Effects Of Gender, Stereotype-Consistent Behavior, And Occupational Setting, Bridget Mchugh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the use of social networking sites (SNSs) in hiring increases, human resources professionals have become concerned with the increased probability of discriminatory hiring decisions. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that discrimination towards overweight and obese applicants has risen in the past decade. The present study addressed these concerns by examining the impact of an applicant's weight in a SNS profile picture on the decision to hire the applicant for a sales position. The impact of the applicant's gender, body mass index, and stereotype-consistent behaviors on hiring intentions were examined. In addition, the type of sales position …

She's Not Fit For The Business World: An Initial Examination Of Gender, Age, And Weight, Miranda Pelkey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined archetype theory (Marcus & Fritzsche, 2015) that suggests that the intersection of multiple group memberships will create a unique cognitive representation, as it is relates to sex, age, and weight. Following a pilot study to equate photos on attractiveness, perceived competence, professionalism, and intelligence, 183 participants reviewed a fictitious LinkedIn profile in which all information was held constant across participants except the photo. Using a 2 (sex) x 2 (age) x 2 (weight) design (manipulated through the photos), participants rated the job applicant on adjectives associated with proposed sex, age, and weight archetypes and on perceptions …

Emotional Intelligence In Organizational Social Networks, Andrea Hermsdorfer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the role of emotional intelligence in relationships. Drawing on the notion that individuals who are high on emotional intelligence should have more social ties to others and stronger relationships within these ties, this study used social network analysis to specifically examine the extent to which emotional intelligence is positively related to social network centrality. I hypothesized that emotional intelligence would be positively related to centrality in four networks: advice, friendship, support, and positive affect presence. The hypotheses were not supported in this study, in spite of this, the incremental validity suggest a relationship between emotional intelligence and …

Why Do Some Employees Readjust To Their Home Organizations Better Than Others? Job Demands-Resources Model Of Repatriation Adjustment, Yukiko Yamasaki

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The present study applied the Demands-Resources Model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) to investigate factors related to repatriate adjustment. Specifically, this study proposed three organizational factors (role ambiguity, lack of work autonomy, and absence of pre-training) as job demands, which would inhibit adjustment of repatriates. The second part of this study identified three personal characteristics (openness, cultural intelligence, and proactivity) as job resources and examined whether these characteristics would minimize the negative effects of the job demands on repatriate adjustment. Repatriate adjustment was assessed as expatriate adjustment (Black & Stephens, 1989), job stress (Lambert, Hogan, & Griffin, 2007), job satisfaction (Warr, …

The Power Of Perks: Equity Theory And Job Satisfaction In Silicon Valley, Kristi Sun

Scripps Senior Theses

Silicon Valley is known for its amazing workspace and perks. Due to Equity Theory and Two-factor Theory, employees should be content and stay longer. However, studies have found that there's a higher rate of job-hopping, which seems like a contradiction (Fallick et al, 2006). Participants were 135 engineers, ages 18 to 35 years old, who completed an online survey looking at job satisfaction, job expectations, perk usage, employee perception of perks, personal equity sensitivity, and comparison others. Recruitment was done through personal connections in the Bay Area and various social media sites that are targeted towards engineers. Results did not …

An Analysis Of Stakeholders Communication In Collaborative Software Development Projects, Wei Zhang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Software development is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving many stakeholders. However, existing software development processes exhibit many issues related to that collaboration. Because prior research on stakeholder analysis and teamwork revealed the importance of communication, this study analyzed stakeholder communication with reference to team activities as a social and cognitive process. The study’s goal was to understand the collaboration process during software development and to delineate factors that influence this process. We focused on communication between the software developers and their clients during the requirements gathering phase, the team process, and the inter-team and interdisciplinary collaboration, in particular between software engineers …

The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective: An Ongoing Experiment In Musical Self-Governance, Julian D. Bryson

Theses and Dissertations--Music

C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective and Triad: Boston’s Choral Collective are the first choirs to explore collectivity as a method of ensemble organization. While more traditional ensembles have a single artistic director, C4 and Triad share and rotate leadership responsibilities among the full membership. Artistic and logistical decisions develop through conversation, consensus, and/or voting.

This monograph draws primarily on interviews with thirteen current and former members of the two ensembles as well as the author’s personal experiences with Triad’s inaugural concert cycle to present a narrative description of member characteristics, governance, and operational processes. Interview responses are compared to relevant …

Relationship Among Motivation, Emotion Regulation, And Psychological Well-Being Of Sophomore And Senior Level Nursing Students, Aryene Delgado, Douglas Garner, Nicole Langhals

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Nursing education and professional work involve stressful circumstances that may lead to attrition, which can further contribute to the projected nursing shortage. This study examines the relationships between motivation, emotional regulation, psychological well-being and academic performance in baccalaureate sophomore and senior level nursing students at a Midwest urban university in the United States. The non-experimental, correlational study is guided by Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory and uses an online survey data collection and convenience sampling. Measures include: motivation, emotional regulation, psychological well-being (burnout; inauthenticity), and academic performance (GPA), and will be measured using Deci and Ryan’s scale, the Emotion Regulation …

Explaining Race Differences In Academic Performance: The Role Of Perceived Expectations & Outcome Valence, Devin Christopher Houston

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Differences between whites and blacks in academic performance are well documented in the research literature. Past research has focused more on stable factors, such as personality and cognitive ability, to try to explain race and gender differences. However, past research has not focused enough on the examination of malleable and socially influenced factors, such as valence of education and perceived parental and friend expectations. In addition, differences between the academic performances of certain groups might not be due to race but due to factors that covary with race. These factors may be unaccounted for while race is being used as …

Detecting Insufficient Effort Responding: An Item Response Theory Approach, Tyler Douglas Barnes

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Insufficient Effort Responding (IER) is prevalent enough in self-report data to cause issues with construct validity. There are many ways to detect IER, but they are less than ideal as they each detect different forms of IER. I compared an Item Response Theory (IRT) approach consisting of the lz person-fit statistic and the Person Fluctuation Parameter (PFP) to longstring, non-consecutive longstring, even-odd split, and psychological synonyms indices. I simulated 3200 samples with one of four types of random responding: consecutive responding, non-consecutive patterned responding, random responding following a normal distribution, and random responding following a uniform distribution. Also, I generated …

Spatial Knowledge Acquisition On Gps Navigational Map Displays: Influence Of Landmarks On Sequentially Presented, Partial Maps, Caitlan A. Rizzardo

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Current car navigation systems use maps that show part of a region and are sequentially presented as the driver moves along a route, displaying information that is relevant to immediate guidance, such as the surrounding streets and turn indicators. Rizzardo, Colle, McGregor, and Wylie (2013) have shown that sequentially presented, partial maps populated with landmark objects can also facilitate spatial knowledge acquisition. Spatial knowledge is useful for evaluating GPS instructions and navigating after the fact. However, the optimal number of landmarks on map segments has not been extensively tested. The Object-Based Spatial-Episodic Representations for Visual Environments (OBSERVE) theory indicates that …

Heterogeneous Versus Homogeneous Measures: A Meta-Analysis Of Predictive Efficacy, Suzanne Lee Dean

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A meta-analysis was conducted to compare the predictive validity and adverse impact of homogeneous and heterogeneous predictors on objective and subjective criteria for different sales roles. Because job performance is a dynamic and complex construct, I hypothesized that equally complex, heterogeneous predictors would have stronger correlations with objective and subjective criteria than homogeneous predictors. Forty-seven independent validation studies (N = 3,378) qualified for inclusion in this study. In general, heterogeneous predictors did not demonstrate significantly stronger correlations with the performance criteria than homogeneous predictors. Notably, heterogeneous predictors did not demonstrate adverse impact on protected classes. One noteworthy finding was that …

Changes In State Suspicion Across Time: An Examination Of Dynamic Effects, Steve Khazon

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State Information Technology (IT) suspicion is the simultaneous action of uncertainty, mal-intent, and cognitive activity about underlying information that is being electronically generated, collated, sent, analyzed, or implemented by an external agent (Bobko, Barelka, & Hirshfield, 2014). Understanding IT suspicion is important in both military and civilian contexts as both are growing increasingly reliant on automation to augment human performance (e.g., Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010). The current process model of state IT suspicion describes how suspicion arises and its immediate correlates. Little is known about how suspicion changes over time and what factors influence this change. Drawing upon …

Stop With The Questions Already! The Effects Of Questionnaire Length And Monetary Incentives On Insufficient Effort Responding., Anthony Gibson

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Insufficient Effort Responding (IER) can negatively impact self-report data quality. The purpose of the current study was to investigate questionnaire length as a predictor of IER and to examine whether the presence of a monetary incentive moderates the relationship between questionnaire length and IER. I predicted that participants who were assigned to complete longer questionnaires would engage in more IER than would respondents who were assigned to complete shorter questionnaires. I predicted that the effects of questionnaire length on IER would be minimized by the presence of a monetary incentive to respond carefully. Using a sample of undergraduate students (N …

Identification And Examination Of Key Components Of Active Learning, Darrell Scott Kelly

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The purpose of this study was to examine key components of active learning. I hypothesized that feedback, accountability, and guided exploration were key components of active learning. I collected survey data from second year medical students (N = 103) in three different active learning interventions: peer instruction (PI), team-based learning (TBL), and problem-based learning (PBL), at six time points. My results did not consistently support my hypotheses. However, I observed a pattern of differences concerning feedback and accountability in the predicted direction in all three interventions. Feedback had a positive effect on professionalism in both PI and PBL, and accountability …

Cognition Of Shared Decision Making: The Case Of Multiple Sclerosis, Katherine Domjan Lippa

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The increasing emphasis in the medical community on shared decision making and patient centered care suggests that patients play a role in their care, but research on clinical reasoning almost exclusively addresses practitioner cognition. As patient involvement increases, it is important to understand the effect patients have on clinical cognition. This necessitates moving beyond a model that equates clinical cognition with practitioner cognition to incorporate the influence of patient cognition and dyadic patient-practitioner cognition. In this dissertation, I suggest that patient-practitioner interactions constitute a distributed cognitive system. As a result patient cognition and the nature of the interaction inherently contribute …